Notes Interesting Facts About Cobblestone Dwellings Only Found in This Vicinity and Northern England
Mrs. William H. Rex, who lives a short distance east of Stanley on the Geneva state road in an interesting cobblestone house, has made a study of cobblestone dwellings in this vicinity and recently read a paper on this subject before a club. The paper follows:
While looking into the mystery of cobblestone houses and all the courage that was built into them I felt these lines well fitted the aims of these builders of so long ago:
To keep my health!
To do my work!
To live!
To see to it I grow and gain and give!
Never to look behind me for an hour!
To wait in weakness and to walk in power, but always fronting onward to the light, always and always facing toward the right, robbed, starved and defeated, fallen, wide astray, on with what strength I have!
Back to the way!Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
One finds while searching for mysteries of cobblestone houses, that there is no mystery, but just plain hard fact of labor and toil and no record of any of the makings have ever been saved. It is an art that existed for a few years, then dropped completely out of sight.
The first ones were built about 1835 and no trace of one being built after 1856 can be found. Between 90 and 100 years ago these wonderful old houses were built by a few stone masons, some traveling short distances and making several, some building only two or three in their locality.
The log houses were found to be poor barricades against attacks from Indians and this might have led to the thought of a more substantial stone house. It can also be considered it took very little paint or repairs on these houses when there was so little money to be had.
These masons must have had a very artistic and creative imagination to take these cobblestones, which had been picked up in piles and laid aside, perhaps with no thought of ever being used, and making these beautiful houses.
Masons Worked in Designs
One picture of a cobblestone house I saw up at Rochester, where the mason laid in a row of white stones all the way around the house after each fifth row, or five rows of red cobblestone, the one of white. It was quite effective, but the architect called my attention to the fact that the large corner stones did not always meet the white row at the corners as a mason would take care to have it more perfect today. Nevertheless, their work is surely substantial and enduring for all time and very beautifully executed. One is surprised to find that while some of the houses have the uniform reddish brown kidney shaped stones in the front and side of them, others have just the ordinary field cobblestones altogether. Our house is like the latter, having none of the reddish brown kidney shaped stones.
The first year we lived here a man by the name of Mr. Wing stopped one day, saying he would like to see our house. He patted the corner and said when he was a little boy, about eight years old, he helped pick up the stones for it. He was about 70 then and that was about 20 years ago. Mr. Thomas, Mrs. Wilbur's brother, said the way was to have a board across a basket with a hole in the board and any stone that would go through the hole was used. In the front gable of our house is a smooth stone with this inscription, "Built by Alanson and Mary Clark 1845."
The cobblestone house near Gorham in which Mr. Renwich lives is a beautiful example of stone masonry. It has none of the kidney shaped stones, but is in perfect condition and is built with a wing of cobblestone, also the back part, which is quite unusual. Some of these houses have wood or different material in the wings, some have a wood upper floor.
We find these houses built of a solid rock foundation and very deep. The inside is made of large stones, some very large and smoothed off as a mason would build any wall, then they chose the smaller and more uniform stones for the facing and these are set in a herringbone pattern pointed below, above, and on either side of each stone with this plaster which has proven to be so substantial.
All the walls are widely thick and each doorway is wide and the window sills are deep. The side stones came from a quarry near Phelps Junction, also the thresholds and stones are under the windows. These side stones are called quoins.
Katherine B. Rowley, in her booklet the Historical Ridge, says John Wetherill of Gaines, Orleans county, is the originator of the herringbone pattern.
Typical of New York
Taking Rochester as a base, one can go over 60 miles in all directions except north and find cobblestone houses This is actually the only place in America where they exist in large numbers. They are as typical of New York as the Cape Cod house is to Massachusetts. In northern England there are houses, built similarly of stone. Were the styles introduced here from England? We do not know, but it is most likely that it is of local architecture. Someone has said of stone houses: rent them the first year, let your friend live in it the second year, and you live in it the third and forever after.
It is of interest to find in Rushville vicinity there are many houses which have been in the same family for lever or around 100 years -within a radius of three or four miles are 18 farms. The Elbert Blodgett farm has been in the same family 130 years. Some others are Taylor Lewis, Frank Arnold, John Wilson, Linwood Bates, William Fisher, Herbert Foster and M.J. Wilson.
In 1803 Amasa Gage came from Johnstown to the farm near Cottage city now owned by his great-great-grandson, Murray Gage. On the Town Line Road just out of Rushville are the adjoining farms of Frank Harness and Charles Fox which belonged to their great-great-grandfather, Henry J. Whitman, who divided his farm for his daughters, Emma Whitman Fox and Mary Whitman Harkness. These farms are in the 100-year class. The red stones were brought from Lake Ontario. Mrs. L.R. Bates was born in the cobblestone house which Charles Fox owns. Robert Moody, also lived on the farm bought by his great uncle, George Stearns, in 1840. Albert Bates lives in the cobblestone house built by his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Bates, in 1840.
Old HouseHe who lives in an old house never loves in vain,
How can an old house, used to sun and rain,
To lilac and to larkspur, and arching trees above,
Ever fall to answer the heart that gives it love?
Its neglected garden only waits to start in answer
To the tending and understanding heart.
A new house maybe, for its first tenant longs, but
Not till it is an old house can it sing old songs.Isabel Fiske Conant.