The country side bordering the Ridge Road, (or in present day parlance, Route 104), might well be called the "Land of the Cobblestone Houses." There are more cobblestone houses along this wave-built gravel Ridge Road, for some 30 miles or more both east and west of Rochester, than along any other highway in America.
The ingenious technique of building cobblestone houses has virtually become a lost art since the Civil War. It was 123 years ago that the pioneers of the Ontario Lake plain began using small round, elliptical stones washed smooth by the waves and weather, for building churches, schools, homes and barns.
The yellowed pages of old records and diaries traced with faintly legible ink, tell how whole families would spend days and days of painstaking back breaking labor in searching for these cobblestones of just the right shape and color, with which to build their houses and public buildings. At that time the stones could be found in the fields along the Ridge where glacial waters had washed them up. These cobblestones, we are told were loaded into ox-drawn wagons to be transported to the site of the proposed building. One account reports that it took 75 loads to build a house!
After the stones had been gathered, there would often be a "grading bee" at which the whole community would gather to sort out the cobblestones of just the right size and shape, by the simple expedient of passing each individual cobblestone through an iron ring of the approved size, or in other cases through holes in a board. Those which passed through easily, yet almost completely filled the ring or the hole in doing so, were placed in a pile ready for the masons, while the others were discarded, or used for other purposes.
The art of setting these small stones in masonry in perfect rows, was jealously guarded by the few workmen who practiced and perfected the art in this area. We are told that some of them even refused to let anyone watch them as they worked, with the result that the secret of cobblestone masonry seems to have died with them.
The process of building a cobblestone structure seems to have been a long one. The masons, it seems, would work on two or more buildings at a time, laying a row on one building and then, while that was drying, laying a row on a second building and so on. At this rate it sometimes took two and three years to build a house! For their labors the cobblestone artists received a dollar and a half a day. (Today's masons receive that much or more for an hour's work!)
In the Williamson township alone there is a generous shrinking of cobblestone buildings still standing as sturdy and strong as the day they were built. Among the first of the cobblestone structures to be built in Williamson was the old Methodist church building which was erected about a century and a quarter ago near the Ridge Chapel. The church is still standing today, although it is now used as a dwelling. The cobblestone church which was erected at East Williamson is no longer in existence, but the First Baptist church of Williamson which is a cobblestone structure, is still in use today after more than a hundred years. Cobblestone dwellings are to be found on nearly every road in the township, of which the most famous is the Captain Throop house at Pultneyville built by the famous Lake Captain by that name.
Although the country side bordering the Ridge is often spoken of as the blossom country, still it is also the land of cobblestone houses and will remain so for many years to come.