Building date: 1842
Original use:
Corner structures:
Mortar application and content: Vertical, no embellishment; Horizontal and vertical similar, mortar looks square.
Types and uses of stones:
Types and choice of windows:
Structures with similar masonry details: Eat-1 Cobblestone Store Mad-4, Mad-4 Howard Mad-6
Masons who worked on building:
Unique features:
Map views courtesy Google Maps. Google Maps street level view is not available. Address is Google Earth confirmed; 42°54'14.91"N 75°31'40.57"W. Current owner of record, Vecsey/Lorenz as of date (YMD) 190420.
Town of Madison and Madison County Maps
Located at 7233 Indian Opening Road, west side, Bouckville, this house is of Greek Revival style. The lintel over the door is inscribed: "blt. 1842 by Capt. T. Willamson for Burton Phelps." It is well built with large stone quoins, lintels and sills. Photo by Diane Van Slyke.
Our Cobblestone House, By Carol Lorenz
Date stone over door.
The lintel over the front door has an inscription stating that the house was built by Capt. T. Williamson for Burton and Phelps in 1842. Burton and Phelps are family names that can be found in the cemetery at the Madison end of Indian Opening Road. Descendants of these families are still in the area. Sue Bartlett, the late mother of Mary, nee Bartlett (formerly of Mary's Hairy Business in Hamilton), who lives on Solsville Road near the Madison end of Indian Opening, was born in our house. Sue's dad was a Phelps; her maternal grandfather, as I remember it, was a Burton. Mary's dad (Bill (?) Bartlett) still owns the house on the corner of Indian Opening, behind which there were the remains of a cobblestone barn when we first moved here 34 years ago but Mr. Bartlett took it down. Mary may have some information from her mother about growing up in our house.
Our house was passed down in the same family from 1842 to 1962. Some of the owners were Henry B. Phelps, upon whose death in 1908 his wife Mary and a son John L Phelps transferred the house and property to a daughter, Evelyn Phelps Babcock. Evelyn died in 1918 and her survivors included her husband Charles Lynn Babcock and sons Elwyn, Glenn, and Seward. Elwyn and Glenn transferred the house and property to their brother Seward H. Babcock. Seward's wife Edith died in 1953 and he did not remarry. Widowed and, as we were told, elderly and in poor health, Seward sold the property in 1962 to Charles Vosburgh, who divided it into parcels and sold them the same year at auction.
Our house and a little over an acre of land formed one parcel (purchased by a couple, Donald and Katherine Carney -- Mr Carney was a local judge). The barn and land behind it formed another parcel (purchased by the Johnson family); farmland on the other side of the road was purchased by the Livermore family, and the lakefront property was divided into several smaller parcels.
Katherine Carney told us that she and her husband did extensive exterior repairs of walls that were in bad shape. They also renovated the interior, replacing all the walls and ceilings with sheetrock, painting, installing carpets over the original floors, and putting wallpaper up in many areas.
The Carneys sold the house in 1977 to James and Joan Ford, who owned it for five years. I am sure you know Jim, who retired from teaching secondary school in Madison school as a local historian himself. The Fords did other work in the house, such as finishing the "borning room," in which Susan Bartlett was born, by putting barn siding on the walls and carpeting the floors.
We bought the house and property from the Fords in 1982. We have undone a lot of what was done in the 1960s, removing wall to wall carpeting to reveal the original ash floors, removing the 1960s wallpaper, removing the barn siding in the bedroom and replacing indoor-outdoor carpeting with oak flooring, uncovering the original brickwork and hearth and bake oven in the kitchen.
On the other hand, we added a large room to the back of the house. There had been a summer kitchen behind the house before our time. The Fords enclosed it and created an unheated wood-paneled den (with a wood stove) in that space. In 1988, we tore it down (the do-it-yourself foundation was rotted) and created a large room there. We also finished an attic over the kitchen that had once been used as a dormitory for seasonal hops farm workers and was a storage area when we purchased the house. Richard Palmer blog.
"Mid-York Memoranda", by Scott Phoenix, Mid York Weekly, Hamilton, NY, 1/28/1965.
"History Chips", by Marshall Hope, Oneida Daily Dispatch, 5/12/1965. See paragraph 1 under heading "Builder's House".
Excerpt from thesis "Nineteenth Century Cobblestone Structures in Madison County, New York", by Ruthanne Mills, 1972. Titled as Phelps-Carney House.
- "Cobblestone Masonry", 1966, Carl Schmidt: Name reference, Carney House
- Page 37
¹ Image courtesy Cobblestone Museum.
² Photography courtesy Martin and Sheila Wolfish.
³ Photography courtesy Diane Van Slyke, Historian, Town of Madison.
4 Photography courtesy Richard Palmer.
