Building date: 1840
Original use: Blacksmith Shop
Corner structures:
Mortar application and content:
Types and uses of stones:
Types and choice of windows:
Structures with similar masonry details:
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Map views courtesy Google Maps. The Google Maps September 2007 street level view is poor. Exact address and location have not yet been determined; therefore, only an approximate location is provided: 42°49'44.42"N 78°05'21.01"W.
Town of Middlebury and Wyoming County 1976 Highway Maps
"An interesting old blacksmith shop at Wyoming shows the cobblestone construction where the wall has broken away. The rather course field cobblestone stones are laid three rows to the quoin." Dorothy Wells Pease paper "The Cobblestones of Upstate New York", 1941 on page 13, 2nd paragraph of that report.
"The Cobblestone Houses of Upstate New York", compiled by Dorothy Wells Pease. Research done in collaboration with Hazed B. Jeffery, supplemented with material furnished by Carl F. Schmidt, 1941. Reference the second complete paragraph on page 13.
William Roberts' Blacksmith Shop history sheet. From the personal research of cobblestone historian Karen Crandall.
The following talk was given by Mrs. Max Tillotson at a recent meeting of the Susan Look Avery Club of Wyoming about some of that village's early history.
Editor's Note: There is a contradiction with the locations of structures between the content of known text and the various maps. The discrepancies will not be detailed because over the years that the blacksmith shop existed there were certainly changes in the ownership, existence, locations and usage of nearby structures. Coeditor, Karen Crandall, in a 11/07/2022 email stated: "My strong preference is to use the 1902 map in the Info Page. It shows the cobblestone BSS set back from the road; it has familiar names - Keith and Roberts on it. It seems less ambiguous because it reflects what is documented in History of Wyoming County. The earlier maps really give us no authenticating information that can be supported by any written material I've been able to uncover."
The Stone Shop In Middlebury Erected in 1840
For the purpose of this meeting and the information of those present, I submit some of the following as "word of mouth" history and must make some apologies for possible inaccuracies due to lack of data. I might add that due to the passing of many of our older citizens many facts are no longer available.
It is known "Newell's Settlement" which was the name of this community, must have included in its four hundred acres, that were acquired in 1809. So we of the sites of the building now located on Gulf Street and an 1866 map indicates that "Stone Shop" was erected on the site of the Silas Newell grist mill, the latter having been erected in 1817. History recorded a blacksmith shop operated in those early days by Phillips and Dixon and soon there after, blacksmiths in the village by the names of David & Tillotson, William Tillotson and son and William Roberts without identifying their places of business. I do however have for exhibit a picture of "The Old Stone Shop" erected in 1840 with William Roberts and son as proprietors and probably those of you of the older generation will remember the wagon shop of David Keith next door to the east, the Tillotson Shop across the street (now our garage) and the grist mill just west of the Dring house.
That the "Stone Shop" was for many, many years an "institution' in Wyoming is an understatement for it was there that Edward Perkins (now of LeRoy), first saw as a boy of six, a "heat" hot shoe held by tongs to be pounded and shaped on the anvil and the tried for a fit. It was there also that the blacksmith found time to fashion large kites for flying and from the large stable on the shop door - a hobby passed down to his son Edmund, who on an occasion sent airborne in a flour sack, one of his father's game cock roosters, to be released on hundred or more feet in the air by a tug on the string. Some will recall the "twist" put on a horses nose to bring him to submission while the nails were being driven in the shoe; the smell of burning hoof when the shoe was fitted; the steam created when the hot metal was tempered by submerging into the watering trough and the "clang" of the anvil when struck by the hammer; the long leather apron worn by the smithy.
Other memories would certainly include persons like Charles Gay and Dick Lacey, Wm. Tillotson, John Gibbons, and Sam Kelley, Wm. and George Strathearn to name a few. Products of the shop also included metal runners (for sleds, braces for barns and other buildings, iron tires to be shrunk on to the wagon and carriage wheels made by Dave Keith next door, and many types of hinges and straps which had not as yet been produced by industry as it is today. "Word of mouth" also gives us the information that the first pieces of fire fighting equipment, a hook and ladder truck for the Wyoming Hook and Ladder company was fashioned and completed by Wm. Roberts and David Keith.
But the "Old Stone Shop" erected of cobblestone with two sky lights in the roof, builder unknown, ox-shoe suspended over the door with wisteria clustered over the windows is now only a memory, is architecturally forgotten and its trades no longer in demand. Written by Marjorie Tillotson for the Susan Look Avery Club October 16, 1962, Wyoming Reporter-Silver Spring Signal-Wester New Yorker-Wyoming County Times-Wyoming County Gazette-The Attica News, Page One-A, 11/1/1962.
¹ 1853 Wyoming County, Wyoming Village Excerpt Map courtesy Library of Congress.
² 1902 Village of Wyoming, Wyoming County Map (modified), Century Map Co. 1902, courtesy Historic Map Works
³ Image courtesy Doug Norton, historian and president of the Middlebury Historical Society.
4 Image courtesy Cobblestone Museum.
