Building date: 1838
Original use:
Corner structures:
Mortar application and content: Vertical heavy, vertical pyramids
Types and uses of stones:
Types and choice of windows:
Structures with similar masonry details:
Masons who worked on building:
Unique features: See Whe-1a Wall property wall.
Map views courtesy Google Maps. Address is Google Earth confirmed; 42°59'44.73"N 77°44'37.36"W. Current owner of record, Gascon/Schiano as of the 2018 Tax Roll.
Town of Wheatland and Monroe County Maps
Isaac Cox - Pioneer Wheatland Quaker, by Anna Cox Harmon, Caledonia Advertiser, July 14, 1938
(This short sketch of the life of Isaac Cox, great-grandfather of the writer, Anna Cox Harmon, on her mother's side, will be of historical interest to many people in Wheatland and Caledonia. Much his history was related to Miss Harmon while she was growing up in the ancestral home by her mother, Melissa McPherson Harmon-Luxon, where she and all her children were born.)
The great interest aroused, recently in the original Quaker meeting house of Wheatland, when it was donated for the home of the Genesee Grange of Scottsville, recalls to some of the older residents of Scottsville and vicinity the history of Isaac Cox who built the double cobblestone house two miles south of Scottsville on West River Road.
Isaac and his brother Joseph emigrated to Western New York from Stillwater, Saratoga County, in 1804, leaving their father Samuel to sell his property to Daniel Shadbolt and to come on later with the rest of his family. Samuel soon had all of his family together in a stout log cabin a short distance from Scottsville on the West River road. A pig pen was also required, close to the house, to house their one pike as the woods at that time were full of bears, while wolves and lynx were sometimes seen. A story is told of Isaac who shot a bear in the mouth which was walking off with their pig. The shot lodged in the bear's brain, leaving Isaac with a perfect bear skin.
In 1801 Darius Shadbolt and his wife, nee Weeks, also Quakers, came from Westchester County when their daughter Anna was 13. It was in the year 1808 that Isaac's father Samuel bought from James Wood a double log house across the road from his home. Samuel moved his family over here and in the same year Isaac Cox and Anna Shadbolt were married. Here Isaac brought his bride and this is where their nine children were born.
Isaac began to buy up tracts of land to clear for wheat raising, and it was not long before he had his father's log house replaced by a frame dwelling. Always a lover of gardens, he started a garden here which years later Helen Cox Budlong took such great pride in.
By 1834 Isaac's family had grown too large for the simple white frame house, and while the Genesee Valley Canal, immediately in the rear of their back yard, was in the course of construction, he decided to build larger and better buildings father upland an away from the canal. Isaac had made good money raising wheat. During the War of 1812 he received $2.00 bushel for one crop off 1,000 bushels. He invested in more and more wooded land to clear and put into wheat until he was harvesting thousands of bushels of wheat in one season.
In 1838 Isaac moved his family to a large log house on the farm known as the Giles place. Here Anna, his wife, did her work in a kitchen separate from the house. In this year also was started the stone house on Isaac's new farm of 60 acres. To make the stones uniform in size they were passed through certain sized hoops. A hall running from front to back, with an entrance in the rear also, divides the double house. The wings on either side of the main part of the house are composed of the sitting rooms, each with a fireplace, winter and summer kitchen, and pantries.
Over the sitting rooms and reached by winding stairs around one side of the fireplaces, are low ceilinged rooms, which in the old days, had a wooden platform running through the center. These were called the hired girls' rooms. The hired men's room was over the large carriage house which had to make way for new barns about 45 years ago.
The cellar bottom is covered with huge flagstones and besides what was then used as two milk cellars is a wine cellar and a fruit and vegetable cellar. With the use of the open fireplace in one of the milk cellars, Anna Cox was able to move into the new home in the summer of 1839 before the house was completed or the large brick oven built into the kitchen. The family cooked and ate in this commodious milk cellar.
To have the best that was available for this new home, both inside and out, elaborate plans for the orchards and garden were made and turned over to Ellwanger & Barry of Rochester. The orchards extended around three sides of the grounds with a duck pond in the northern end of the orchard, formed from the overflow water from a cistern and well in the brick-paved summer kitchen.
Beautiful trees were planted in the yard; also beds of old fashioned flowers. Among them being a great variety of verbenas. One was a diamond shaped bed of portulacas edged with myrtle. The finest shrubs were planted between gravel walks in the flower and fruit garden. A gardener was employed for four years and Isaac lived seven years to enjoy the fruit of his labors with his son Harrison living in the south side of the house part of the time. People came from miles around to see what was then called the show place of Monroe County.
In 1846, when Isaac was 60 years old, he was laid away in the Isaac Cox family cemetery nearby. Most of the bodies interred there have been within recent years removed to Oatka Cemetery in Scottsville, but around the small cemetery can still be seen the cobblestone fence, topped by an iron railing. Anna Cox lived on here for 33 years after her husband passed away, with everything just as Isaac had left them. She died in 1879, aged 91 years.
The house stands in its original state and is a fitting memorial to the ones who saw their fondest dreams come true, but much of the charm of the place has gone with the passing of the white picket fence, horse block and hitching post; the wide gravel walk leading up to the main door where it was joined by two other boxwood-edged gravel walks which came up from side gates at the road and past the process to the wings of the house.
Gone are the long green blinds inform of the yellow mottled door; bushes of yellow japonicas on either side of the large stone steps; the oblong flower beds bordered with boxwood along the cellar windows; the evergreen trees and hard maples grown tall; the beautiful old fashioned garden behind an eight-foot cobblestone fence with the peaked shingle roof, a short length of which is still standing. This gives the proper setting to the house which will be 100 years old next year. Richard Palmer blog.
History of the Cox-Resch House and Family of the original owner, by Ann Cox Harmon, Caledonia, N.Y., December 1938.
"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. Reference the sixth paragraph on page 12.
"The Geological Origin of Cobblestone Architecture", by Gerda Peterich. Specific reference to this structure on page 16.
"Cobblestone Architecture in the Rochester Area", by Gerda Peterich, 1953. Reference Crowell-Petrie House and figure 18. Editor's Note: This digitized version of the original typescript manuscript is reformatted for digital display, edited for errors, and includes blue tinted highlighted links to improve access within the document, to the appropriate structure pages in the Cobblestone Info Base, or to external resources on the internet. This document is one of two known typescript drafts, likely a thesis or essay bound as a book and apparently never published. One is available in the Cobblestone Museum Resource Center, the other in the University of Rochester Art and Music Library. A companion or precursor typed paper of the same title exists, perhaps used for a talk and/or photographic display of cobblestone structures.
"History Tour Saturday", Carl Schmidt to Be Guide, by Marilyn Rice, Democrat and Chronicle, 9/5/61
"Realtor sales ad", Democrat and Chronicle, August 1964
"Antiquing a Cobblestone, Rochester at Home", by Jean Giambrone, Times-Union photo - Fred Powers, The Times-Union, Tuesday Evening, 2/2/71
For Sale, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, March 2, 1880
Two Farms in the Town of Wheatland, N.Y. A farm of one hundred and fifty acres one and a half miles south of Scottsville, on the main thoroughfare between Rochester and Avon, being the homestead of the late Isaac Cox, with large stone house, carriage house and commodious barns. The land is of excellent quality, one-third bottom land, well watered, and a good orchard. Another farm of one hundred four acres four miles southwest of Scottsville, known as the Ira Cox farm. The land is of a superior quality, mostly upland, well watered, fences good, and comfortable house and barn. By the recent death of Mrs. Anna Cox these farms must be sold to settle the estate of Isaac Cox, deceased. Inquiry of either of the subscribers.
DARIUS COX, DANIEL G. McPHERSON, ISAAC BUDLONG. Scottsville, N.Y. Richard Palmer blog.
From Cobblestone Masonry, Page 73, 1966 Carl F. Schmidt
Cox-Resch House - Isaac Cox began the construction of his house on the Canawaugus Road, south of Scottsville, in 1838. It is a double house, with a two-story center and one-and-one-half-story wings extending to the north and south. From the entrance, in the center of the two-story section, one enters the hall which divides the house and contains the stairway to the second floor. The main entrance and stairway were used by both families.
The walls are built of fieldstones of different shapes, sizes and colors, and the courses are about two-and one-half inches high from center to center of joints; which are laid five courses to a twelve-inch quoin height. Cobblestones vary from two to three inches in length and from one and three-quarters to two inches in height. Horizontal joints are carefully formed "V's", and the vertical joints are also embellished with a short "V". It is a good example of Middle Period work.
Corner quoins, four-inch high watertable, window sills and lintels are gray limestone. The quoins are about twelve inches high, eighteen inches long and six inches thick. After the house was completed, Isaac Cox built a six-foot high cobblestone wall or fence along the highway for about five hundred feet, behind which were gardens, orchards and a duck pond. A small section of this wall still stands at the south end of the property. The heights of the cobblestone courses in the wall gradually decrease from the bottom to the top. Beginning with five-inch high courses and ending at the top with two-and-one-half inch high courses. The top of the wall is covered by a small wood gable shape covered by two courses of shingles on each side. Richard Palmer blog.
From Historic Preservation Report for the Landmark Society of Western New York, by Cynthia Howk, Page 91
5015 River Road - Two-and-one-half-story vernacular Greek Revival residence, c. 1838. Cobblestone. Five-bay/side-gabled section with flanking one-and-one-half story side and rear wings. Limestone lintels, sills, quoins and watertable. Double-hung windows with six-over-six sash. Fan windows with louvered wood panels in north and south gables. Front porches with square columns. Agricultural outbuildings include two gambrel Wells barns, one gable-roofed barn, a silo, and four foot tall cobblestone wall along the roadway. Listed in the State/National Registers of Historic Places, 2003. Richard Palmer blog.
"Some of the Older Houses and Buildings in and Near Scottsville N.Y.", pages 1 and 2 of a paper by Carl F Schmidt. Date not provided.
The Cobblestone Society & Museum Tours:
Mr. and Mrs. George Letson House 9th Annual 06/07/1969, 11th Annual 06/12/1971Draft 9th Annual Tour document with edits. Contains edited or deleted information.
The Rochester Cobblestone Wedding Barn, a John Talcott Wells and Sons designed and built barn in 1896 with a cobblestone foundation is included on this property.
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National Register of Historic Places Registration
- Front of the Isaac Cox House drawing, Entrance Door drawing 1 and drawing 2, both askew to left of straight on view. Carl Schmidt Collection of Two-Dimensional Drawings, online access to view, New York Heritage digital collections.
- "Cobblestone Masonry", 1966, Carl Schmidt: Name reference, - Resch House
- Pages 73 - 74, Main Entrance Pages 284, Page 310
- "Cobblestone Landmarks of New York State", 1978, by Olaf William Shelgren, Jr., Cary Lattin, and Robert W. Frasch, Photographs by Gerda Peterich: Name reference, Cox House
- Page 84
- "The Era of Cobblestone Architecture", unpublished manuscript 1972. To access the manuscript content about this structure, see 41,42. Monroe County, Cox-Letson House.
 Whe-1 Cox-Resch 3.jpg ¹ Image from 1900 book "Cox of America" given by owner 9/3/1983 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 4.jpg ² Pease Collection 1940-41 |  GP Monroe Wheatland Whe-1 6_1 N.jpg ² |  GP Monroe Wheatland Whe-1_1 N.jpg ² 1971 |
 GP Monroe Wheatland Whe-1_3 N.jpg ² 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 5.jpg April 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 6.jpg April 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 7.jpg April 1971 |
 Whe-1 Cox-Resch 8.jpg April 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 9.jpg April 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 10.jpg April 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 11.jpg April 1971 |
 Whe-1 Cox-Resch 12.jpg April 1971 |  Whe-1 Cox-Resch 13.jpg April 1971 Wells designed barns |  Whe_1_1.jpg |  Whe_1_2.jpg |
 Whe_1_3.jpg |  Whe_1_4.jpg |  Whe_1_5.jpg |  Whe_1_6.jpg |
 Whe_1_7.jpg |  Whe-1 5015 River Rd 1.jpg ³ |  Whe-1 5015 River Rd 2.jpg ¹ |  Whe-1 5015 River Rd 3.jpg ¹ |
 Whe-1 5015 River Rd 4.jpg ¹ |  Whe-1 5015 River Rd 5.jpg ¹ |  5015 River Road 2.jpg 4 |  5015 River Road Wheatland.jpg 4 |
 5015 River Road Wheatland 2.jpg 4 |
Duplicate black and white images of above 1971 color images.
¹ Image courtesy Cobblestone Museum.
² Photography courtesy Gerda Peterich. Cobblestone Museum.
³ Photography courtesy Martin and Sheila Wolfish.
4 Photography courtesy Richard Palmer.
