I’ve been snooping around my old stomping grounds up along
the shore of Lake Ontario. That’s one of the Great Lakes ( I think that
deserves capital letters…). I don’t know
how great it is but it is big. In toddler terms it’s THE BIG LAKE because we
have quite a few in upstate NY but this is the only one where you can’t see to
the other side! (Canada, by the way, if you’re wondering)
I never really took local history for granted – it always
interested me. This is old frontier land – French and Indian war sites, Iroquois
Confederacy land, War of 1812 incidents and a hot-bed of abolitionist sentiments
later on. We have the Erie Canal, too.
Two things I did take for granted – the abundance of green and
blue as in lots of agriculture and, most
especially along the lake, orchards; the
other was cobblestone houses.
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| This cobblestone home is found facing Lake Ontario, and was built in 1832 by Captain Horatio Nelson Throop. It was one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad before Capt. Throop took his special passengers on to Canada. |
Along the ancient lake bed is an east-west highway once no
more than an Indian trail. We call it Ridge Road for hundreds of miles. In an
area of New York state, mostly within ninety miles east and west of the city of
Rochester are the majority of buildings known as Cobblestone buildings found
across the northeast/great lakes basin.
If you are thinking of cobbles –the uneven stones or brick
like stones used to make streets in many old towns and cities, here and abroad,
you are only close. Cobbles in my neck
of the woods are smooth round rocks that fit nicely in your hand. Big, heavy
and smooth and come in a variety of colors of grays, tans and the occasion
brownish red.
Cobblestones are unique in this area as they are the remnants
of glacier activity. The same kind of round rocks we still see along Lake
Ontario’s shore are often found far ‘inland’ because they weren’t caused by the
action of water but by the movement of our visiting glacier.
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| A cobble. When you find one of these buried in the soil, you know it spent a long time rolling along under an ice sheet! |
Stone masons came to love these stones for buildings and
created hundreds of them (an estimated 1200 across upstate New York). These
cobbles were free, of course, for the picking. And anyone who has gardened,
cleared land and garden for agriculture knows that rock-picking is part of the progress.
Clever and impressive use of these stones made building with cobblestone a type
of folk art throughout part of the 19th century.
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| The Barnard Cobblestone House in Lima, NY |
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| A sample of our local 'natural stone' - straight from a quarry - pure limestone. |
While researching a very unique village along the lake shore
for some history posts and a possible fiction series in the future, I settled
on this post about cobblestones because I was struck again by the loveliness of
these homes and what a treasure they are in the county I grew up in.
A ‘Cobblestone Trail’ exists for tourists as well as a
museum dedicated to these lovely homes. For more: See a link to the Cobblestone Museum
Stone houses are not unique to upstate NY but this style of using cobbles is a bit different than houses found elsewhere. Many local artisans moved on west along the Great Lakes and created cobblestone houses along the way.
Have you anything similar where you live?
