[Information for this site provided by Barbara Chapman,
Wheatland Town Historian]
Wheatland Town Historian]
Slocum House, 8 Second St., Scottsville, Town of
Wheatland, built in 1838 by Osborn Wheeler.
Second floor was later addition.
Second floor was later addition.
Peter Sheffer II built this cobblestone house about 1840 for his son Levi. The houses faces west toward the village from the end of School Street later renamed East Genesee Street. The wooden one-story wing of about 1860 included a dining room, kitchen and woodshed. Higher ceilings, tall windows to the floor and molding details reflect the Victorian era. In 1946, the attractive east wing was added by Mr. and Mrs. Carey Brown with assistance from Scottsville architect Carl Schmidt. The front porch was enlarged around an existing maple tree. A basement garage and upstairs guest quarters were included. In 1954, the east wing was extended further to the rear to add a two-room apartment. Only the house shown above is original. The rest of the cobblestone work was done in the 20th century.
Cobblestone House at 11 East Genesee Street, Scottsville
By Barbara Chapman, Wheatland Historian
In the fall of 1789, Peter Sheffer and his sons, Peter II and Jacob, made their way from Bloomfield to the area now the Town of Wheatland in search of land. They crossed the Genesee River at Avon, traveled to the Indian settlement at Canawaugus, and then followed the old Indian trail north to Ebenezer “Indian” Allen’s cabin. They stayed with Allen for the winter and then purchased his settlement when he moved on to Rochester in the spring.
In 1798, Peter Sheffer II began cutting timber for a new house and barn. The following year, the first frame house west of the Genesee River was erected on the Sheffer farm in Scottsville.
Early in the 1840s, Peter Sheffer II built the cobblestone house at what is now 11 East Genesee Street in the Village of Scottsville for his son Levi. The house was soon passed on to other family members, as Levi and his family moved into the Town of Chili. In 1855 a frame addition was erected on the back of the house. (Another son, Peter III, lived in the cobblestone house on Sheffer Road in the Town of Chili.)
The 1902 Plat map of Scottsville shows the Genesee Street cobblestone as the property of Isaac Budlong, who owned extensive lands and raised beef cattle. Other owners followed.
In 1940 Colonel Cary Brown came from Rochester and purchased the property. Brown was a West Point graduate and became the vice-president of the Ridge Construction division of Kodak. He was very active in civic affairs in the Scottsville area and in Rochester. The Browns named the property Rebel Hill Farm. They hired Carl F. Schmidt, an authority on cobblestone structures, to supervise the accurate restoration of the cobblestone house and design a large addition. After the death of his wife about 1970, Carey Brown sold the estate and moved to Virginia.
The next owners of the Genesee Street cobblestone were VanBuren “Skip” and Susan Hansford. He was a Rochester businessman. They also added on to the house, increasing its size to over 6,500 square feet, and made many improvements to the property, including renovation of the caretaker’s house. The Hansfords owned the house until the early 2000s when it was sold to a couple who are both doctors.
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[From: Historic Preservation Report: Wheatland/Scottsville/Mumford by Cynthia Howk of the Landmark Society of Western New York, 2003].
This house at 11 East Genesee St., Scottsville is a two- story, vernacular Greek Revival residence, c. 1830 (cobblestone); 1855 and later 20th century wood frame additions. Sheffer-Brown-Hansford House. The original cobblestone section of the house has a rectangular plan, limestone quoins, wide cornices and gable end returns. Brick chimney above the south gable.
The window frames feature limestone lintels and sills as well as one-over-one double-hung wood sash. The 1½ story middle section (1855) and the two-story east section (later 20th century) part of the house are of wood construction. This land is part of a tract purchased by Peter Sheffer I, one of the earliest permanent settlers who came to the valley from Pennsylvania with his sons Peter and Jacob in 1789.
Originally built as a modest farmhouse for his son Levi, this residence has been greatly enlarged.
A wing was added in 1855, and another addition was made by Carey Brown. During the 1980s it acquired its present configuration during the ownership of VanBuren Hansford. The middle and east sections of the house appear to treble the original size of the residence and, in scale, overwhelm the original cobblestone building. With a notable view of the Genesee river valley to the east, the house sits in an expansive, estate-like setting of open lawns, mature trees and gardens.
In 1838 William H. Hanford he built this cobblestone store at 16 Main St., Scottsville, he same site that Hanford had built the first store in the village. William and John Keys purchased the store from William J. Cox in 1890 and continued to operate it until John closed its doors in 1944. The west brick section was built by Dr. Freeman Edson as his office about 1846. The stone piers on each side of the entrance were probably removed sometime in the 1870’s and the cast iron pilasters and new display windows installed. The cobblestones are of the fieldstone variety, of various shapes and colors, and laid in the “Early Period “manner. The “V’d” horizontal joints are about four inches on centers and the cobblestones are about two and one-half to three inches high. The mortar is made of a very coarse gravel.
Sketch of store by Carl F. Schmidt.
Quaker Meeting House, 409 Quaker Road, Scottsville,
Town of Wheatland, built 1834.
Story of the Quaker Meeting House
By Carl F. Schmidt
In 1828 Elias Hicks came to Wheatland preaching a new doctrine to the Quakers. The people were divided, some accepting and others rejecting his precepts. It is said that they continued to hold their meetings in the frame meeting house on the south side of Quaker Road for several years, one group meeting in the morning and the other in the afternoon, quarreling all the time.
A committee appointed in 1832 by the Orthodox group reported that they had obtained estimates for building a stone church thirty by forty feet, fourteen feet high, and to cost about $500, exclusive of the teamwork for drawing the stone, and providing the mortar. The following year the same group acquired from Darius Shadbolt, about one-half acre of land on the hill east of their frame meeting house. In 1834 they built the cobblestone building. It is a rectangular shaped plan with the narrow end facing Quaker Road. Originally a porch extended along the east side of the building on which the occupants from carriages could alight. There were two entrances into the meeting house from the porch, one for women and one for men.
The large room was divided by a low lattice partition extending through the center, on one side of which were seated the women, and on the other the men. The Quakers held their last meeting in the building in 1873, and it was used for residential purposes until 1937. In 1938 it was acquired by the Genesee Grange.
Wheatland Town historian
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Isaac Cox House
Caledonia Advertiser
July 14, 1938
Isaac Cox - Pioneer Wheatland Quaker
(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.)
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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.
ANNA COX HARMON.
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Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
March 2, 1880
For Sale
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.
3015 River Road, Wheatland, built by Isaac Cox in 1838.
From Cobblestone Masonry, Page 73
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.
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.
Section of cobblestone wall which originally several hundred feet long was built by Isaac Cox to separate highway from gardens, orchards and duck pond north of house. It is about eight feet high.
Closeup view of unusual cobblestone wall.
Ariel Harmon built this house at 1911 North Road built in 1832. In the left side wall the mason used larger sized field stones, varying from two and one-quarter to three inches in height and from three to eight inches in length, with similar jointing as in the front wall. Corner quoins are gray limestone blocks roughly squared with split surfaces, about 12 inches high, 19 inches long and seven inches thick. In 1872 it was occupied by Harris Rogers. His sons operated a grocery business in Scottsville. Window openings have 10-inch high lintels and three-and-one-half-inch thick sills of the same material. Farm buildings were across the road.
This exceptionally well-maintained Greek Revival house at 3314 North Road was built about 1833 by Sylvester Harmon. It has wide cornices with gable-end returns. A fan-shaped window with wood panel adorns the front gable end. It has limestone quoins, lintels and sills. The front entrance has a paneled door, rectangular transom and sidelights. The front porch has square posts. The wood-frame rear wing appears to be a 20th century addition. In later it was the home of Volney P. Brown, a prosperous farmer. He served as supervisor of the town of Wheatland in 1869 and as a member of the New York State Assembly in 1870 and 1871.
Same house in the 1970s. Photo by Robert Roudabush.
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
February 1, 2020
Same house in the 1970s. Photo by Robert Roudabush.
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
February 1, 2020
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