Cobblestone-Cobblestone Masonry

Boulders, cobblestones and pebbles are a glacial legacy shared by our northernmost states and Canada. Glacial action left an inexhaustible supply of rounded stones. Even today, 12,000 years after the retreat of the glacier, wave action along 8,117 miles of Great Lakes shorelines continues to polish boulders into cobbles, cobbles into pebbles and finally pebbles into sand

• taken from Dana Thomas Bowen's book Memories of the Lakes (Freshwater Press, Inc.)

Cobblestone Masonry
by Delia Robinson

The uniqueness of American cobblestone construction lies in the manipulation and refinement of the mortar treatment. One European precedent to American methods can be found in southern England, along the Sussex Coast in the vicinity of Brighton, Worthing and Shoreham. There, as early as 1750, buildings were constructed of rounded beach flints laid in rows with horizontal mortar joints troweled to a flat projecting "V". In discussing English flint work, Sydney Jones, in his book The Village Homes of England (1912), remarks, "By acknowledging tradition, by treating with respect the memory of former things, the craftsmen did not yield to mere copy ism but added their own stamp and so gave their work a living sturdiness and vitality; they gathered together the bequests of their forerunners and clothed them with their own thoughts." This can just as appropriately apply to American cobblestone.

Perch – 16 ½ cubic feet of rubble stone

Cord – 99 cubic feet of stone in the wall

Joint – The division between the stones; there are two kinds horizontal and vertical

Pointing – the process of filling joints with mortar

Bead –Projecting ½ circle of mortar about 1” wide to embellish the joints

Course – each horizontal layer of stone in the wall

Quoins – Large squared corner stones

Stone boat –flat sled drawn by horses or oxen on which to collect stones from the fields

Sorting Board – a plank with a few holes of various sizes through which cobblestones were sorted

Bee – Gathering of people to collect and sort stones

There were at least three construction methods.

1. The first was a simple rubble wall, with layers of glaciated cobbles interlaced. The outside showed regular courses, while the inside was random. This was used in the earliest construction.
2. The second was a rubble core with a facing of smaller lake-washed cobbles, which included longer bonding stones reaching into the core. The facing stones showed perfectly matched faces, yet the stones were of irregular dimensions. This was popular through the 1840s.
3. The third utilized a rubble wall laid first and then with a cobblestone veneer laid up separately. In this method the stones were small and there were no bonding stones in the veneer layer. This technique is evident in the latest constructed buildings.

The following is an excerpt from the memoirs of Henry Lee whose family built the house (1844-1845) on Minsted Road, Arcadia, Wayne County, NY. It was taken from an essay by Verlyn E. Klahn on Wayne County cobblestones. The essay was published in the December 15, 1955 issue of the Newark Courier-Gazette. The essay is on file at the Cobblestone Resource Center.

“Father had accumulated a large quantity of stone and lumber. On the last sleighing that spring there was a “bee” and a large pile of sand was taken from the back of the woods where Mr. Farnsworth’s farm now stands. . . it being the first ever taken from there. We got two or three loads of cobblestone from the lake for facing of the wall. The “cut-stones” (caps and sills) came from Phelps (then Vienna). The job was let to a Mr. Skinner. . . have forgotten the price but I think it was less than $200. They came and laid the cellar wall; then went away and did other jobs to let this harden; then returned and laid the first story; then went away again for several weeks and so on until it was finished.

The first stone he drew from the lake, he took a man with the team and went to the bar off the bluff across the bay on ice. I went with him and we reached home about one o’clock in the morning. Father went about 20 times but sometimes being rainy he got only part of a load and often reached home 10 or 12 o’clock at night”. According to the son, his own hands and the hands of his father became so sore picking up stones that they had to bandage them. Sometimes the stones were so heavy that they had to dump some from their load. Also, since their horses wearied easily under the heavy load, they frequently had to stop and un harness the animals to rest them before completing the trip.

“In laying the walls after getting out of reach from the ground there were poles set about 6 or 8 feet from the wall and about as high as the walls were to be, then long poles were lashed to them with hickory withes an inch or an inch and a quarter in diameter and six to eight inches long and then scantling laid across them to the wall and planks laid on them making scaffolding all around the house. Then a crane and tackles and rope were fastened to the northeast post. Buckets a little larger than a molasses cask cut in two would be filled with either mortar or stones and hoisted up, using a horse, to the scaffold and their contents distributed with a wheelbarrow. When they were above reach from a scaffold the staging would be raised again. . . “