Quaker Meeting House, Adams, Berkshire County, Mass.



In 1790, a number of the Adams Quakers moved from Berkshire County to the Genesee Country in western New York. The group included Nathan Herendeen & family, and his son Welcome & family. Nathan's first wife Huldah Dillingham Herendeen (mother of Welcome) had died in 1779 and is buried outside the Adams meeting house in the unmarked burying ground for Quakers, who at the time did not believe in headstones.

In 1791, Samuel Mason and family left Adams and joined the settlers in Farmington, New York.

 
 
Cobblestone house built for Welcome Herendeen, 1832,
4998 Shortsville Road
Farmington, Ontario County, New York
The House of Stone

We're in a house of stone tonight,
Built more than a hundred years ago.
Carefully made of thick stone walls,
Laid roughly row on row.

Under wide and friendly eaves,
Remindful to me of a mother's hair,
Curling softly over her brow,
Shading the smile that draws us near.

Through the door flung wide,
And through the dim old hall,
Of this dear and quaint stone house,
Our homecoming footsteps fall.

And here is found a fireplace wide,
With kettle hung upon a crane,
In which boils water for the tea,
That sings a sweet refrain.

Now warm and sheltered as of yore,
When clustered about our mother's feet,
We're older, sadder children now,
But here joy seems complete.

For happiness sings as the kettle boils,
And homely delights are here to be found,
With never a care, the world shut out,
Within these walls doth peace abound.

      -- Nancy Carroll McAtee (from the Herendeen file at the Ontario County Historical Society)

For this is America's "Cobblestone Country." Virtually all of the cobblestone buildings in this land are concentrated within a 50-to-60 mile radius of Rochester. There must be more than 250 of them, scattered to the east, west and south of this city.

We who have grown up with these familiar relics of our pioneer era take the picturesque structures for granted.

But tourists and newcomers to our region are mightily intrigued with the cobblestone houses, churches, schools, stores, barns, even sheds that dot this countryside...

Cobblestone buildings are built of small stones laid in horizontal rows between straight lines of exceedingly hard mortar... Due to the materials, which are local, of warm and colorful tones, the structures appear to have grown from the soil on which they stand...

Who built the first cobblestone houses or where or when are questions lost in the mists of history. The buildings go back to around 1825, after the digging of the Erie Canal had brought many skilled masons to this frontier. The first ones were built of the stones, irregular in shape, size and color, picked up by the pioneers in the fields. Some of the earliest examples are in the Henrietta-Mendon area which abound in what geologists call "glaciated stones."

The masons began improving their skills and around 1835 began selecting small, roundish, more uniform stones. These were plentiful around the Ridge Road, the wave-built natural highway which formed the shorelines of the glacial Lake Iroquois. So it was between 1835 and 1845 that many of the early cobblestone buildings on or near the Ridge Road were built.

But plenty of them arose in the interior, too. Teams of oxen and horses hauled countless loads of cobblestones from Lake Ontario to such distant places as Phelps, Geneva, Marion, Farmington and the Genessee and Wyoming Valleys...

Names of few early cobblestone masons have been preserved. Many of the houses seemingly were the work of the same artisan or group, although it is recorded that many a pioneer built his own cobblestone dwelling...

(from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Oct. 30, 1960)

The Welcome Herendeen Homestead in the photo above is for sale as of December 1998. The asking price is $369,900,  including 14 acres. 

The above photo shows details of the construction of a cobblestone house nearly identical to Welcome Herendeen's house, built by James Herendeen on County Road 8, Farmington, also in 1832. The walls are seen to be about two feet thick. This house was occupied in 1948 by Miss Jane Herendeen. A newspaper article of that year describes "fine maples, some of which date well beyond a century, cast partial shade over the sweeping front yard. A macadam road now passes by the house instead of the old gravel road over which older generations passed on their way to the Quaker meeting house and Farmington village... There are no creaks as you walk on the black ash floors... The great front door with its heavy lock and massive knocker carries the golden eagle emblem of the Herendeen family..." The article describes huge kettles in the basement used for boiling maple syrup. "Miss Herendeen has come here to live after a distinguished career  as a teacher of literature." 
Descent from Welcome Herendeen to Kenneith Pratt Knapp:

1. Welcome HERENDEEN (1768-1837) m. Elizabeth DURFEE
2. Edward HERENDEEN (1795-1870) m. Harriet CUDWORTH
3. Gulielma Maria HERENDEEN (1822-1904) m. Hiram G. SHEFFIELD
4. Mary Ellis SHEFFIELD (1847-1935) m. Walter Gardner MASON
5. Edna MASON (1876-1974) m. C. Wilkins PRATT
6. Kenneith Graham PRATT (1899-1981) m. Harold Clarence KNAPP 





Herendeen and Mason plots at South Farmington Quaker Cemetary, Shortsville Road