Tinker Cobblestone Farmstead

The farmhouse along this stretch of western New York was built between eighteen twenty-eight and eighteen thirty by James and Rebecca Tinker, Connecticut settlers who had arrived in Henrietta in eighteen twelve with not much else. As they cleared their fields of stones, they kept the cobbles, and when they were ready to build a permanent home, they hired masons whose work on the Erie Canal had recently ended and who now needed employment. The result is a Federal-style cobblestone house assembled from the very rocks that once prevented the Tinkers from farming.

The family occupied the homestead for many generations, watching the wooded frontier around them become a thriving community. It is one of thirteen surviving cobblestone buildings in Henrietta and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The stones carried out of the fields became the walls of a house that has lasted two centuries.