Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Stone Mason's of Yesteryear

The art of stone masonary isn't thought of much today, not in the same way in was over a hundred years ago.  Think of the hard labor for man and beast that it would take to gather the huge stones, transport them to the location and then be able to lift the stones in place.  The mason's were proud of their work and many of them would carve their initials and date of the work into one of the sandstone rocks.  On the stone above is the initials L. C. T. and the date 1851.

Since Travis and Turley familes lived in this area, it may be that one of them was the creator of this chimney. Also located not too far from the house is a small Travis cemetery and also a larger cemetery that is known as the Travis-Wilson cemetery.

There aren't too many of these majestic old chimney's left in the county, over the years they have lost their cementing in between the stones, weather damaged and the now these stones have become popular for many modern day uses in people's yard and patios, so they are dismantled and taken off to someone's house.

One of these long again master pieces I found on the old home place of Thomas Benjamin Lamb on Travis Cemetery Rd. in the South East area of the county.  Although these pictures were made in 1998, I fear the ice storm of last year may have caused more damage to the old home place. As you can see from the picture, at one time this was a fine county home, with a chimney to be proud of.

Thomas Benjamin Lamb was born Sept. 3, 1862 and died July 28, 1948.  His wife, Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie" Jacobs, was born in 1881 and died 1963.  They are buried in the Sugar Grove Cemetery.  Today Michael Crider is the owner of this farm land.

Update: April 2, 2018.  I believe the person that carved the initials in the chimney rock was Lysander Cullen Travis, the son of Francis Travis, Jr.  They are both buried in the Travis-Wilson cemetery that is located new this place.  They lived in this area.

The old house was almost completed fallen in in 2017, and someone had taken the stone with the carved initials out.

3 comments:

Ben Gage said...

nice story, sadly the art of masonry is more a memory than reality...

Unknown said...

Hi Brenda. I'm a stonemason and enjoy seeing this old work. I love that he took the time to carve his initials. Thanks for sharing this piece of local history.

Forgotten Passages said...

Joe, thank you for your message. I love these old stone chimneys that have about disappeared from our county.