MUSINGS OF A LOCAL by Iris Mead - Stone Quarries and Stone Cutters

Measuring the 11 ½ x 11 ½ stone as the pile behind him seems to be the same and when necessary large, machinery was brought in.

Something we don’t think about and take for granted are our stone walkways, stone patios and stone steps.  But where did that stone come from and how did it get there?

Stone quarries still exist, some are hidden under forest cover, have been “worked”, as it is called when the quarry no longer suits the need of the cutter and moves on, or still visible and waiting to be worked again.  Many still exist in this area, waiting to be “worked”. A lot of men in the area worked in stone cutting as a side job to make extra money.  They would sell it themselves or to someone else who would then market it.  My uncle, Virgil Mead, and my father, Stanley Mead, cut stone in the summer for many years. Following in Virgil’s footsteps his sons worked alongside him and earned enough money to put them through college.  Virgil purchased the old Sheffield Creamery in Halcottsville where he bought and sold stone from the local quarries to companies in the Hancock area, New Jersey and Long Island.  Tractor trailers would load pallets, usually 1-1/2 ton, pay by the square foot or stone size, and take them for resale.  After the sale of the creamery, he sold stone in front of the Round Barn farm outside Halcottsville for many years.  The Hancock area was and is still known for stone products.  An interesting fact is that while stone is sold by the square foot, it is cut to 15-1/2”x15-1/2” to allow for a mortar joint.  

Finding a quarry involved a lot of luck, as well as experience.  My cousin related a story of how his brother discovered a usable quarry while fox hunting and they worked that quarry. Another quarry was located in an area owned by four different landowners.  Each man struck a deal with the landowner on whose land he was quarrying.  Most quarries are old ones that are rediscovered and usually have some types of stone that can still be reworked.  One indication of a quarry are lines in the rock formation that look like sheets of plywood stacked together.  The old-timers referred to the three major portions of a quarry as (1) Top, which was blown off, (2) Bed, often was too rough to bother with, and (3) Bottom, unusable.  The best stone was usually in the back of the quarry and was thicker and quarried first.  Air chisels were used in the quarries to cut the stone, rendering a loss of hearing to some of the cutters later in life.

Sometimes blasting had to be done to uncover what was below.  A long-time stone cutter said he used to send his wife to Hancock to pick up 100 dynamite sticks, which were put in a cardboard box in the back seat of her car, and blasting caps and wires, which she had in the front seat with her, and then drive back to Halcottsville.  Can you imagine that today!  All they had to do to get a permit to blast was go to the Town Clerk’s office, answer 9 questions “No” and one question “Yes”, pay $.50 and they had their permit.  Nowadays you have to get a permit from the Bureau of Mines.  

Today, there are many old quarries scattered around the area waiting to be worked again, but there are few people left who know this art and want to put in the time and heavy work to do it.

My thanks to Dennis Speilman and Richard Meade, who were young stonecutters trained by their fathers, and John Biruk, still cutting stone today, for their help in gathering information for this article.