Hamilton Farmstead

Sixteen acres of former farmland on Hamilton Street in Mexico, New York, hold a cobblestone farmhouse and several farm outbuildings. Richard and Agnes Hamilton came from Oneida County in 1824 and built the house beginning in 1848 with architect-mason David Wilcox, who married a Hamilton daughter. Cobbles were gathered at Mexico Point on Lake Ontario and laid in deep V-shaped mortar joints. The two-story, three-bay Greek Revival house has wide wooden corner pilasters, cut stone lintels and an entrance with sidelights. It is the only cobblestone building in the town and one of five in Oswego County. A mid-nineteenth-century wood barn, an early twentieth-century concrete block milkhouse and three hand-dug stone-lined wells survive, illustrating the shift to dairy farming. The farm later declined and lost many buildings, yet the remaining land and structures keep a rural character tied to the town's agricultural past.