Slack Farmstead

This 38-acre farm on Row Road, just south of Route 104 in Mexico, Oswego County, combines a farmhouse, a granary, a dairy barn and a hen house with fields, maple woods, a stone wall, a hand-dug well and a farm pond dating from 1925. The farmhouse was probably built around 1838-39 by Joseph Slack, whose family farmed the land from about 1814 to 1850. It is a one-and-one-half-story, five-bay house only one room deep, a horizontal form unlike the two-story, three-bay houses typical of 1830s Mexico. The outbuildings date from about 1850, 1870 and 1910. The Row family held the farm from about 1900 to 1984. Glen Row added plumbing and central heating, built the pond and raised thousands of White Leghorn chickens for egg sales. Because the buildings, features and a large share of the original acreage survive, the property illustrates how agriculture in Mexico changed over more than a century. It is significant in the areas of agriculture and architecture.