I held this historic round cope stone in my hands yesterday. It sits balanced on a heritage dry stone wall that John Scott showed me in front of an old church in Beckwith township, Ontario which John tells me is made of potsdam sandstone . The Hamlet of Franktown is about 40 miles south of Ottawa and began as a half-way stagecoach stop between the military settlements of Perth and Richmond. Many of the orininal settlers were Irish who refused to join the Church of England and built this quaint stone church in 1822. There is no documentation on the date of the dry stone wall in front of the church, however it certainly is reasonable to assume it goes back to the church's early days. The original drive opening in wall was expanded around 1900 with concrete posts and the wall was crudely rebuilt in places. Other than settlement from tree roots and some tampering here and there, a lot of the wall remains in it's original bond. The round granite coping stones seem small and out of place....kind of delicately placed on top. However pictures from 1895 and then again in 1925 reveal that they are (possibly) not not only original, but some of them haven't moved from their original position for over a hundred years!
