Scipio's Howland Stone Store gives Sherwood a reform story

Scipio gets a memorable story through Sherwood and the Howland Stone Store. The 1837 cobblestone building was built by Slocum Howland for his store and now appears as an official Path Through History site.

That would already be a good old-building detail, but the story goes further.

The Howland family is tied to reform movements, especially abolition and women’s suffrage. The museum collection includes an Underground Railroad pass brought by two enslaved people in 1840, suffrage posters, store ledgers, and records of a 19th-century upstate community.

That gives Scipio more than farmland and Finger Lakes back roads. It gives the town a crossroads room where commerce, Quaker reform energy, women’s rights, abolition, and community records meet.

The store ledgers are a lovely part of the memory because they bring the story down to daily life: names, purchases, accounts, and ordinary business sitting beside the larger causes people now remember.

Sherwood’s story is easy to picture: a cobblestone store by the road, ledgers on the counter, reform posters saved, and a local museum holding proof that national movements often passed through small upstate rooms. That gives Scipio a story with both scale and texture.