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Bas-relief carvings on the sandstone cliff face at Worden's Ledges, Hinckley Reservation. Human faces, dates, religious symbols, and a schooner are chiseled into the rock.
Bas-relief carvings at Worden's Ledges in the Hinckley Reservation. Cleveland bricklayer Noble Stuart chiseled nine figures into the sandstone in the mid-1940s. The ledges themselves are roughly 300 million years old. Photo: Matthew Dillon, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Local History · From Hinckley Township

The bricklayer who chiseled his grief into the ledges

Noble Stuart married Nettie Worden in 1945 on the sandstone-ledge farm her father had homesteaded in 1860. She died within months. He spent the next two and a half years alone in the woods, carving faces into the rock.

Published 2026-08-05 · 3 min read

Hiram Mace Worden moved from New York to Hinckley in the early 1840s. He was a tombstone carver by trade, trained in stone.1 Around 1851 he married Melissa Bissell. He carved the year into the ledge itself: "HM Worden 1851." The inscription is still there.

In 1860 he built his homestead on thirteen acres directly atop the sandstone ledges that run under the northern edge of what is now the Hinckley Reservation. The rock underneath the house is Sharon Conglomerate. Cleveland Metroparks documentation describes it as "laid down roughly 300 million years ago."2

Ninety years later, Hiram's youngest daughter Nettie inherited the farm. In 1945 she married Noble Stuart, a Cleveland bricklayer who was sixty-three years old. Stuart had done stonework his whole life for other people's buildings. He had never carved a sculpture.3

Nettie died shortly after the marriage. Some sources say the same year, some say about a year later. Either way, Noble Stuart was suddenly alone on a farm his wife had grown up on, holding a set of stonecutting tools he had used all his life for practical work.

Over roughly two and a half years in the mid-1940s, he chiseled figures into the exposed rock face of the ledges. A three-masted schooner. A sphinx. A cross and open Bible. Christ on a crucifix. Portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. A likeness of Hiram Worden himself, based on the father-in-law he never met. And, for reasons no one has ever fully explained, Ty Cobb.4

He worked alone. He did not sign the carvings. He did not open the site to visitors. When Noble Stuart died in 1976, the farm passed out of the family and into the Cleveland Metroparks. The Metroparks folded the ledges into the Hinckley Reservation. The Hinckley Historical Society acquired and restored the 1860s homestead building.5

The carvings are still there. So is the "HM Worden 1851" inscription. So is the homestead. All three sit within a short walk of the Worden Heritage Homestead trailhead off Ledge Road. A room dedicated to the site is inside the Historical Society's 1846 Greek Revival building at 1634 Center Road.

Most people who live in Hinckley have never walked the trail. The ledges are quiet on weekday mornings. Ty Cobb is still looking out at the trees.

Footnotes

  1. Hiram Worden's trade and arrival. Documented in the SPACES Archives folk-art record of the site and in the Great American Hikes profile. Both describe Worden as a New York-trained tombstone and statue carver who moved to Hinckley in the early 1840s.
  2. 1860 homestead and the "HM Worden 1851" inscription. The 1860 construction date is given by SPACES Archives and reproduced across all major sources. The Hinckley Township history page gives 1862 for the surviving farmhouse structure specifically. The 1851 inscription is visible on the rock and photographed in the SPACES record. The characterization of the underlying Sharon Conglomerate sandstone as "~300 million years" old is quoted from Cleveland Metroparks reservation documentation and attributed to that source. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editor.
  3. Noble Stuart's 1945 marriage and age. Stuart was born in 1882 and died in 1976 (SPACES Archives). He was 63 at the marriage. His occupation as a Cleveland bricklayer, and the absence of prior sculptural work, are recorded in SPACES Archives and Great American Hikes.
  4. The nine ledge carvings plus three freestanding works. Subject list from SPACES Archives, Roadside America, Cleveland Metroparks, and Great American Hikes. Roadside America dates the carving period to 1944–1948; SPACES gives "the next 2½ years" after Nettie's 1945 death. The story uses the safer middle phrasing.
  5. 1976 land transfer to Cleveland Metroparks and homestead restoration. The Hinckley Historical Society acquired the homestead around 1988 and continues to steward it. Both facts appear in the SPACES record and on the Cleveland Metroparks reservation page.

Sources

The carvings, the 1851 rock inscription, the restored 1860s homestead, and the Historical Society building at 1634 Center Road are all standing today and can be visited from the Worden Heritage Homestead trailhead off Ledge Road.

Medina Homes Guide · Verified 2026-08-05