Dearborn Memorial Day Parade 2013

The Sunset Rock at Snow Elementary School in Dearborn

Sunset Rock sits in the front of the Edward Sparrow Snow Elementary School in Dearborn Michigan.  There is no marker and perhaps no student inside the school today knows why it's there.

 

The rock was formed in northeastern Ohio.  Eventually, the land around it was farmed. Sparrow and Clara Snow had emigrated west from Massachusetts with their three oldest children in a covered wagon.  The oldest son, Sam, remembers driving the ox team, sometimes across the ice on Lake Erie. The rock was part of a wild landscape.  The Snow Family, mother, father, and nine children, all worked very hard to make a living from the farm.

Little Eddie Snow, like other farm boys, attended the district school but spent most of his time helping his family.  But he dreamed of being educated beyond the local school.  The government was eager to settle the lands "out West in Missouri and beyond."  They were hiring surveyors and he wanted to become one and go West.  

So when his work for the day was done, Ed Snow watched the sunset from this large rock, which he called "Sunset Rock."  And he dreamed of being educated and of traveling beyond Ohio.

Now let's skip all the years and all the hard work that led Ed and his wife, Lizzie, to Dearborn, Michigan, where he practiced medicine (his Medical Degree was from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio), managed a farm and raised two sons. They had built their dream house near the corner of Monroe Street and Beech.  

He loved his new house which his wife named "Temple Villa," and when his parents' farm was changing hands, he arranged to move Sunset Rock to his home in Dearborn.  Here his children and grandchildren played on it, and watched the sunset from it.  The rock was part of the family and well-loved.  Ed Snow died in his house in 1892.

His son Bert's three children grew up in this house, and when they married and moved to a circle of new homes they had built in 1915-1917 (at the west end of Morley Avenue), they arranged to move Sunset Rock to the common green space they shared.

And there, Ed Snow's great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren played on it and watched the sunset from it, and knew its history. As I write this, all seven of the great-great grandchildren are still alive, and I'm one of them.

When the last of the three houses on Morley Circle was being sold outside the family, Katherine Moore Cushman, who spent the first 6 months of her life with her parents, aunt Clara Snow and grandmother in Temple Villa before moving to the Circle, arranged with the Dearborn Public Schools to move Sunset Rock to the school named for her great-grandfather, Dr. Snow.

And there Dr. Snow's beloved Sunset Rock rests today.

Written on October 19, 2013 by Betsy Cushman