Linda’s Monday Morning Moaning’s
Back to Mount Vernon, when Robert Eldredge wrote in ‘Past and Present of Macomb County’ in 1905, that “Mount Vernon, which is situated in section 19 and 30 of Washington Township is a thriving little village community, in which has gathered a number of business houses, two churches and a blacksmith shop and several residences, it was. It also has one of the oldest post offices in the county.
Old timers indicated that for years the post office was in a corner of the General Store, and names like Tobias Hoyle 1888, Frank Rogers 1893, Orlando Pike 1894, Levern Levanseler 1900, Rudolph Reed 1903 and Frederick Norton 1904 where all proprietors of the store so it can be assumed the post office was in the store at that time. In 1905 it was decreed that the Rochester post office would now handle Mount Vernon’s mail, and the local post office was closed marking the diffident end of an era. There was a structure that started out as a home built in 1830 which became the club house for the Mount Vernon Country Club. It was designed to look like George Washingtons Mount Vernon home. While the club drew members from all around and including the Detroit area, and the grounds were kept lush all summer, after World War II it would fall on hard times. It was later bought and restored by a family later on, but now the property is within the Stoney Creek Metro Park system.
Mount Vernon has changed from the thriving, yet quite farming community it once was. The school house was destroyed and damaged beyond repair during a windstorm in 1934. The Baptist Church closed. Stores went out of business. There was no more calls for buggies, wagons or windmills. Fields that once grew crops of hay and grains are covered over with asphalt. Large new homes are being built and automobiles make the area homeowners more mobile, where they can travel miles for shopping or entertainment. Food and fun are no longer homemade.
These changes might well have begun when Mount Vernon was bypassed by the railroad. The same as with many areas near by like Clifton Mills a ways down the road. Towns that railroads passed through grew and prospered while others became only a collection of homes. Now all that remains of the past are a few “old” homes, the Methodist Church (although that has recently been sold to soon become Greek Orthodox), and the Mount Vernon Cemetery.
Memories of Mount Vernon’s glory days are fading as most of the ‘old timers” are also gone, those hard working people who knew the importance of building their village. The present and future generations need to remember the past and the people who worked hard to shape it.
Thank you to Louise M. Pohly for her work on ‘Historic Mount Vernon, 1997
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Linda Osborne Cynowa 