The history of the house on the southwest corner of Buffalo and Washington in Lakin harkens back to the heydays of Hartland and one of Kearny County’s earliest businessmen. Many locals associate the 209 N. Buffalo location with Leon and Leona Davis who operated Davis Funeral Home out of their residence for more than 30 years, but it was another undertaker who owned the property first.
Corporal Edmond Strong Snow, a Civil War veteran, grew up on his father’s farm in Ashtabula County, Ohio and finished his education in the Grand River Institute at Austinburg, OH. Snow enlisted at the age of 19 in February of 1863 with Company C of the 60th Ohio Infantry. Two months later, Snow found himself under fire at the bloody Battle of the Wilderness, the first stage of a major Union offensive toward the Confederate capital of Richmond. Snow’s regiment bore the brunt of much of the hard fighting that followed in Virginia until the close of the Civil War. While he personally escaped all enemy bullets, Snow was wounded when a tree fell on him.
After the war, he went to Dearborn, Michigan with the intention to study medicine alongside his uncle, but ridding his mind of the scenes of military life was impossible for Snow. He abandoned his studies and took on a variety of jobs including starting his own grocery business at Holly, Michigan. Late in the fall of 1868, he was broke and looking for a job when he spotted a “help wanted” sign in Chicago for the Union Pacific Railroad which was then in the process of constructing across the great West. He hired on to the grading outfit working all the way to Wasatch, Utah which was the end of the line. Soon after arriving there, he transferred his services to the car repair shops of the company. E.S. served as a switchman and then as a railway brakeman before becoming a freight conductor. For 10 years, Snow was a passenger conductor from Cheyenne, WY west over the different divisions but chiefly between Laramie and Green River. He was in Wyoming, Utah and Idaho altogether for 18 years.
Ed Snow moved in November 1885 to Hartland where he established a lumber yard and general merchandise business, became partner in a livery, and erected a number of buildings. The highly respected businessman was elected Hartland’s first mayor, served as a director for the Bank of Hartland and organized the Knights of Pythias there. He also started branch lumber yards at Surprise and Cincinnati, Grant County towns with fates similar to Hartland’s. While many left Hartland immediately after Lakin secured the county seat, Snow remained there but eking out a living in a dying town was difficult.
News broke in May 1895 that Snow had purchased a lot on north Main in Lakin and was moving his buildings and stock of general merchandise here from Hartland. He was open for business by the end of summer. Some of Snow’s buildings were combined to make his residence at the Buffalo and Washington location. Snow purchased the Kearny County Advocate in 1902 and dabbled for a short time in the newspaper business. In February of 1907 came the announcement that he was having an opera house erected on the southeast corner of Main and Lincoln. The concrete, fire-proof 50×100 building was to be two stories high with the top story housing Snow’s Opera House, also known as the Lakin Opera House or Snow’s Theatre. The theatre had a seating capacity of 250 and included a 14×28 stage, dressing rooms and scenery. Dances, lodge and religious meetings, graduation exercises, and festivals were held there, and local as well as traveling entertainment performed for crowds of theatre-goers. Mr. Snow’s furniture, hardware and undertaking business occupied the first floor.
His wife of 46 years, Margaret Collins Snow, passed in 1922. Edmond Snow retired the following year and traveled as much as he could until ill health prevented him from doing so. Kearny County sheriff-elect Roy Puyear and his wife moved in with Snow at his home on Buffalo Street in 1924, and Snow died in 1926. The Snows had no children, but their former home and the building which housed Snow’s Theatre still stand in Lakin. The building was and is still considered one of the best in town. According to Edmond Snow’s obituary, the structure at 122 N. Main stood as a memorial to his life and activities in Lakin. The building has housed The Agency since 1982. In recent years, the top story was renovated and an addition was built to the south to serve as the residence of The Agency’s owner, Doug Geubelle and his wife, Stacey.
SOURCES: Diggin’ Up Bones by Betty Barnes; A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley; History of Kearny County Vol. I; archives of The Hartland Times, Advocate and Lakin Independent; and Museum archives.
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