The Hermitage, That Haven of Rest
I have lived on Quaker Meetinghouse Road my entire life. As far as I knew there was
nothing much here except for wood lots until the developments of the 1970s and 80s. I didn’t question that understanding until I stumbled across a photograph of a farmhouse with trellised flowers bordering the porch. On the back of that photograph was a note that read simply: “the Hermitage.”
I later came across a series of photographs in the Sandwich Town Archives that included the same flowery porch. Notes mentioned that the Hermitage stood in South Sandwich at the end of Kiah’s Way on the north end of Spectacle Pond. Those photographs introduced me to the Kinraide family.
After emigrating to Massachusetts from New Brunswick in 1882, Thomas Burton Kinraide met Rebecca Thayer Jackson. Her financial support enabled him to devote more time to his scientific research. Kinraide was an electrical inventor known for his elaboration on Nikola Tesla’s work with X-ray imaging, which led to the Kinraide Coil, a portable, high-frequency x-ray machine. By 1900, he lived in a large home in Jamaica Plain, where he maintained a laboratory.
Kinraide had purchased the South Sandwich 64 acre property that he later called “the Hermitage” in 1905 after a fishing trip in the area. This was expanded with the purchase of an additional 64 acres in 1915. For Kinraide and his wife, Ethel Sugg Ford Kinraide, the Hermitage was an escape from their home in the city. It would be the same for their future children Cecil, Robert, Thomas, and Ethel.
Long before the Kinraides owned the property, it was the farm of Hezekiah Hoxie. Hezekiah was one of two people who settled in the area around Spectacle Pond by 1698. His farm was off Mill Road, a backroad connecting what is now Old County Road to Cotuit Road. Kiah’s Way, which led from Mill Road to Hezekiah’s farmhouse, still bears a semblance of his name today.
The farm stayed with the Hoxies until it was purchased by Saul Jones in 1857 after the death of a different Hezekiah Hoxie. Jones sold to Henry H. Gray in 1878, who sold to Claire Stedman in 1893. A foreclosure in 1900 finally led to Kinraide’s purchase in 1905.
When the property was purchased there was the old Hoxie farmhouse and a barn. In 1910 Kinraide purchased a log cabin at a sporting show in New Brunswick and had it shipped to Cape Cod. A combination storage shed and icehouse were added along with a small beach cottage, which began as a widow’s walk on Kinraide’s home in Jamaica Plain, rounding out the structures that would make up “the Hermitage.”
Kinraide and his family involved themselves in town affairs over the course of about twenty years. His connection to Sandwich was through his sister Mary Annetta “Nettie” Carpenter and her husband, LaForest J. Carpenter. LaForest had served as a selectman and assessor for the town of Sandwich. The Carpenters, including their daughters Rachel and Ethel (later called Shirley), were frequent guests at the Hermitage.
LaForest appeared to take full advantage of the access to Spectacle Pond. One photograph shows LaForest, the quintessential fisherman, raising his prize, a nearly 4 foot long eel he referred to as a “sea serpent.”
One can imagine that Kinraide’s vision was realized when seeing pictures of his children running through the orchard and wide lawn, riding their pony, Dunk, and swimming in the pond. Often alongside them were neighbors Edna and Alice Yarwood who were among their frequent visitors.
In their time at the Hermitage, the Kinraides hosted a wide variety of guests. The Sandwich Independent made note of many of these visitors including the Woman’s Alliance of the Sandwich Federated Church and the Sandwich Winter Club, which was formed by those who spent their summers in Sandwich and would organize events throughout the year to stay connected. When a group camping nearby was caught in a storm, they found refuge at the Hermitage in “that ‘haven of rest’ for many travelers.”
Kinraide was president of the Williams Club of Boston for a time and hosted yearly club gatherings at the Hermitage. As reported in the Independent, that gathering soon grew into a “first-class clambake” that welcomed fifty members of the club as well as an unspecified number of Sagamore and Sandwich residents. The family was well liked and had become a fixture in town. Shortly before the Kinraides returned to the city, some twenty people from Sandwich threw a surprise party for them where “a delightful time was enjoyed by all.”
Everything wouldn’t stay rosy for much longer. In 1920 Ethel entered divorce proceedings against Thomas through the Barnstable County Court. This was likely done in Barnstable to avoid scrutiny from their circle of Boston socialites.
After the divorce, Ethel took the children to live with her mother, and continued summering at the Hermitage. As for Thomas, he made occasional hunting trips to the Hermitage before his sudden death in California in 1927. Among his personal effects were three tubes of radium, valued at about $80,000 (about $1.5 million today), which may have contributed to his death.
The same year, Ethel married William T. Casperson. They continued to summer at the Hermitage eventually moving there full time. Ethel passed away after complications from childbirth in 1933 and William remained at the Hermitage. He deeded the property to Ethel’s children before his own death in 1945.
The fate of the Hermitage itself came within a decade. Fires were common on Cape Cod. Small brush fires that could be fought by neighbors happened frequently, including on the property in 1910 and 1915. Expansive forest fires also occurred with alarming regularity. In 1923 one fire burned 25,000 acres from Pocasset Village to East Sandwich. That may have accounted for the billowing smoke captured from a distance in some of the family’s photographs.
As for the fire that ultimately took the Hermitage, we know less. A 1989 Village Broadsider article put
the date in the late 1940s. March 23, 1952 was listed on a family genealogy website but I have not been able to confirm it. A gap in available local newspapers ranging from 1938 to 1974 makes pinpointing the exact date and circumstances extremely difficult.
Walking down to the site now, I can’t help but picture how it looked during the Kinraides’ tenure. A thatch-roofed gatehouse welcomed visitors at the wooded intersection of Mill Road and Kiah’s Way. The path leading to the main house, now the approximate location of the Lakewood Hills Associates Club House, was rough gravel, packed down by centuries of horse hooves and later by Kinraide’s car. Seeing the area now, it’s difficult to imagine the rural, idyllic scene that would have been so familiar to the Kinraides and their many guests.
Brendan Carmichael is a board member of the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the town of Sandwich.
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