The Legacy of Maple Grove

In 1982, Scenic Hudson's Ken Toole conducted an oral history interview of 88-year-old Miss Elise Kinkead, owner of the Maple Grove and Southwood estates located along Poughkeepsie's South Road (Route 9). By the early 1980s, increasing pressure from strip mall commercial development along with Miss Kinkead's advanced age and lack of direct descendants, presented the urgent need to capture the history of this threatened landscape and way of life.

Maple Grove. Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Archive.

Much of Maple Grove's history is really the story of two brothers from Kentucky, John and Henry Kinkead, who fell in love with and married two elegant and spirited sisters from Poughkeepsie, Elise and Edith Hamilton of Maple Grove. The lives of these two couples, along with their parents, children and step children, were intertwined even by geography as they settled side by side along the then stately South Road at the neighboring estates of Maple Grove and Southwood. Their family history presents a remarkable picture of three generations of devotion to a landscape and way of life that is now all but forgotten.

In this interview, Miss Kinkead describes the acquisition and occupancy of Maple Grove by her grandparents during the period from 1870 to 1891 followed by the tenure at Maple Grove of her aunt and uncle, Dr. John and Elise S. H. Kinkead who particularly cherished and enjoyed

the family home—until they in turn passed the estate to those they thought most likely to ensure its survival, their nieces Jennie and Elise H. Kinkead, who lived across the road at the estate known as Southwood.

Southwood in 1908. Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Archive.

Although Southwood was demolished by Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery in 1989, Maple Grove survives and is undergoing a gradual restoration with the goal of one day finding a new use for this gracious 19th century mansion which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. The following interview represents the last voice of the last generation to have owned and loved Maple Grove as a family home in an era when Route 9 was a bucolic thoroughfare lined with country estates and gentlemen's farms.

Ken Toole: The easiest thing is probably to start at the beginning. How Maple Grove first came into the family.

Elise Kinkead: More details?

KT: Well...

EK: My grandparents lived in New Orleans at the time my mother and aunt were born. ...And when the Civil War came along, my grandfa-

ther [Adolphus Hamilton] was from New York and Connecticut and my grandmother [Matilda Hamilton] was from Wilmington originally. Delaware. And so... .business had taken them down to New Orleans. And they felt very unhappy there with the Civil War. My grandmother was very emphatic about her faith that there shouldn't have been a Civil War. That it was politics. It wasn't slavery. That it was politics. And Mr. Lincoln could have prevented it. And she couldn't bear the whole thing.

And they had five children. Two of the boys were from my grandmother's former marriage. And the three children from my grandfather and grandmother's together. And they decided the best thing for them to do was to go abroad and give the children the benefit of the languages. And my grandmother who had been left after the death of her first husband following a long illness, she'd been left very financially limited and had a hard time. She said if they went abroad, she was going to try and learn from those European women how to live on a shoe string... and not run into the expenses that she had had to look after when she was alone. So she had that in mind and languages for the children.

My grandfather had to come back and forth on business, but he established them with a tutor for the boys who he thought was good. He [the tutor] was a very well-educated man, and he was trained for the priesthood. But he developed a violent temper, though my grandfather was unaware of it, and grandmother too to a certain extent. He [the tutor] was vicious and mean to the three boys. Very, very mean with them. And struck them and bamboozled them pretty well to get them subjugated. But.. .the family didn't know that until much later.

..I think they went over there [to Europe] in [18]62 perhaps and came back in [18]69, something like that.

And [when they came back] they tried living in New York City and had a house that had access to a park. You had to get a key to the gate. They could let themselves in and out, and they could walk in the park and tread on the grass if they had a mind to. But the children rebelled at that. They were used to the outdoors and freedom, and they hated it.

And my grandfather found that in seven or eight years, that he'd been away from New York, social things had changed a great deal. And there was a tolerance for things he didn't think there should be any tolerance for, so (laughter) though his brother wanted him to stay there [in New

York], he and grandmother and the children listened to [Samuel F.B.] Morse's persuasion that there was a place in Poughkeepsie that was for sale near them and with excellent schools available within just a short walking distance.

Well, children now might feel a little imposed on if they had to walk back and forth from Maple Grove to Cannon Street every day, twice a day. But it was just what they needed. So these children grew up at Maple Grove. They bought the place, and that was in 1870. They'd come back to this country in 1869.

Restoration of Maple Grove's west facade was completed in 2005.

At that time [in 1869], it [Maple Grove] belonged to a family named Sweetser. And when my grandfather and grandmother were looking at it, Mrs. Sweetser was feeling that the place was very difficult for the Sweetser family to hold on to. Her daughter preferred being in the city where she could walk on the stone sidewalks. So they had put in that little stone walk from the kitchen door to the drive and over to the back door of the house and out to the drive again. So the daughter, when she got dressed for the afternoon, could walk on city streets (laughter).

And when grandmother said, "Mrs.Sweetser, this drive is so pretty. It's

a long drive and all those little maple trees are so nice." And Mrs. Sweetser said in a plaintive voice, that my mother and I always imitated, "Well, it looks all right now. But in the fall, all the leaves have to be raked up." Because in those days, although the drive was a quarter mile long, it was raked up every week. Once a week, and those leaves had to be raked up. So Mrs. Sweetser was glad when she moved off the place, and grandmother and grandfather were glad when they moved in.

And they [her grandparents] had the garden just as nearly as my aunt could Maple lined drive at Maple Grove. Rendes Collection, Makeep it, just the way it is pie Grove Archive. now. And my grandfather had the greenhouse that he was very fond of. And one part of it was just for grapes. Those big black Hamburg grapes or something. And that whole section of the greenhouse was grapes. And they had a tank in the back part for water, so water was accessible. And they had that filled with water and lovely greens and goldfish which delighted Jen [Elise Kinkead's sister] and me when we were children. Oh, those goldfish were lovely in the greenhouse!

So they [Elise Kinkkead's grandparents] moved in [to Maple Grove] and they ran it until my grandmother's death probably in 18...maybe 1890? Maybe 1891? My grandmother died. My grandfather had died before then. And my mother and father were married and living in Kentucky at that time. My aunt was the second wife of Dr. John Kinkead. ..he was raised in Kentucky of course, and his sister went to Vassar and was a roommate of Cornelia Annie Dodge, one of the early Vassar graduates.

(short discussion of discomfort of speaking into a tape recorder) KT: You were talking about the Dodges. How the Kinkeads and Dodges met.

EK: Well, it was through the Vassar College association. My uncle [John Kinkead] who was practicing eye, ear, nose, and throat work in New York City, I believe, that's how he met his first wife whose home was in Poughkeepsie. She was Annie Dodge. They lived on Academy Street. But my mother and father lived in Kentucky.

After my grandmother's death, my aunt, who was at that time Mrs. John Kinkead, had said she Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Archive. would love best of all to put that money [her inheritance] into Maple Grove instead of having it [Maple Grove] divided among all the family; she would like to do that because she lived here, and she loved the place so. So she did. ...My grandfather's executors made it possible for my aunt and uncle to put the money that my aunt inherited from my grandmother into buying the house from the estate. ...she said she'd rather have that than anything. So she bought that. And my mother and father built a house in Lexington, Kentucky out of what my grandmother left my mother. ...You see my mother and aunt were sisters; my father and uncle were brothers. So the relation was very close.

Dr. John Kinkead

KT: Well now, are you talking about a period before Southwood was bought by your family?

EK: Yes.

KT: I see.

EK: I was born in [18]94 in Lexington, Kentucky. And I was born in January. And in June or July, I think, we were probably up here. Came up every year. To see Auntie and Uncle. And we just LOVED it. Just

loved Maple Grove. Grew up loving Maple Grove. ... Uncle had the orchard. ..had a beautiful orchard. When he retired from medicine, from his doctoring, I think it was probably about 19.. .maybe 1902 or 1903, something like that. And he put his loving attention on looking after a little orchard he had at Maple Grove. He had an apple orchard. And a little pear and peach orchard. And he had grapes. And he loved his bees. Crazy about bees. They were what killed him. [Dr. John Kinkead died on July 4, 1909 after suffering a heart attack while working among his bees.] He was very fond of those. Very much interested in them. He had them right back of the main house. The orchard was perhaps about an acre. Some few trees left there now.. .And the pear orchard was to the north of the stable drive. Pears and peaches in there. And the pears down to the lawn. He followed my grandfather's habit of coming home from the office and putting on his farm clothes and helping with the hay or anything like that that was going on...

Elise Kinkead with her nieces Jennie (left) and Elise (right) on the front steps of Maple Grove. Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Archive.

KT: Were there animals then?

EK: Oh, we had animals there. They had. ..they had a pair of carriage horses. They had more horses in my grandparent's day. But in the days that I remember, when we were away in the wintertime, my uncle and

aunt had a pair of carriage horses and in the summertime, farm horses. Sometimes they bought the new farm horses every spring and let them go in the fall. I don't remember how they always did that, but I can remember their doing that sometimes.

And they had a coachman who lived over the stable, over the carriage house. And they had a gardener who lived in the two story house. And the house that the Rendes' use [the Rendes family were Maple Grove caretakers] was turned around a little differently, and that was the ice house... .And over the ice house, my uncle had his shop with all his bee things in it...

They had the man that lived at the gatehouse. And the cows down there... in the summertime. And in the wintertime, when they didn't need the pasture, they had them up back of the carriage house.. .And where St. Simeon's is now [St. Simeon's Senior Apartments], part of that was our place. And part of it belonged to old Miss Thompson who lived across the road. [The Thompson mansion, once part of an estate known as "The Wilderness," survives on Beechwood Avenue, across from St. Simeon's.] And [she] wouldn't let my aunt in and out of there. ..on to Beechwood Avenue (laughter). Wasn't that a funny thing? And this funny old lady would get herself up and get her coachman and her horses, everything out and come over once or twice a year to call on my aunt. To do it, she had to go through Beechwood Avenue, down South Road and up the long drive to Maple Grove. And all she had to do was just go across fifty of her own feet. But she could not part with that land. My aunt tried to buy it. My aunt and uncle tried to buy it when Cornelia Kinkead, my cousin, was at Vassar because it would have made it so much simpler. The big hill was pretty slippery in the wintertime for horses. And ... it took a long time to get out that way. Took about six or eight miles. So... nothing doing. And every so often my aunt would get her carriage out, get her horses all harnessed up and the man in livery, and she would drive the six miles over to pay Mrs. Thompson a call (laughter). Isn't that strange?

KT: Well, then who were the last people who lived in the house?

EK: In our house?

KT: In Maple Grove. Was it Cornelia? Or...

EK: Oh, after my aunt died?

KT: Yeah.

EK: Well, that was a thing that was very much criticized... because people didn't understand it. Cornelia and George were the children of my uncle's first marriage.

KT: Oh, I see.

EK: And when my aunt and uncle were married, they had no children, which was a source of great regret. But Cornelia and George were getting along. Cornelia, I think was about seven and George was probably about four [when their widowed father, John Kinkead remarried to Elise Hamilton of Maple Grove]. And they had been brought up to a certain point by my uncle's father and uncle's sister who came up from Kentucky to take care of the children [in Poughkeepsie] when their grandmother died.

So when my grandmother died and Auntie and Uncle were moving to Maple Grove, Cornelia and George had lost their mother... so they were definitely with Auntie and Uncle. And the grandfather [Leroy Dodge] was still living, and he hated to give them [his grandchildren, George and Cornelia] up because they'd been living with him on Academy Street [in Poughkeepsie]. And he couldn't bear giving them up. Especially George, because George he thought was just perfection, and George felt the same of him.

So Auntie, when she was first married, went to live with him... with Grandpa Dodge and the children [on Academy Street in Poughkeepsie]. Then when they

George and Cornelia Kinkead. Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Archive.

bought Maple Grove, the tie was very close with him too. So it was arranged that he would very happily go down and live at Maple Grove. And they arranged those two rooms at the end of the house. I think they were going to be his two rooms; at the south end of the house overlooking the garden. ...And the family were just devoted to him. Apparently, he was devoted to the family. And he.. .he had quite a long illness and he appreciated so much the care my aunt gave of him which was just as if it was her own father. So that.. .1 don't think I've quite answered your question. I can't remember just what...

KT: Well, what I was going to add.. .the last people who lived there... were George and Cornelia?

EK: My aunt had a home out in California that she and uncle built before he died. He died before it was finished. And, uh, my cousin, Cornelia was a very brilliant mind. She went to Vassar, I think, when she was sixteen or something like that. And she was very young when she graduated. She was very bright. She had been shifted around a great deal in the family. First her mother for three years, and then after her mother's death, uh...her grandmother, then her aunt taking care of her, and she had been shifted around. Her great resource was reading; she loved reading more than anything else.

When my aunt was married, my aunt felt as if something had to be done that would have her see more people, more of her own age. And she didn't like that very much. Well, anyway, she gradually came around.

George and Cornelia Kinkead. Rendes Collection. Maple Grove Archive.

And when we went out to California, she blossomed out, and became very dependent on people, began loving people. And people loving her because they could see what she was. ... she seemed to be constantly on the go there and very happy. So my aunt was going to give her this house she had in Santa Barbara which was a lovely house... .But before my aunt died, Cornelia said one day that she would probably never go back to California again and Auntie said, "Well, Cornelia, do you mean that you don't want the house out there?" and she said, "Nope, not interested." You know, people have changes...

KT: Oh, sure.

EK: So Auntie said, "Well, you want to sell it? You know, it's yours to do anything you want with." So she sold it. Then my aunt was feeling terribly. She said, "Cornelia and George don't want to take any responsibility for anything, real estate or anything like that. And they'll never take any care of Maple Grove; they'll never take care of it." And she really was terribly downcast about it. Because it Elise Kinkead, her mother Edith, her sister Jennie, and an unidentified friend Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Armeant so much to her. chive. She had worked hard on it herself and grown up there.

So my sister was there one day when she was feeling this... depression. And Jennie said, "Now Auntie, don't worry about that at all. No use in your worrying about it. Just give it [Maple Grove] to Elise and me and we will do with it as nearly as possible what we think you would like us to do." And she said, "I would like it to be Cornelia and George's home

if they wanted it." And Jennie said, "Well then, it will be Cornelia and George's home if they want it. And we will make it as nearly their home, except in title. So if you're worried about their selling it, then it won't be sold." So that's how she happened to give it to us. And that was a good while before she died. I don't mean many years, but some years. And people in town criticized that very much. They criticized my aunt for giving it to us when we had this home [the Southwood estate located across Route 9 from Maple Grove]. They shouldn't have, because there was no justification for any criticism because they [Cornelia and George] would have sold it.

Rustic gazebo at Maple Grove. Rencles Collection, Maple Grove Archive.

KT: But what really we've always talked about is carrying on that tradition... in the future.

EK: And that's why I don't want it to get in the wrong hands. Because it was almost like a CHILD to my aunt. She loved that place so. And we gave her our word that we'd do the best we could to help her have it. ...

KT: And they [Elise's step-cousins, George and Cornelia Kinkead] lived into the 1940s, I guess?

EK: Oh. ..19...I think Cornelia died in '49. And I think that George probably died a few years after that. I don't remember what year. My aunt, I think, died in '45...'44...'45, just before the war ended. [The "Auntie" that Elise was named after died in 1944. Cornelia Kinkead died in 1949, and Cornelia's brother George (the last resident of Maple Grove) died in 1955.]

But George and Cornelia both had traveled a great deal, and they loved traveling. And my aunt said, "They won't do a thing to fill this place except sell this place, and by and by, they'll spend the money traveling. And I have loved it so much," she said, "And I've worked over it so hard." And she had, and I think that it would have been sad for her to feel that it was going to just be torn down. So we've done the best we could with it.

interior of Maple Grove. Rendes Collection, Maple Grove Archive.

And I can't think of anything that would be wiser or more what she would have because it isn't practical to have it as a home anymore—a private home.

[After George and Cornelia's deaths, their cousins Jennie and Elise refused to sell Maple Grove. Instead they continued to live across the road from Maple Grove at their Southwood estate and used Maple Grove for daily lunch, Sunday dinners and charity functions. The Rendes family continued to act as Maple Grove's caretakers. This arrangement continued for over 30 years. As her own death drew nearer, Elise Kinkead discussed with Scenic Hudson and others what to do with Maple Grove.]

KT: So... it's really to preserve it in the tradition as it always operated.

(complains she can't hear very well—laughter)

KT: Well, I was just going to say what we've always talked about is to preserve it in that same tradition...

EK: YES!

KT: So that it will be a small farm operation.

EK: I don't see why it couldn't be preserved and to good effect for the whole district. Because as I've seen on the map of the district and the location of so many homes in little dots all over the map, there's practically no open space in Poughkeepsie now except the river going through it.

KT: The nice thing about the property is.. .1 talk to other people about it. ..when you talk about its open space, and people really do love it. They loved seeing the cows there when you had the cows.

EK: I miss having those cows myself, but I can put back some. ...And what I think my aunt would love would be to have that little pond put back [the pond was destroyed by the widening of Route 9 in 1955]. Wouldn't be much trouble. And it was such a pretty little pond. Children could skate on it in the wintertime. Of course, that wouldn't be safe near the road. But when they had it, it was a very pretty little pond...