Biography

In 1887, Catherine Hinkley, a widow in Cedar Rapids, offered to pay her neighbor, Elsie Stewart, a small sum in exchange for staying in her home. For women such as Hinkley, who were alone and unable to support themselves, Cedar Rapids had few options besides the “poor farm.” Within the year several more women had come to Stewart offering to pay what they could and asking to stay with her. After the sudden death of Stewart’s husband, she and her friends kept the household going by establishing a Women’s Board of Managers for what they started to call the Old Ladies Home.

By 1889, Board of Managers arranged to purchase the home where the women had been living and hired a matron to manage it as well as staff for housekeeping and repairs. They also established a Men’s Board of Trustees to manage the home’s finances. The distinction between the “Women’s Board” (Board of Managers) and the “Men’s Board” (Board of Trustees) continued decades into the 20th century. When a woman entered the Home for Aged Women, she paid an entrance fee and turned over her investments, savings, and real estate to the Board of Trustees to manage. Upon her death, her property would become the property of the Home.

By the 1890s, the Old Ladies Home was no longer large enough to accommodate the women who lived there. A contribution of $30,000 from Abraham Slimmer of Waverly, Iowa helped to start an endowment. Additional donations from Slimmer and Cedar Rapids residents raised enough money to build a new home in the village of Kingston, Iowa, which could house up to eighteen women. In 1899, fifteen women moved into a new home which they called their “Castle on the Hill.”

The Home for Aged Women, as it began to be called, routinely housed around twenty women at a time and frequently had to turn down applications from women even as entrance fees climbed to $2,000 by 1953. Although there were rules, the women who lived in the Home did so fairly independently. They could come and go during the day to club meetings, visits with family, and to other activities. They each contributed to cleaning and food preparation as they were able. For most of the Home’s history each woman had her own bedroom and shared a kitchen, dining room, and parlor with the others. Women who came to the home frequently lived there until their deaths or until they required more medical care than the Home could provide. Occasionally, women would leave due to increased fees or to go live with extended family members. During World War I, one woman chose to leave after others in the Home objected to her speaking German.

Throughout the 20th century, the Home for Aged Women continued to adapt. A radio was added to the parlor for sermons and musical programs in the 1930s and the women received a television in 1953. In 1974, the Home for Aged Women completed an addition of seventeen resident suites to the building and officially changed its name to Kingston Hill. For Kingston Hill’s centennial, Ruby Klatt, matron of the Home from 1964 to 1980, wrote a book summarizing its history entitled The Story of Kingston Hill.

After one hundred and sixteen years as a women’s only home, Kingston Hill opened its application process to men in 2003. Four years later, Kingston Hill officially affiliated with a non-profit healthcare organization, Abbe, Inc., dedicated to addressing the needs of the elderly in Linn County, Iowa. Kingston Hill closed in 2016 due to the rising costs of resident care and building maintenance. At the time of its closure, it had twenty-three residents.

Found in 1 Collection or Record: