Fourth graders visited the Hermitage in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, on a class trip last month. It’s is an historic house with a long history. The original two-story stone farmhouse was built in the mid-1700s. Kayleigh Clifton, a fourth grader, said she had a favorite room.
“My favorite exhibit at the Hermitage was the kitchen because the kitchen wasn’t just used for cooking. One of the other things it is used for is bathing,” Clifton said.
“Overall, the Hermitage was pretty good,” Eli Robayo said. “In the house, it explains the places where they eat and chairs and furniture they have from a couple hundred years ago.”
According to the website for the Hermitage and the tour guides on site, one owner of the house was James Marcus Prevost, an officer in the British Army. At the start of the American Revolution, Prevost returned to active duty and left his wife and five children at the Hermitage.
“One thing I learned about New Jersey’s history was that George Washington came through the Hermitage because the person who lived there wrote a letter to George Washington,” Clifton said.
The wife of Prevost invited Washington and his troops to shelter at the house during the war.
After the Revolutionary War, the Hermitage had several owners and was used as a tavern. In 1807, a doctor named Elijah Rosencrantz and his wife, Cornelia Suffern, bought the property. Four generations of the Rosencrantz family lived at the Hermitage.
In 1847 and 1848, architect William H. Ranlett renovated the house in the Gothic Revival style. The building still has that style today.
