1906

The Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society is founded “to improve and to ornament the streets and public grounds of Jaffrey Center and vicinity, by doing such acts as shall tend to beautify and to improve” the area. Silas Buck of Parsons Lane is elected first president. Dora Tenney, for $100, sells the VIS her “flat-iron lot” as “a park forever” at Meetinghouse Road, Thorndike Pond Road and Main Street. Jonas Cutter agrees to sell the former Cutter Hotel site on the hill (where the flagpole is now) for $2,000 and extend the park. The sale is not final until 1909. 

1907   

VIS builds a watering trough of granite to replace the horse-nibbled wooden trough on Thorndike Pond Road at Main Street. Flowers bloom there now.

1908   

VIS launches fundraising to repair the tower of Melville Academy, a Jaffrey public school. President Silas Buck dies. Margaret Casson Robinson, a founder, is elected president. She serves 20 years.

1913  

The Harkness Triangle, at Harkness Road and Main Street, is given to the VIS by Annie Henchman and Alice Cutter. VIS members form the Cemetery Association to restore the Old Burying Ground.

1919   

The Town grants the VIS permission to use Melville Academy, abandoned as a public school. The VIS installs electric lights, restores the windows, paints and furnishes it. The VIS buys the old blacksmith lot at Main Street and Thorndike Pond Road from E.C. Shattuck for $1,500.

1920   

The VIS holds a grand opening of Melville Academy Museum on Aug. 4.  

1921 

Mrs. Robinson organizes and chairs a VIS committee to raise funds “for restoration of the Town Hall.” The Town asks Bowman F. Cann, a builder and VIS vice president, to do the work, including restoring the main door to its original center position. The VIS raises $5,000 of the $8,000 cost.  The VIS has funded many thousands of dollars of improvements to the Meetinghouse from 1923 to the present.

1928   

Mrs. Benjamin L. Robinson, 64, resigns as president after serving 20 years.  She died four years later. Mrs. Lawrence H. Wetherell, active in the VIS since 1919, succeeds her.   

1932  

Rev. Charles S. Mills gives the Swale, about 10 acres of boggy meadow, to the VIS. The Swale is later combined with the Blacksmith Lot.

1941   

Alice W. Poole leaves the VIS a $3,000 endowment for the old cemetery.

1945   

Across from the Monadnock Inn, the Bigelow Lot and its cellar hole is bought by the VIS to prevent development. It was later sold. 

1948   

Josephine H. Wetherell retires as president and is succeeded by John D. Johnson, who served eight years.

1954   

The VIS takes over care of the 1810 Horsesheds, which VIS members helped restore from 1949 to 1954. The VIS has maintained the Horsesheds with paint, new roofs in 1972, 1997 and 2020, several structural repairs, and signage. 

1960   

Melville Academy needs a new tower, new roof, new front steps and work on the foundation. The Town conveys the title to the VIS for $1.00, provided that it maintain it as a historical landmark. Cost for repairs: approximately $9,000, underwritten by Mrs. Lawrence Wetherell.

1967   

Lawrence Wetherell dies and leaves $10,000 to establish a fund to support Melville Academy. Mrs. Wetherell dies in 1974 and leaves $10,000 to the VIS.

1968   

At the Annual Meeting at Melville Academy, “the floor in the center of the hall suddenly sank about 10 inches with a loud crash.”  Cost: $3,000.

1973   

A comprehensive inventory of the museum’s artifacts is started by Molly McCready, with the help of Margaret Bean, Marjorie Shattuck, Ken Jewett, and Don Eaves.

1975   

VIS publishes Jaffrey Center New Hampshire, Portrait of a Village, a history of the houses and buildings with 185 photos, many by editor Coburn Kidd, who also financed it.

1975   

National Register of Historic Places status was received for the Jaffrey Historic District that was established by Town Meeting vote in 1969.

1978   

The VIS buys John Morgan’s .6-acre lot on Mountain Road across from the Meetinghouse Common for $9,000.

1990   

Jeanne Duval and President Mary Payson carefully rearrange the collection in the newly painted first floor of Melville.

1991

The 1775 Meetinghouse is closed to the publicbecause of “severe foundation block tilt” and other major problems. VISPresident Mary Payson starts The Committee for the Restoration of The Meetinghouse.The VIS helps raise $66,000 in private fundsfor the $155,000 restoration by the Town. A structural engineering study of Melville reports the first level is structurally unsound. Cost to repair:   $14,527.

1993   

Jaffrey and the VIS celebrate the re-opening of the Meetinghouse on July 3. The VIS raises another $4,200 to build the balcony railing.  

1996   

The VIS raises $8,000 to restore and gild the four Meetinghouse clock faces. 

1997   

The JCVIS Endowment Fund at the NH Charitable Foundation is started with a deposit of $11,000. 

1997   

A grant for $2,435 from the American Conservation Consortium, Ltd is received to repair Melville bell tower and interior.

1998   

The VIS creates Centennial Park at Main Street and Bryant Road after buying Jane Walling’s 1.3-acre lot for $35,000.

2000 

Mary Jo Marvin serves as Museum Curator from late 1999 through 2010, along with Sally Waters Larsen. They catalogue and expand the collection with Past Perfect software. Sally Roberts, VIS fundraiser, does much of the data entry. Sally Larsen continues as curator from 2010-2013.

2001   

Robert B. Stephenson of VIS initiates the July 4th Reading of the Declaration of Independence at the 1775 Meetinghouse. The JCVIS starts its July 4th Ice Cream Social tradition. Noel Pierce loans the old Jaffrey Center Post Office boxes to Melville Academy. 

2003   

VIS raises $52,000 for Town to buy land expanding Cutter Cemetery.

2006

The VIS celebrates its Centennial with many events.Robert B. Stephenson writesMarshal the Willing Forces, A Centennial History of the Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society. The VIS holds a tour of historic houses and sells Jaffrey and Mt. Monadnock Spode plates.

2008   

The VIS adds the August Picnic in Centennial Park (or the Horsesheds if it rains) to its annual events: the March Dinner, Spring and Fall Cleanup, July     4 th Ice Cream Social, and Christmas Dinner at the Inn.

2009   

The VIS amends its Articles of Agreement to allow VIS conservation easements to maintain the area’s rural character in perpetuity. By 2014, 35.1 acres are under VIS easements: the contiguous parcels of Coleman and Pokorny on Parsons Lane and 15 woodland acres of Robert Chase, from 107 to 169 Thorndike Pond Road.

2010   

The VIS begins to take annual “spending distributions” (earnings) from the NH Charitable Foundation’s JCVIS Endowment Fund. The first annual payment was $4,766.          

2011   

Sandra Best gives the VIS 6.23 acres with a view of Mt. Monadnock. The land is between 63 and 97 Thorndike Pond Road; the VIS now owns and maintains a total of 22.5 of Open Spaces enhancing the Jaffrey Center Village community.

2014   

The late Mary Payson, president 1989-93 and 2001-2005, leaves $100,000 to the JCVIS/NHCF Endowment Fund, yielding an additional $4,000 + per year. 

2016   

The VIS celebrates its 110th Anniversary! Museum Curator Suze Campbell organizes and expands Melville’s collection into thematic areas. Electricity is upgraded on first floor.

2016   

The horsesheds need a new roof.

Compiled mostly from VIS Timeline, Excerpts of JCVIS Minutes 1906 to 2005, by Robert B. Stephenson.