A History of Melville Academy Museum and Collections
Melville Academy serves as a Museum whose mission is to preserve and communicate the history of Jaffrey, the Academy, and the Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society.
Melville Academy Museum from Southwest lawn.
Photograph by Ron Yantiss
The Melville Academy Museum of the JCVIS contains a collection of hundreds of items dating from the 18th century to the present day. Jaffrey residents and people have given the items to this museum with connections to the village of Jaffrey Center and the town of Jaffrey, by people with a keen desire to preserve the history of the village, the town and the Academy, for the education of its current residents and for future generations. This local history museum contains a sampling of meaningful artifacts depicting the life and times of our small, iconic New England community. The initial collection of artifacts was started in 1920 when the Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society (JCVIS) became the guardian of the building. Donations to the collection continue to this day.
The existence of Melville Academy Museum is a testimony to the importance of a sense of place. It has a distinguished collection of art and artifacts, documents and objects that fulfill the mission and purpose of the Museum adopted in 1996. More than that, it is a location, and is in a location, that creates both the nostalgic as well as the historic identity of Jaffrey Center and the JCVIS.
The focus of the Museum’s collection and the arrangement of its contents are both historical and thematic. Its contents, with a few exceptions, are valuable either as sentimental objects with meaning to people who are still alive and remember some aspect of their provenance, or as teaching examples of life in Jaffrey Center from the early 19th century to the present.
A very brief history of the development of the museum’s collection and the people involved with its preservation and management follows. Miss Kate Fox, a VIS founder (who served as treasurer 1906-1940), was elected as Curator in 1921, with Miss Nannie Greene as assistant. Miss Fox was instrumental in the initial gathering, cataloguing, and arrangement of items for the museum. There are pictures showing the way the museum was in 1936 at a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the VIS, and pictures showing VIS activities that took place in the museum in its early days. Mrs. Benjamin (Margaret) Robinson (who served as President of the VIS from 1908 to 1928) and then Mrs. Lawrence (Josephine) Wetherell (who served as President of the VIS from 1928 to 1948) took very active roles in the preservation of the building and its contents.
Amos Fortune’s hand fashioned hay fork hangs above a display of tools next to the Jaffrey Meetinghouse model built by past VIS Vice President Bowman Cann, who rebuilt the actual Meetinghouse in 1922.
Photograph by Ron Yantiss
In 1961 there was an open house at the Melville Academy Museum to celebrate the building’s restoration, which cost approximately $9,000, and was substantially underwritten by Mrs. Lawrence Wetherell.
A 1961 Monadnock Ledger article said the following after Jaffrey voters had agreed to turn over the deed for the building to the JCVIS for $1.00. “The open house on Saturday, June 22, 1961, has been prompted by the Society’s offer to welcome visitors from time to time as part of the purchase agreement. The terms of the agreement as recorded in the Town Reports for 1960 are as follows: “For which conveyance the Society will raise sufficient funds with which to repair and restore the building, more especially its tower, and maintain the building as a historical landmark in the town, and in the event the Society is dissolved, terminated, disbanded or its activities cease, all the rights, title and interest it may have had in the above mentioned land and building shall revert to the town of Jaffrey.”
Melville’s open door welcomes you.
Photograph by Ron Yantiss
Melville Academy Museum summer hours.
Photograph by Ron Yantiss
In the 1960s renovation of the museum, Mrs. Wetherell installed a mini-kitchen in the office area. In 1973, Molly McCready with the help of Margaret Bean, Marjorie Shattuck, Ken Jewett, and Don Eaves, began to compile a comprehensive inventory of the museum’s artifacts. In 1974 the collection was appraised and insurance was purchased to cover it. According to several people who have said they visited the museum in the mid 1980s, the collection was in serious need of renewed attention by then. In 1989, when Rob Stephenson was tending to repairs of the ceiling on the second floor, Jeanne Duval became interested in caring for the museum and in preserving the contents; she arranged them, labeled them, and she also inventoried the books in the museum; she photographed the museum’s collection to match with the inventory. Mary Payson, President of the JCVIS at the time, eagerly welcomed Jeanne’s assistance. Mary served as curator in the 1990s.
In the late 1990s, the museum became the passion of Mary Jo Marvin and Sally Waters Larsen who took courses in historical preservation and museum management. Among their major accomplishments was the purchase of Past Perfect software that remains today the gold standard of museum cataloguing software. Mary Jo along with Sally Roberts, owner of the Monadnock Inn and very active member of the community and the JCVIS, did the major job of entering data into this program, laboriously transferring it from the 1970s inventory of the contents of Melville and renumbering the items.
In 2015, Suze Campbell and Miki Osgood undertook the management of the museum. It entered a new stage of development, carefully built on the excellent and extensive work done by previous caretakers to whom they owe great amounts of gratitude. Using the new 5.0 version of the Past Perfect software and a newly acquired dedicated laptop, many more labels will be created in the near future. The electrical system has been upgraded to include more outlets for added lighting and technical advances. Much archiving, conservation and preservation remains to be done.
Newly installed exhibits are the “clothes closet and shelves” displaying the outstanding collection of Hannah Davis bandboxes and children’s linens; a wood stove from the Wesselhoeft Farm; the NW corner featuring five people very important to Jaffrey Center; and the SW wall display of the people most responsible for the preservation and maintenance of the VIS Meetinghouse and the Melville Academy Museum. Various items, including an antique map, have been restored. Another addition to the museum is the collection of clothing and memorabilia donated by Rachel Soney in 2016.
The clothing here might have been packed in one of the Hanna Davis bandboxes above.
Photograph by Ron Yantiss
All the work we have done has used appropriate archival, non-toxic materials.
Suze and Ken Campbell, with the help of Miki Osgood, Rick Stein, and the JCVIS Board, were been instrumental in making this latest transformation take place. Many thanks go also to Andy Webber and Dennis Wright, Ron Yantis of Inkberry, Sean Driscoll, and Randy Morse, long time participants in the life and times of the building and the museum’s collection.
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