Jonas Melville Raised Funds for Melville Academy and Two Jaffrey Churches

Jonas Melville

JONAS MELVILLE (1791-1869) ~ Jonas Minot Melville was a merchant, investor, banker, and principal founder and funder of Melville Academy. The Academy, built in 1833, was the first secondary school in Jaffrey. It enrolled 87 girls and 87 boys in 1835 from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. He also raised the money in 1831 to build The First Church in Jaffrey’s red brick building and, two decades later, he raised money for the East Jaffrey Congregational Meetinghouse on land adjacent to the Stone House he built in 1829 on Main Street.

Melville served as Town Treasurer and Justice of the Peace, and was a director and president of the bank in New Ipswich and a Winchester bank. In 1851, he joined Peter Upton, John Conant, and others in organizing the first Monadnock Bank in Jaffrey.

He invested heavily in railroads, and the Panic of 1857 ruined him. He assigned all of his property to be sold for the benefit of his creditors. Penniless, he and his wife Betsey moved to Pepperell, MA. There, they lived with his wife Betsey’s niece and her husband, the Rev. John Jewett, the former pastor of the East Jaffrey Congregational Church. Melville died in 1869 and is buried with his wife in the Jewett family plot there.

Jonas Melville, from the Melville Academy Museum exhibit.