The Good Old Days

Jaffrey Center was Jaffrey’s first community. Settlers here received their charter from the British Crown in 1773 and started to construct a Meetinghouse in 1775. The village thrived as the Third New Hampshire Turnpike brought commerce and more settlers.

But as industrialization grew during the nineteenth century, people and their business moved down the turnpike towards the waterpower of the Contoocook River and then the railroad. Although the original village with its view of Mount Monadnock had become a popular tourist destination, it was definitely sliding downhill by 1900.

Improving the Village

On August 27, 1906, nine women and a man met in a Jaffrey Center home to organize a Village Improvement Society, one of the scores of such societies formed by civic-minded volunteers at the turn of the 20th century to beautify and improve their towns. The VIS’s stated purpose was “to ornament the streets and public grounds of Jaffrey Center and vicinity…to promote a general interest in the improvement of private grounds and to engage in any activities which affect the village.” The group also stressed that both summer and year-round residents should be involved in its efforts.

The initial project that first day was to interview Doris Tenney, who lived on the diagonal “road to the meeting house,” to see if she would sell the large “flat iron lot” on Main Street west of Thorndike Pond Road. By October 27, President Silas Buck  had purchased the lot for $100 as trustee for the Society as “a park forever.” That deed enabled the VIS to replace  the wooden horse trough at the corner of Main Street and Thorndike Pond Road with a granite one, now used for colorful flowers.

These first actions – protecting open space and improving historic structures –have remained hallmarks of the VIS’s mission in the 20th and 21st centuries. Thanks to extraordinary volunteers and generous benefactors, the VIS has purchased land to preserve the common greens and mountain views, improved street signs, kept flags flying, planted trees and flowers, and enhanced a sense of community identity.

Source: Marshal the Willing Forces, A Centennial History of the Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society, by Robert B. Stephenson, 2006, pages 10, 21.