Founded in November 1925, the Peterborough Rotary Club has put “service over self” in the Monadnock region for 100 years.

“A lot of people might not be aware of all of the things we do, we kind of just do these things quietly and they just keep going, ” said past president and club historian Bob McDonald.

One long-standing Rotary project is the holiday decorations on the Peterborough Town House.

“We’ve been hanging the holiday decorations at the Peterborough Town House since the 1950’s,” MacDonald said. “We used to have a holiday tree in Putnam Park, but the town didn’t want to pay for the electricity, so Bob Duhaime used to run an extension cord out of his office into the park.”

Rotary’s mission goes far beyond holiday cheer. Local business and community leaders have been the driving force behind the Peterborough Rotary Club.

Because Rotary clubs have a new president each year, the club has a long list of former presidents, including familiar names from the history of Peterborough and surrounding towns. Past Presidents of Peterborough Rotary include Major Arthur Goyette, John Derby, Clarence Derby, Charles Jellison, Lincoln Lounsbury, George Cummings, John Bellows, Maurice Nichols, Dane Cummings, Richard Fernald, Daniel Eneguess, Donald Hopkins, Merton Dyer, and Forrest Tenney.

In its first year, under Goyette’s leadership, Peterborough Rotary “hosted a reception for the town’s schoolteachers,” sponsored the purchase of American flags to decorate downtown Peterborough on holidays, sponsored football games at Peterborough High School, and loaned the school money to purchase uniforms for the football team.

The club also sent a truckload of clothing to Vermont to help people who had lost their homes due to floods.

The second president, Karl Musser, carried the momentum of the new club forward, and that year, the club presented a scholarship to a local nursery school. In 1930, the club’s Boys Work Committee helped form the Peterborough Recreation Committee and gave funds for the construction of a toboggan chute at what is now the Monadnock Country Club.

In 1932, during the Great Depression, under President Forest Mercer, the club suspended dues to ease the burden on members, relying instead on lunch ticket sales. A historic account by Edward Larrabee states that “this was not very satisfactory, but it saw the club through that long period of economic depression.”

Annual dues of $15 were reinstated in 1934 under President Edward Moulton. George Cummings, who had served as Rotary district governor, became president in 1938 but died just three weeks after taking office.

During World War II, the club supported civilian defense and the Red Cross, and sent holiday boxes to local soldiers serving overseas.

The club celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1950 and its 50th in 1975, the latter marked by a special insert in the Peterborough Transcript. MacDonald, who has been a member of the club for 42 years, “just missed” the club’s 50th anniversary.

At its peak, the Peterborough Rotary Club had 90 members with meetings held at the Salzberg Inn, at the site of what is now Nubanusit Village and Farm.

“Then we got so big we couldn’t find a place to meet,” MacDonald recalled.

Growth led to the formation of a second club. In 1989, 15 Peterborough members established the Monadnock Rotary Club in Dublin.

“We gave $15,000 to help them get off the ground, which is typical when a large club seeds a new chapter, ” MacDonalds said. “That was in 1990, right after women were allowed to join.”

Nancy Gorr became the first female president of Peterborough Rotary in 1995-1996.

A decade later, Jaffrey and Rindge formed their own club. Membership in both Peterborough and Monadnock Rotary declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the groups merged in 2020 to form the Grand Monadnock Rotary Club.

“It was hard to give up the Peterborough name,” MacDonald said. “We were founded in Peterborough; we had served Peterborough, and the towns in the ConVal school district, for so long.”

The club chose to retain its original chapter number, #2186, when it changed names.

“So, we can say we are the same club that has served Peterborough and this region for 100 years. We’ve just waxed and waned a few times, and now we have a new name to reflect our whole history,” MacDonald said.

Grand Monadnock Rotary is one of 40,000 Rotary clubs worldwide. Rotary International was founded in 1905 by Chicago attorney Paul Harris. Harris and three business acquaintances rotated the meetings among their four offices, giving the organization its name.

In the historic account of the first 50 years of Peterborough Rotary, Larrabee notes that there was great excitement when Harris visited the Peterborough chapter in 1943.

“We will never forget this kindly old gentleman who created this thing called Rotary,” Larrabee wrote.

From the beginning, the mission of Rotary has been to try to make the world a better place, starting at the community level, and “service before self.”

According to MacDonald, Peterborough Rotary has always been focused on providing opportunities for children and youth.

From 1926 through the Second World War, Peterborough Rotary ran a program called “Boys Work.”

“‘Boys Work’ was about opening opportunities for youth and supporting education, but also about teaching them how to work with others, how to improve themselves — it was almost a cross between scouting and educational work,” MacDonald said.

In 1970, the club sponsored an Interact Club, the Rotary International program for high school students, at Peterborough High School. In its first year, the Interact Club had about 50 members.


Today, the club continues to award scholarships to high school seniors pursuing any form of post-secondary education.

“It’s not just for college, because college is not for everyone, and it’s not just for those kids who might be strong in academics. Our scholarship is focused on outstanding community service, not just for most academic kids, not necessarily for the kid who might be the valedictorian; it’s for those kids who are great citizens; it’s about community service,” MacDonald said. “That’s who we are.”

For information about the Grand Monadnock Rotary Club, visit grandmonadnockrotary.org.