SeacoastNH.com Presents  
Historic Portsmouth #380

A recent “History Matters” featured George Jaffrey IV and his wife Clementina who arrived in Portsmouth in the early 1800s. If you recall, George was actually a Jeffries, not a Jaffrey, by birth. But in order to claim a huge inheritance of property and money, he had to change his last name. (Continued below)

The couple inherited the mansion that stood where the post office is today on Daniel Street, but sold it as their fortune dissipated. George was a founder of the Portsmouth Athenaeum where their portraits now hang. Clementina, the last Jaffrey, left town after the Civil War and the mansion in Portsmouth was torn down in 1920. But the earlier Jaffrey “cottage” in New Castle survived – at least until the fire seen here in the 1960s. Historian John Albee bought the cottage in 1865 and promoted it as the oldest house in New Hampshire. It wasn’t, and the original house was heavily adapted in the Colonial Revival era to copy other early homes. But with this fire the last vestige of a once-proud Portsmouth Jaffrey family went up in smoke. (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum)

READ ABOUT  George Jaffrey & family