Grace Carol Jager

Grace Jager (1936-2025)

Grace Jager of Washington, NH, died peacefully in her sleep early on the morning of December 31, 2025. For the past three years she had been living at Havenwood in Concord, NH. She was 89 years old.

Grace Carol Otten was born on July 4, 1936, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the youngest of three children. Her family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she attended high school. She matriculated at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, graduating in 1957. In June of that same year she married Ronald Jager, and the two of them moved to Bloomington, Indiana, and then to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ron pursued graduate degrees in philosophy and Grace worked as an editor for Indiana University Press and the Harvard Library Bulletin. When Ron took up a faculty position at Yale University, Grace worked first for Yale University Press and then as a history teacher at Day Prospect Hill School.

Visiting friends in Hillsboro, the Jagers fell in love with rural New Hampshire, and in 1966 they purchased an abandoned Cape Cod style house and 120 acres on Half Moon Pond Road in Washington, NH. Devotedly restored over many years, that house became their full time home by the mid-1970s. Grace taught elementary school, first in Hopkinton and then fourth grade in Hillsboro from 1982 until she retired in 2001. Grace served the town of Washington as member of the Board of Assessors and as a founding member and chairperson of the Archives Committee (until 2020), as chairperson of the Washington Monadnock Music Concerts for 30 years, and as choir director and organist at the Washington Congregational Church until 2020. Grace also served on the Duncan-Jenkins Trust for nearly 20 years, in which capacity she helped to award hundreds of grants to students and teachers of Hillsboro and Washington.

Together with Ron, Grace co-authored four books: Historical Pillsbury (1976); Portrait of a Hill Town (1977); New Hampshire: An Illustrated History of the Granite State (1983; re-issued 2000); and A Cloud Witnesses (2005). Together with the printed words she helped to research and craft, and the generations of students whom she taught, Grace will be remembered for her love of travel and of music, her infectious laughter and bright smile, and her blueberry pies.

Grace is survived by Ronald, her husband of 68 years, her son Colin and daughter-in-law Wendy, of Highland Park, NJ, and grandchildren Olivia (24) and Eliot (20).

A memorial service and celebration of Grace’s life will be held in Washington in the summer of 2026. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Washington Congregational Church, 1 Half Moon Pond Road, Washington, NH. https://washingtoncongregationalchurch.com/contact/