Margaret C. Bean

Jaffrey - Margaret C. Bean, 93, of Match Point Road, died peacefully in her sleep early Saturday morning, March 28, 2009, in her home of seventy years.

Born November 28, 1915 in Brooklyn, NY, Margaret Laws Crane was the daughter of the late Rev. Arthur Ernest Crane and Sarah Rebecca (Goodale) Crane. She was the seventh of nine children born into the family. She attended public schools in Brooklyn and earned a degree from the Pace Institute in New York City. After graduation, Margaret worked as secretary to the president of an investment firm on Wall Street where she met a young businessman from New Hampshire looking for venture capital to start a match company. The young businessman did not get his capital on that trip but he did bring Margaret home to Jaffrey as his wife. Margaret and Delcie D. (Jack) Bean Jr. were married 49 years until Jack\'s death in 1987.

Margaret dedicated a lifetime of service to educational, religious, and civic organizations. A partial list of her accomplishments in the line of community service include: President of the Jaffrey Parent Teacher Association, President of the Jaffrey Woman\'s Club, Local Chairman of the League of Women Voters, President of the Guild of the United Church of Jaffrey, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cathedral of the Pines, New Hampshire State Chairman of U.N.I.C.E.F., President of the Board of Trustees for the Monadnock Community Day Care Center, member of the Board of Directors of the New Hampshire Charitable Fund and a Trustee of Franklin Pierce College.

She received many honors including the Cathedral of the Pines Distinguished Service Award, the Keene State College Granite State Award in recognition of Outstanding Community Service, Rotary Clubs Paul Harris Fellow Award, and an Honorary Degree from Franklin Pierce College.

Margaret loved knowledge and was an avid reader, writer, puzzle solver and fact reciter. She wrote a weekly column in the Monadnock Ledger throughout the 1980s entitled Keeping in Touch, she was the long-standing editor of the Pathfinder newsletter for the United Church of Jaffrey, and she authored booklets for the Jaffrey Historical Society on the lives of Willa Cather and sculptor, Viggo Brandt-Erichsen. She had studied the lives of the wives of the Presidents of the United States and had organized a talk on the subject she would present to local groups.

Her most serious project satisfied her love for solving mysteries and utilized her training in shorthand as a Wall Street secretary. Having long been intrigued by Jaffrey\'s infamous Dean murder mystery, Margaret learned that the stenographers notes of the Grand Jury Hearing that took place in 1919 had never been transcribed. Having studied the same type of shorthand as was used by the court stenographer she decided to take on this project. Over six years of work later, the result was a book which she published entitled \"Hearing by the Grand Jury in the Death of William K. Dean\". The book is a priceless treasure for the preservation of Jaffrey\'s history as it captures the testimony from the people involved in this case in their actual words. She subsequently edited another book about the Dean murder, Prominent Citizen: Prime Suspect by Georgiana Hodgkins.

Margaret is survived by her six children: Margaret Alice Brown and her husband David of Taos, New Mexico and Peterborough, New Hampshire, Delcie D. Bean and his wife Marney of Dublin, New Hampshire, Ellen R. Bean of Markham, Ontario, Canada, Elizabeth (Betsy) C. Bean of Baltimore, Maryland, Christopher V. Bean and his wife Claire of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and Mark C. Bean and his wife Linda of Amherst, Massachusetts; fifteen grandchildren; eleven great-grandchildren; her loving sister, Christine Welton of Stamford, Connecticut and many nieces and nephews spanning multi-generations on both the Crane and Bean sides of her family.

The family as asked that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made in Margarets memory to the Monadnock Community Early Education Center, PO Box 262, Peterborough, NH 03458, or to the United Church of Jaffrey, 54 Main Street, Jaffrey, NH 03452.

A private burial will be held later in the Spring.

There are no calling hours.

Services will be held Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. at the United Church of Jaffrey followed by a reception at the Church Parish Hall.