Jarvis Family Continues to Have 'Lasting Impact' On Manchester Through Generous Trust

Many organizations with direct ties to town have benefited considerably by generous donations made on behalf of the Jarvis Trust, an ambitious charitable trust set up by Alexander and Alice Jarvis that has distributed more than $21 million in the past several years. 

According to John LaBelle Jr., a local attorney responsible for overseeing the distribution of the funds, the Jarvis Trust was established in 1974 when Alexander Jarvis died. LaBelle said Alexander Jarvis ran a construction company that operated out of Manchester, and that his wife Alice assumed control of the company until she died in 2002. 

"They were a major road building company," LaBelle said. "They built bridges and roads." 

The first distribution from the trust, according to LaBelle, totaled approximately $17 million in 2006, and the money went to "a number of organization," although LaBelle would not specify all of them. 

Among those organizations that received funds the first time around were the town of Manchester - with the money earmarked to purchase books for the Mary Cheney and Whiton Memorial Libraries - , , the Manchester Scholarship Foundation, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and the Manchester Area Conference of Churches. Each of those gifts, LaBelle said, totaled $750,000. 

A second round of distributions from the trust, totaling $4.7 million, was also recently completed. This time around, according to LaBelle, each of the organizations mentioned above received $333,333 from the trust. 

When asked, LaBelle said the trust has done "a lot, certainly" for the town. 

"The scholarship foundation was able to come up with a scholarship that was good for multiple years out of the prior Jarvis distribution, which is something they haven't done before," LaBelle said. 

Manchester Community College will use the most recent distribution from the trust , while the trust's gift in 2006 was the largest single gift ever received from an individual donor and helped fund renovation of MCC's Culinary Arts Center. 

While Peter J. Karl, president and CEO of Eastern Connecticut Health Network, said that the family's generous gifts have made "a lasting impact on the town of Manchester and the generations of families who proudly lived and worked in this community." 

"The Jarvis’ lifetime dedication to the people of Manchester continues today thanks to the wonderful generosity of the Jarvis estate," Karl said in an email. "Many local organizations like ours have been fortunate to receive contributions from the estate over the years. ECHN has invested their charitable giving in Manchester Memorial Hospital (MMH) for the reasons Alexander and Alice intended: to improve the health and well-being of area residents and their families." 

Karl said the Jarvis' gifts allowed Manchester Memorial Hospital to renovate many of its clinical nursing areas as well as make computer and software upgrades at its birthing center. 

LaBelle said there is "a very limited amount" remaining in the trust, and that most of it will be used to wind down the estate of Alexander and Alice Jarvis.

There might still be some "small gifts" to organizations in the future, LaBelle said, but none would approach the level of the two previous rounds of gifting. 

Still, many organizations in town have profoundly benefited from the Jarvis family's generosity, according to General Manager Scott Shanley. 

"I think the generosity of the family over the years has just been enormous," he said. 

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