The Rochester Women’s Club has changed a lot since it was first established in 1928 – gone are the clambakes and bandage rolling, twice weekly card parties and dances in the basement.

Yet the community spirit that characterized the group in its early days has been a constant thread that continues to the present.

“The people who came before us tried so hard. We respect them and we want to follow through,” said President Marsha Hartley.

She and Nancy Boutin have volleyed between the vice president and president roles for at least a decade, working to build the membership, improve the clubhouse and reestablish the scholarship fund. All of this is in keeping with the mission to promote “civic, educational, intellectual and social interests” that began when the Women’s Club was established as an auxiliary of the Rochester Country Club, a male organization.

Katherine Hartley, often called Mrs. Greenwood Hartley in print, founded the group, along with about a dozen other women in town, and presided over the club for a decade.

Mrs. Hartley also happens to be Marsha Hartley’s grandmother.

“My grandmother was very sweet and a loving person,” she remembers. “She really loved Rochester. She was one of few women who was politically active.”

Led by Mrs. Hartley, the group had the goal of encouraging athletics in town. How long that focus lasted is unclear, but the group did take on a life of its own apart from the men. The ladies incorporated in 1932, and that same year purchased land from a Mrs. Arthur C. Kirby to build their own clubhouse, which the group still owns.

The land cost $450, and husbands of the club members did much of the work on the building, digging the cellar, shingling the exterior of the building and other projects to get it ready.

Once finished, it became a hub of community activity.

The first recorded dinner was a chowder supper that netted a whopping $8.30 profit. (Of course, things cost a lot less in those days. The club’s original bylaws state that the original initiation fee was $.50 for anyone under 18 years of age and $1 for those over. The yearly fees were also $.50.)

The clubhouse functions were popular. At least one chicken pie supper fed as many as 300 to 400 people, said Boutin.

One history of the Women’s Club says: “There [sic] treasury grew, through an art these women had, cooking and baking. An art that we have much lost in our modern times.”

The Girl Scouts and the Feather and Fin Club (now the Sippican Rod and Gun Club) met at the clubhouse, there were basketball games and dances in the basement, and Santa and the Easter Bunny also dropped in each year.

“I had my wedding reception down there,” Boutin said of the basement. “Everybody in town had their wedding reception down there.”

The ladies of the club, who sometimes numbered 70, were an active bunch.

They folded bandages and knitted for the armed services during World War II, and with the town, put up the honor roll to remember war veterans.

In the 1930s, the group held medical clinics so kids could be checked out before they started school. They also established the Raymond C. Hartley Scholarship, named for a young man from town who died in the war, something the Woman’s Club has brought back in recent years.

There were 13 consecutive antique shows on the grounds until 1977. They were “discontinued since yard sales were in vogue the public had lost interest in antique shows.”

The club established the weekly preschool hour in the 1970s that Plumb Library has carried on as story times, and Hartley says the women were the first to sell doughnuts and coffee at the Memorial Day Boat Race.

About 20 years ago, the group took a turn, dropping out of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, due to the fees involved, and with the goal of becoming a self-sustaining nonprofit.

The ladies achieved that goal in July 2014.

“Nancy and I had some goals when we started. That was one of them,” she said.

They also wanted to reshingle the roof and the exterior and reestablish the scholarship fund, all of which have been accomplished. It has helped to have the town use a portion of the building as the Town Annex.

The current group is far from 70 strong, but they are establishing their own traditions. Their monthly meetings feature a little business but mostly an opportunity to hang out with other ladies from the community (surrounding communities are also invited).

They also continue to reach out to the people of Rochester. Each year, the club sponsor's an Earth Day cleanup. They also sell homemade pies for Thanksgiving and decorated wreaths for Christmas with proceeds going to the scholarship fund.

The fund has grown in recent years, and the women hope to expand the scholarship in the spring.

By the time the 2016 scholarship recipients get their college diplomas, the Women’s Club will, hopefully, have passed another milestone – paying off the mortgage.

“We’re just ecstatic about that,” said Boutin.

She and Hartley are dedicated to the continuation of the group, and they hope more area women will become part of their somewhat irreverent, always entertaining meetings.

“It’s not for my personal gratification or anybody's, it’s for the women’s club,” said Hartley. Adding, “I don’t want to let my grandmother down.”