Funding for the production of Our Hometown Nottingham was provided by the New Hampshire Lottery.

Eversource, with additional production support by: and by viewers like you.

Recently I was asked why it's important to tell the stories of each New Hampshire town.

The short answer is everyone is unique.

Every town, every person, every story.

Think of a quintessential New Hampshire village.

It could include a picturesque Main Street with a church or town hall on a beautiful green square, a quaint library flanked by historic homes with picket fences.

This town has all those things.

It just distributes them a little differently.

The truth is, a town is the collective story of its people.

What they do, what they know, what they hold dear, and how they are with each other.

Hello, I'm Rebecca Rule.

Welcome to Our Hometown.

We're in Nottingham, a town of about 5000 and growing.

It stretches from busy Route 4 and North River Lake in the north to Pawtuckaway State Park and Lake in the south and in between ponds and streams, working farms, country roads, rolling hills and family homes.

Some 200 years old and some brand new.

What is a main street, anyway?

It's a place to gather.

Maybe with a convenience store and gas station.

A pizza joint might be nice.

Add in a garage and a pretty darn good five star Yelp reviewed restaurant with outdoor seating.

Sounds good to me.

But what if this entire Main Street had just one address?

There was a hunting camp on the corner, I believe, of Deerfield and Stevens Hill Road, and they had a hand-carved sign, wooden sign, that said Liar'’’s Paradise in it.

And on Halloween night, one night, a bunch of teenagers went and took it.

And nailed it above the door of the original store.

And the owner of the store, his name was Levitt.

He knew where it came from because he probably knew everybody then.

So he called the guy up and they said, just leave it there, you know, for a laugh.

And eventually the next person legally called it Liar's Paradise.

I believe Levitt was there for about 30 years and it was called Levitt's Country Store.

When my wife and I were not working together, that was the toughest time of our marriage.

So we looked for something.

We just happened to call the owners of Liar'’’s Paradise and say, Hey, are you interested in selling?

So we worked with the people that owned it at the time and and made it happen.

And we put the kitchen in and the rest is history.

This is a true family atmosphere.

It's the first job for a lot of people.

Kids can't find their way.

You know, we give them a chance.

And most of the time they work out.

Sometimes they don't.

This is their family.

We can talk.

We can do whatever.

We can support them.

And they they do good and they get rewarded.

Most of our employees, all but two of them were not born when we bought the store.

They were also young kids, so we've gotten a chance to see them grow up.

One of the greatest kids we had working for us was my youngest son's good friend.

The end of a soccer game, I said.

Isn'’’t your birthday coming up.

He said Yeah, why?

I said.

It's time for you to come to work.

And he just gleamed.

And he was one of the best employees we ever had.

He was really sweet kid.

Got to know everybody, just really enjoyed it and it fit.

You know, that type of work doesn't fit for everybody.

You know, people try it.

I say when we hire them, you're on thirty day of probation, but so are we.

If you don't like it, you know, no strings attached, no hard feelings.

Be honest.

The average person stays with us for close to five years if it's their first job in the five years they're moving on with their life.

It's been wonderful.

It's not everybody's career.

It's part time gig.

But, you know, we have room for somebody that wants to make it a career.

We'd have the first grade class come to our store and they'd be like 12 or 15 of them would put them in a circle around a big table, and I'd teach them all how to make pizza, and they would all make their own pizza and they would get to take it home.

And that's where we met some of the kids that end up working for us years down the road.

And it was just a lot of fun that the parents that came loved it.

The kids absolutely loved it.

They had a lot of fun.

It was one of those fun field trips.

New Hampshire has a lot of trees, a lot of stone walls and a lot of writers, including me.

Nottingham is no exception.

I am a local author that writes books about anti-bullying and just children's books in general.

And I have a website that has educational links about issues just to help kids and adults with bullying and all sorts of different issues as well.

I think it was 2016.

Yeah, 2016, which would be when I was in third grade.

That's when I wrote my first picture book.

It was called The Bullying Book, which was very fitting for my topic.

But it's about this little girl named Imelda, and she was bullied by these few kids.

And then she told her teacher about it, and then it was solved.

So that was kind of like a simple version of it.

My guidance counselor, Mrs. Wheeler, she actually put a digital copy of the book on the Nottingham School website.

That was so cool.

That was such a cool feeling.

So my dad was like, How would we try to publish it on iTunes?

It was a very vigorous process at first, but we eventually posted to iTunes and that's what got me so inspired to write because other people can view what I'm writing and I could have an impact on people's lives.

I really want to help kids know what to do in those situations, but also teach them about it in a fun way, with fun characters, so they would be like invested but still have the knowledge to use throughout their life.

One time in 2018, we raised $1,000 for charity and put the books in schools around New Hampshire.

I'm just really inspired by all the emails I get.

Parents mostly like, say, this book has really helped my kid because they've gone through something like this and they know that they're not the only one.

We would publish it on Amazon, iTunes and have it like printable.

So that was a great moment to have my second book, Sassy Tomatoes, which is my most popular one in my hands.

That was like the coolest thing to me because I've always liked doing art and stuff and it's just so cool to have my printed work.

My website is Claire Burbank dot com and when you first go to the home page, it has pictures of me when I was younger at the ages, like when I wrote the books, all of my books in my Claire Burbank series.

That's what my dad calls it.

And I also have a link section of helpful links and resources for people who need help in any way.

Full disclosure, I've lived in Northwood just a couple of miles from the Nottingham line for 45 years.

Northwood is in fact the Northwoods of Nottingham.

They were once a single town.

Yet it was news to me that not one, not two, but four Revolutionary War generals hailed from Nottingham and they all lived within sight of each other on this town square.

General Joseph Cilley General Henry Dearborn.

General Thomas Bartlett and General Henry Butler.

Three out of the four gentlemen were actually born in Nottingham.

Henry Dearborn was not.

He was actually born in North Hampton.

And after he did his medical practice in Portsmouth, opened the practice in Nottingham, started in 1772 and all men grew up in Nottingham and they all were prominent men, young men at the time.

Most towns like Nottingham had a committee of safety which had Minutemen and town militia.

And Henry Dearborn was the captain of the Nottingham militia at the time.

But then after the United States and Britain formally recognized each other, the Treaty of Paris Cilley became general of the New Hampshire militia, became a major general in 1786, and then Thomas Bartlett became major general of the New Hampshire militia after Cilley retired and became a prominent member of the New Hampshire legislature.

And right after Thomas Bartlett left, then Henry Butler became general of the New Hampshire militia.

The statue actually was erected back in 1917 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Elsa Cilley chapter, which is a direct descendant of Joseph Cilley.

And I realize that the names on the bottom of the statue coincide with the houses that they lived in.

Joseph Cilley is the front one and the house is over where the Fernalds lived now, which are a direct descendant of General Cilley.

Now, on this side of the statue, Butler, which Butler's house is right over here now, Henry Dearborn is, you know, his name is facing outward.

And his house was over there.

And then Thomas Bartlett, his house was across the street from from Joseph Cilley.

So literally, they were all neighbors.

So there's a rich history from 1722 through the Civil War, through World War One, when this great statue was built till 2022.

And then in the future, this history lives on.

You learned all about it and is in third grade that you studied Nottingham history.

Yes, that was a very fun project.

I think it's pretty cool that we have four generals that came from Nottingham There is General Cilley, General Bartlett, General Dearborn and General Butler.

The four generals names are carved into the big statue.

And it's pretty cool because we're a very small town and that we had four generals and they led like a hundred people to Boston.

The generals were on the horses and then the hundred men were behind them marching, all the way there, all the way to Boston from the town square.

It kind of makes me feel proud that our town sent some people into the Revolutionary War and we might actually know some people who are descendants from those four generals, that live here today.

So some of the families are still here?

Yes, still in town.

Water is a precious commodity.

When a large corporation scored a permit to draw 300,000 gallons of groundwater per day, then bottle it and ship it overseas.

Locals objected.

Led by Gail and Chris Mills, they organized and fought for more than a decade to preserve this precious natural resource.

They fought at the state and federal levels.

They fought in the courts.

But in the end, the solution turned out to be local and democratic.

In 2008, Nottingham voters adopted an ordinance making it illegal to extract water from Nottingham and sell it outside of town.

A model for other towns in New Hampshire and across the country.

There's a name for people who do that sort of thing.

This would be a real detriment to the entire community.

That is that is relying upon that aquifer to supply their daily water.

I asked several people in town if they would, you know, want to take over this project and do what they could.

And nobody seemed interested in doing it.

And I wasn't sure that I had the ability to do it either.

But I said, to heck with it.

If nobody else was going to do it, I'll do it myself.

We formed the Nottingham Water Alliance and started putting together an ordinance which we would need to pass at town meeting and we got in touch with a professor at UNH, Thomas Ballestero, Yeah.

So we got a report from him that detailed the problems that we were going to have with wetlands, with streams.

The flora and fauna that rely upon wetlands for survival, and then set about educating the town population.

Because you're not going to get an ordinance passed unless there'’’s enough people that know what it's all about.

And we got it passed.

That was in March, I guess, of 2008.

In July of that same year, they filed for bankruptcy.

And there's a reorganization mode for people going into bankruptcy whereby if they can get enough information to be able to continue their operations, that'’’s fine.

That would primarily involved them, getting people to invest money in it.

And as soon as we got the name and address of who it was that was a prospective funder, I would come home and write a letter and enclose the copy of the ordinance and a copy of Dr Ballestero'’’s report.

The attorneys got up at a bankruptcy hearing and requested that the name of any future investors be redacted from the record, so that, and they turned around and pointed directly at us and said, because of those despicable people, the name stuck.

So as in many small towns, the library is itself a center.

People will tell you without any prompting that the Blaisdell Library, though small, has a big impact.

It is a gem.

If you think of a library as just four walls, a few comfy chairs and books on shelves, you've got it all wrong.

The children's library here in town.

And a farmer, a wife, a mother and a grandmother.

So we do a lot of storytimes.

We're starting to offer one every day of the week rather than just a couple of days a week.

When I get a new group, They'’’re usually pretty little.

Maybe not used to sitting so much.

So we start with a couple of simple books, and then by spring we'’’re reading four long books.

We'’’re starting this fall with a STEAM program with school age kids and Lego Club.

That's fun.

That's a fun program.

I come up with a weird theme every week.

Like one time I said a tornado came and picked up all the sea creatures and dropped them in Pawtuckaway Lake.

And then the kids had to build a bridge to get over the sharks and all that.

So it was so fun being our 300th to I did that theme quite a bit with the kids.

They did buildings in town.

Had great success with that.

I go to the school, the elementary school and did a craft program every week.

There was a huge call for it.

We had ten spots and 52 kids signed up.

So that was that was a lot.

It was fun.

It was fun.

But this year, the buses are going to deliver the kids to us.

So we'll be able to offer the Steam Club and the Lego Club with the bus delivering the kids to us.

So that would be a lot easier for parents.

So we do birth to three years.

Robin Proulx does the baby storytime on Wednesdays and then they move up to my story hours with preschool.

The preschools here are all filled up and there's waiting lists for all of them.

There's a ton of new families in school that have no daycare and no preschool.

So we're offering more storytimes so that the kids can be immersed in books.

And we do a lot of math activities sequencing.

The kids don't know they're doing that.

It's just silly little things.

They don't know they're learning.

So we do it through play.

Mr. Bunker and I both do outreach.

So he does the older kids.

So he did the summer program and took it to the rec kids.

And they also came here.

They would walk here and I'd go to All Aboard daycare and Nature'’’s Place daycare and bring story hour to them.

Between offering it, Story Hour four plus five days now this coming year and visiting, we're reaching pretty much all the preschoolers in town.

Just developing a love of reading.

That's huge.

You want it?

You want to start them young and keep them reading.

I love it.

I love it.

It's all I want to do.

If I'm off for three days, I can't wait to come back to work.

It's hard to ask for help, but it's a little easier to accept help from people who know what it is to need it.

People with heart and compassion.

At the Nottingham Food Pantry, the line between community and family blurs a bit.

The founder, Mary, she wanted to start it and have it be a community.

She plugged into everybody fire department, police department, the Board of Selectmen Library.

Everybody in town school.

She wanted the whole community to come together and be a part of this.

The original group of people decided it wasn't going to be about income, it was going to be about a need.

And so they never asked for income, just that you live in Nottingham to be able to be served.

Right now we are serving probably 20 families.

We have gotten as high as 40.

Sometimes you might have, you know, come in to bad health and have to pay the costs of health bills and don't have enough to feed your family.

Some of it comes down to pride in families.

They just don't want to ask for the help even though it's needed.

So it's hard because there's only so much that you can do.

I try to make things as comfortable as possible for people.

I've invited people into my home and just chit chatted with them and you know, or, you know, meet them down here at different times just to get them comfortable with coming and then coming when other people are here too.

And on our distribution night.

Numbers, we have numbers on the bags so it doesn't have the people's names on there.

So if somebody does pop in, nobody's going to know who's, you know, using the food pantry.

Our town is definitely a blessed town as far as people donating monetary or they come up with other different ideas of things to be able to do.

You know, if we go to different stores and purchase things, they ask, Where do you live?

You know, what food pantry is this?

And we tell them.

And then I proudly tell them how incredibly blessed we are with our town and the people that just come together.

And each year at the end of the year and December, I'll say, okay, am I going to do this another year?

And for me, it's all God he provides and he provides me to be able to, to keep doing it.

And I just keep saying, you know, you'll show me when I can find another person who can take over.

But, you know, there was a woman in Northwood, and I always looked at this woman in Northwood that ran the food pantry there, and she was in her eighties.

And I said, okay, if that's what you want me to do until I'm 80, then I'll do it.

Are there tides on a lake?

You wouldn't think so, but I have it on good authority that once a year the tide goes out and you'd better steer clear of the dam when that happens.

Well, I would come from home, from work or teaching.

I would kayak out on the lake and I would go near the Dolloff Dam, and I would always just check the height of it and see what's going on.

So I go home one night after, particularly in October, and I had a great day of teaching.

I was kayaking out and near the dam and suddenly the dam was open.

Wait a minute.

And, it swept me and my kayak over the dam about a 30 foot drop.

It was a lot of water, fortunately.

And so I didn't get hurt and the kayak slid.

I was trying to brace myself as I was about to go over and holding my paddle against the dam and the kayak slid out from under me.

I then tumbled down.

The kayak, fortunately got caught down below and I didn't lose it.

I thought it was going to go to the Atlantic Ocean or England.

I scrambled up and my pride was wounded.

I explained to Peggy, who kind of almost laughed and said, and she explained to me that every fall the dam people open the dam, open the things, and they lower the lake.

I did not know that.

That's why I went over it.

I later on went back and I said, Well, what happened to the paddle?

And I walked the length of Pawtuckaway River.

And I found, right on the dam where I was holding it against the paddle.

So Peggy got a roof rake, and we retrieved the paddle.

So that's my part of Pawtuckaway story.

I have one more part of it I'd like to add.

I am part of something called the Pawtuckaway Lake Improvement Association called the PLIA, And this is a wonderful organization whose major goal is to protect, honor and make sure the lake is great.

We do it with lake hosts, weed watches.

We measure the quality of the lake.

We do annual pickups of the lake.

We also do road pickups and we remove exotic or invasive weeds from the lake.

So this is kind of a shout out to the fact that Nottingham and New Hampshire is known for community participation and this organization the PLIA is a group of people that banded together to make the lake better.

And they do.

So that's how I relate to the lake.

I go over the dam and I help protect it.

We collected other stories, too, too many to fit in this short program.

They'll be showing up on our website soon at nhpbs.org/hometown.

In Nottingham, people are rightly proud of their history, their stewardship, their library.

They're proud too of what Chelli talked about.

When help is needed, the people of Nottingham do not hesitate to step up.

I'm Rebecca Rule.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you around town.

It's amazing how the town has kept its character.

There's a lot of talent in this little town.

There really is.

You know, people care about the community.

A lot of people do a lot.

I mean, it doesn't get any better than this.

We got the Pawtuckaway Mountains, Pawtuckaway Lake.

The people are involved.

It's a great community that way.

Funding for the production of Our Hometown Nottingham was provided by the New Hampshire Lottery.

Eversource, with additional production support by the Nottingham and by viewers like you.

Thank you.