Wednesday, 2 October 2019
6:30 PM

Peggy Tucker will share Yankee stories told in verse, reading from the works of Holman F. Day and, thanks to the archives of the Nottingham Historical Society, the circa-1900 poem “A Tale of Nottingham” by Mrs. Edward Sanborn Stevens. Accompanying Sanborn’s poem (which details the singular handling of a Tory guest by Agibgail Butler of the Butler Tavern, just prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War), Peggy will share some images of Nottingham gleaned from the Society’s archives.

Peggy Tucker grew up in Auburn, Maine, seventh of the ten children of Phyllis and Bill Schoppe. Both were active members of the Community Theatre Group in Auburn, and Bill employed all his skills as a thespian to vivify the stories he read to his children each night, be it Golden Book The Pokey Little Puppy, Kipling’s Just So Stories, or even the chilling tales and verses of Edgar Allan Poe. At family gatherings, it became a tradition for Bill to recite from the work of Holman F. Day, and it is in honor of her father that Peggy will read from works like Up in Maine, Kin O’ Ktaadn, and Pine Tree Ballads. Though Day’s stories depict Maine Folk of the nineteenth century, Peggy has always felt that they could quite as easily reflect the lives and ways of people right here in New Hampshire.