Our Town: Sugarhill is a Young Town with Yuletide Roots

In a state filled with beautiful places, Sugar Hill is one of the most stunning. Blessed with Norman Rockwell looks and sensibilities, this town tucked into the western White Mountains is a community where there always seems to be a parking spot with your name on it.   

Chris Cote, with his mom, Kathie, at Polly’s Pancake Parlor. Along with his sister, Emily, the younger Cote is transitioning to take the reins of the James Beard award-winning eatery from his mom and dad, Dennis. Photo by John Koziol

New Hampshire’s youngest community was incorporated in 1962 after seceding from the town of Lisbon over what has been called an instance of “taxation without representation.” For the peckish, there’s always something good to eat, either at Polly’s Pancake Parlor or Harman’s Cheese & Country Store, each of which has Aldrich family ancestry. 

Sugar Hill is also home to one of the most unique civic organizations anywhere. The Willing Workers Society, founded in 1920 but active well before then, is a “nonprofit nonsectarian organization whose purpose is to foster a spirit of helpfulness throughout the community.” 

For more than a century, the Willing Workers, whose members come from Sugar Hill and surrounding towns, have helped residents mark many of life’s joys as well as its tribulations.

“From the beginning, the Workers presented every new bride in the community a beautiful quilt,” according to a history of the group posted at thewillingworkers.org. “They knitted sweaters and made surgical dressings for the Red Cross. They catered dinners (including mercy meals.) They aided victims of fires. They visited the sick. They comforted the bereaved.” 

They also sponsored the Town Christmas Party. First held in 1892, the event ensures that every child in Sugar Hill younger than 12 receives a gift for the holiday. The gift, often clothing made by the Willing Workers, comes with an orange, an item that in the early days of the Town Christmas Party was rare and therefore very special.

The party is one of several annual events put on by the Willing Workers, which also financially supports many nonprofits in the Upper Valley region. Since 2020, the group has purchased surplus milk from Hatchland Farm in North Haverhill and donated it to local food pantries.

A view of St. Matthew’s Chapel can be seen off the road amongst the lupines. Sugar Hill is famous for its annual lupine festival. Photo by John Koziol

The Willing Workers is one of the things that makes Sugar Hill the place that it is, said Jody Flescher, a Franconia resident who is in her fourth year as the group’s president.

“We bake, craft and sew to make money, and give the money away,” Flescher said.

Willing Workers members who travel to Hatchland Dairy once a week are collectively known as “the moo crew,” she said, adding the group hopes the effort continues well into the future.

In a town with a population of around 600, everyone knows everyone else, and the Willing Workers reflects that fact. Its membership has at one time included both branches of the Aldrich family.

Harman’s was begun by the late John and Kate Harman. Before being succeeded by their daughter, Brenda, it was owned and operated by Bert and Maxine Aldrich. Bert’s ancestors settled in Sugar Hill in 1780, and his wife was a longtime Willing Workers officer.

Since 1987, the Willing Workers has bestowed the Maxine Aldrich Merit Award to Sugar Hill students “who demonstrate energy, engagement and commitment to furthering their education.”

The Willing Workers, on behalf of the former Lafayette Lions Club, also administers the Roger Aldrich Valedictorian Award to valedictorians of Profile High School. The award is named in memory of Roger Aldrich, a principal founder of Sugar Hill. With his wife, Nancy, the former selectman and town moderator opened Polly’s Pancake Parlor in 1949, the year the couple married.

Today, Polly’s is run by the couple’s daughter Kathie, and her husband, Dennis Cote. 

In turn, the Cotes are preparing their children, Emily and Chris, to follow in their footsteps. In 2006, Polly’s received a James Beard Award for “American Classics.”

Both Harman’s and Polly’s serve an eclectic and international clientele with Chris Cote noting that visitors to the annual Laconia Motorcycle Week are regular Polly’s customers who both eat and tip well. 

Flescher added that visitors to Sugar Hill also share other traits, honesty foremost among them.

Until six years ago, Harman’s — apart from the quality of its aged cheddar cheese — was known for its quaint billing practice: You had to pay cash for all purchases; no debit or credit cards were accepted. If you didn’t have greenbacks, Harman’s would send you a bill.

“Cheese-eaters are honest,” Brenda Aldrich said. “We never got stiffed,” she added, at least not deliberately. There were however, customer checks that failed to clear.

Customers would often carry an “emergency check,” but those checks were so old, their issuing banks had gone out of business, or consolidated and had new names, which rendered the checks uncashable and forced a lot of calls for clarity by Harman’s, Aldrich explained.

A couple years ago, during one of its biggest fundraisers, the Willing Workers’ credit/debit card-reading device failed, Flescher said.

“We have a Square and use it for our fairs and markets. We lost our connectivity, and we had to write down what people bought. They came back the next day with cash,” she said.

Town clerk/tax collector Lissa Boissonneault said one of Sugar Hill’s biggest attributes is its strong sense of community spirit. She has served the town for more than 30 years and lives close enough to Town Hall that when she needs to work a bit on her days off, she can walk to her office wearing pajamas.

It’s nice to be so casual, Boissonneault said, but nicer still are “the people I work with and the people who come into my office.”

Katharine “Kitty” Bigelow, the executive director of the Sugar Hill Historical Museum, said Sugar Hill and Lisbon are both doing well since their split 63 years ago. She said the breakup was punctuated by the 1948 fire that destroyed the Sugar Hill Elementary School and by the town of Lisbon’s perceived slow response to that emergency.

Sugar Hill, she noted, had traditionally been tourism-based, with several large hotels, whereas Lisbon was more manufacturing- oriented. Sugar Hill was so well-known as a place of respite that the actress Bette Davis called it home for more than a decade and even owned property there, Bigelow said.

In 1955, John and Kate Harman started Harman’s Cheese and Country Store. It has long been known for old-fashioned quality, reasonable prices and personal service. Photo by John Koziol

In addition to Davis, Sugar Hill is famous for its annual lupine festival. For 2026, the showy display of lupines will continue, but there may be fewer of them. In response to repeated trespassing, some property owners have plowed the lupines under, Selectman Dick Bielefield said.

Bielefield, who turned 97 in June and is among the oldest elected municipal officials in New Hampshire, said Sugar Hill was named after a cluster of sugar maple trees, some of which still remain, and that the town supports the Willing Workers’ continued use of the Sugar Hill Meeting House for the Town Christmas Party.

As a selectman for some three decades, “It’s always challenging out there” for a municipal board in a small town, but the Sugar Hill selectmen have worked through the challenges.

“Yeah, it works,” he said, echoing Bigelow’s “If it ain’t broken …”  philosophy. “I think most of the people like it the way it is.”

Sugar Hill, he summed up, “is exactly where I want to be.”

Like Bielefield (Massachusetts) and Flescher (Long Island, New York), Margo Connors is originally from “away,” in her case, from the environs of Philadelphia. She agreed that Sugar Hill is special.

A selectman from 2008-2025, Connors also served on the Sugar Hill Conservation Commission and Planning Board and was the town’s health officer. Connors was held in such high esteem by her townsfolk that the 2024 Sugar Hill Town Report was dedicated to her.

In an e-mail, Connors described Sugar Hill as “an amazing little town, nestled in the White Mountains, defined by its people and scenic views and rolling landscapes.”

She said the townspeople “are welcoming and caring. They value community and know the importance of looking out for one another.”