SPRINGVALE — Local genealogist Fred Boyle has gotten to know the Nutters quite well these last 30-plus years.

Back in 1981, a gentleman from North Carolina named Charles Nutter contacted Boyle and asked him to research the history of his family in the United States. Boyle jumped right into Nutter's family tree and continued his charge after Nutter passed away. Nutter's daughter, Janet Alpert, of South Carolina, commissioned Boyle to finish the job.

Little did Boyle know, the assignment would take him 30 years to complete. Boyle, now 81, completed his first volume of the Nutters' genealogy in 1997. Now, 15 years later, he has finished the second and final one. Boyle signed a copy of the book, "Hatevil Nutter of Dover, New Hampshire, and His Descendants, Part II," on a recent morning at Springvale Public Library.

So you can see how Boyle might know more about the Nutters than they know themselves.

"In fact, in this book, Janet makes me an honorary member of the family," Boyle smiled and said.

Incidentally, these Nutters are not the ones well known in Sanford during the 20th Century, namely John Nutter, the overseer of the Goodall woolen mill. The first volume starts with Hatevil Nutter — more on him in just a moment — and follows the male lines of the family up through 1997. The second volume picks up from there and brings the account right up through to 2009.

"This includes some very young people that have the Nutter name," Boyle said of the second book.

Boyle came across some interesting people in the family's ancestry. The British took one of them, Thomas Nutter, an ordinary farmer from Penobscot with three sons, and kept him prisoner on a ship during the American Revolution. According to Boyle, people went to the General Court in Boston and pleaded for funds for Nutter's ransom.

"It's a remarkable story about how people in Maine suffered during the American Revolution," Boyle said.

The family's American story all begins with Hatevil Nutter. Hatevil, which Boyle pronounces as "hate-evil," was born in England around 1603 and died in Dover, New Hampshire, during the early summer of 1675.

Boyle places Hatevil in Dover as early as 1635 and definitely by 1637, which is when he purchased land from Captain Thomas Wiggin. The land was, to quote in Old English, "rebounded in 1640" and "butting on ye Fore River, east, and on ye west by High Street on ye north by ye lott of Samewell Haynes and on ye south by Lott of William Story."

According to Scales's "Colonial Era History of Dover, NH, 1923," which Boyle quotes in his first Nutter volume, "His house stood on the east side of High street about 15 or 20 rods from the corner of the meeting house lot. An old pear tree stands in the hollow, which was part of the cellar. He received various grants of land from the town and had part ownership of a saw mill at Lamprey River."

Hatevil worked in the lumber and ship-building trades, according to Scales. He also was one of the elders of the First Church, which he helped organized in 1638.

Boyle charts Hatevil's progress in Dover, noting that the first Nutter prospered as the owner of a sawmill and shipyard and soon began taking on civil duties as well. According to Boyle, Hatevil served as a deputy to the General Assembly at Portsmouth in 1650; as a Dover selectman in 1655; as Dover's town moderator in 1659; and as a Justice of the Peace from 1661 to 1662.

Nutter is remembered most as a zealous and generous supporter of his church, Boyle writes in his first volume.

"He would have been a puritan, as such," Boyle said during an interview with the Sanford News, which took place in the genealogy department of Springvale Public Library. "He would have had rigid views. He detested Quakers and felt they had no place in society."

Sure enough, in his first volume, Boyle recounts how Hatevil "vigorously opposed" three Quaker missionaries by the names of Anna Coleman, Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose who went to Dover in 1662. Hatevil's opposition reportedly proved so strong it prompted John Greenleaf Whittier, the 19th Century Quaker poet, to later pen the poem, "How They Drove the Quaker Women From Dover."

Boyle said he is impressed with the family's growth over the last three-plus centuries, as both Nutter volumes are filled with stories that exemplify the American experience.

Boyle has six copies of his newly published Nutter volume that he is distributing to genealogical libraries in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Springvale Public Library has a copy.

His two books are available through purchase by contacting Janet Nutter Alpert at either 137 Victoria Drive, Hilton Head, South Carolina 29926 or janalpert@aol.com.

Thirty years is a long time to work on two books, but for Boyle the Nutter assignment goes straight to the heart of what he cherishes about his field. Boyle has written at least seven other books and is now turning his attention to completing one on the history of the early farms of Waterboro. He said he loves seeking answers to questions surrounding people, such as where they were born, who their parents were, and what happened to them in the course of their lives.

"I like the historical nature of studying a period of time," he said "I like the mythological nature of genealogy. It brings out the detective in me because I'm constantly trying to solve a mystery."