A former New Hampshire House speaker and retired lobbyist took in more than a quarter-million dollars in charitable gaming proceeds over the past seven years for an inactive nonprofit, a month-long Monitor investigation found.
In January, George B. Roberts Jr. accepted a nearly $131,000 check from one of the state’s largest casinos, the Nash, addressed to the Concord Coach Society. The sum made his organization one of the highest-grossing beneficiaries of charitable gaming last year, taking in more than $166,000 in 2025. It has received $274,411 from the system since 2019.
Despite its earnings, the Monitor found no evidence that the organization has engaged in any public activity, such as holding an event or a meeting. It has no website or social media footprint. Ten people involved in local and national stagecoach preservation said in interviews that they had no knowledge of any activity by Roberts or his group in more than a decade.
By contrast, the Concord-based Abbot-Downing Historical Society is far more visible. It made two public appearances last week alone: the first was at Concord’s National Night Out and the second at a church service in Rye.
It’s unclear how the 87-year-old Roberts has spent his gaming proceeds, and he isn’t saying. The nonprofit is registered to his home address in Gilmanton, where no visible sign or marker indicates the existence of the organization. His 6,000-square-foot, 1793 farmhouse is set back on 39 acres in a town historic district.
Some Abbot-Downing members told the Monitor they worry that Roberts has been cashing in on the well-documented work and reputation of their group.
“I think they believe that money is going to us,” Tom Prescott, the organization’s co-president, said about state regulators and the casinos.
Casinos in New Hampshire are legally required to set aside a portion of their revenue for charities. The state certifies which nonprofits are eligible, but casinos decide who they work with and for how long. For each day a facility is open, two selected nonprofits benefit. Each group gets a maximum of ten days a year.
In 2025, casinos dispersed more than $64 million to nearly 1,100 charities and nonprofits, per lottery records.
Less than 20% of participating charities came away with more than $100,000.
The obscure Concord Coach Society benefited more than most.
The $131,000 it received from just three days in December at the Nash was the highest dollars-per-day payout to any organization from any casino in the state.
When initially contacted for this story in late July, Roberts said his group was no longer involved in charitable gaming.
“It was discontinued last year, or a year or two ago,” he said.
Lottery records, however, show Roberts received charitable gaming qualification from the state through 2026.
On another call, Roberts didn’t answer a question about how he used his charitable gaming proceeds. He replied that his nonprofit had 501(c)(3) status and was certified by the state of New Hampshire and by the lottery.
“We have nothing to hide,” he said.
After multiple calls and emails, Roberts said he would agree to an interview later this month, but failed to respond to attempts to schedule a meeting.
This week, the Monitor was contacted by Concord attorney Paul Alfano, who said he reached out on behalf of Roberts. A request to schedule an interview with Roberts through Alfano was unsuccessful.
Roberts has been celebrated as one of the most influential lawmakers in state history, serving three terms as House Speaker in the late 1970s. He introduced machine roll-call voting and salvaged what would become the Legislative Office Building. Its foyer was dedicated to him in 2019. His portrait, usually in the under-renovation legislative building, currently hangs in the statehouse.
In his later decades as a successful lobbyist, Roberts wielded political influence for years on behalf of the gambling industry as lawmakers looked to expand gaming types in New Hampshire.
He left public office after an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in 1980. By the early 1990s, he was the state’s highest-paid lobbyist, per 1993 Monitor reporting. His clients included big names in New Hampshire gambling in the pre-casino era: the horse racing track in Salem and the greyhound race track in Seabrook, a precursor to what is now a casino known as The Brook.
“When I got to the state,” said James Rafferty, a former Nashua casino owner, “somebody said, ‘You’ve got to call George Roberts. He’s the guy. He’s the gaming guy.’ ”
The Concord Coach Society’s gaming earnings over the past half-decade raise questions about the extent to which the state oversees the charitable gaming system and how casinos choose the organizations they work with. While state law spells out how organizations can get money, they face no requirement to report back to the lottery commission how it was spent. Neither regulators nor casinos are obligated to follow up.
David Baer, a co-president of the Abbot-Downing Historical Society, flagged Roberts’ group to the Attorney General’s office in February. When he followed up, he said, “they said they couldn’t talk with me anymore because it was an active investigation.”
In response to a request for comment, the Department of Justice said it would “neither confirm nor deny” an investigation, per spokesperson Michael Garrity.
As they pinch for donations, members of the Abbot-Downing Historical Society said in interviews that they were taken aback by Roberts’ winnings.
“Did the Nash not do their due diligence?” said Robin Briscoe, an Abbot-Downing member. “Or is it just because when they Googled ‘Concord Coach Society,’ all this wonderful stuff about the Abbot-Downing Historical Society came up?”
‘Quite a history’
The original Concord Coach Society was officially founded in 1977 with an eye to promoting and preserving the history of the city’s hallmark manufacturer, the Abbot-Downing Company, and its world-famous Concord Coaches. Roberts, an enthusiast then serving as state house speaker, was one of its first members, according to previous Monitor reporting. In the decades that followed, he held the roles of president and treasurer intermittently.
Roberts parted with the original Concord Coach Society about 20 years ago, according to interviews with seven current members. The split wasn’t amicable.
In 2006, Roberts pushed for the Concord Coach Society to disband and sell off its collection of artifacts, including the single coach it owned. While he still venerated the stagecoaches’ history, he told the Monitor at the time, with a membership growing older and smaller in numbers, he felt it was time to give up.
“If the horse is dying, the best thing to do is to shoot it,” he said in May 2006. “Closed case. No tears.”
At a contentious meeting at the Kimball Jenkins Estate, Roberts put the issue to a vote. The question roiled many other group members and coach preservationists, who defeated the measure. Roberts left the organization soon after, its members said.
Five years after the split, however, Roberts came back into the picture.
In 2010, the Concord Coach Society mistakenly let its state registration lapse, members said, leaving a window where the name lacked ownership on paper.
By spring 2011, Roberts re-registered the Concord Coach Society under his own name, according to state records. He has maintained that registration since.
When the members of the original coach society went to refile with the state, it was too late. With the name now controlled by Roberts, they were forced to choose a new one, settling on the Abbot-Downing Historical Society. Current members said Roberts stole the old name.
“There was no other reason to do that, except to be malicious,” Briscoe said.
In a brief phone call at the end of July, Roberts described his current organization as the continuation of the original Concord Coach Society.
“We’ve done a lot,” he said. “Some publications. We do road trips, we do a lot of internal education. We put together a workshop. We’ve been an organization for 30 or 40 years. We’ve had quite a history.”
The Monitor found no record of this activity since Roberts started his group in 2011. He did not respond to requests for documentation of that work.
The Abbot-Downing Historical Society today oversees a collection of more than half a dozen coaches — some of which it owns outright and others it holds on loan. Its members store, preserve and bring the coaches to local events, using the showings to teach about the Abbot-Downing Company’s innovative suspension system and its role in the development of the American West.
Meanwhile, Roberts refiled his Concord Coach Society’s 501(c)(3) status with the IRS in 2018, after it had lapsed four years earlier. Charities must have nonprofit status for at least a year before they qualify for gaming funds. As soon as Roberts crossed that threshold in 2019, he began applying to participate.
Before the $131,000 payout from the Nash, the Coach Society received funds from two smaller Nashua casinos, the River and the Lucky Moose, typically receiving between $15,000 and $30,000 each year.
Unlike bigger organizations, nonprofits that take in less than $50,000 annually aren’t required by the IRS to file detailed financial reports. Instead, they fill out a so-called “990N.” The only financial information on the filing is an attestation that the group’s annual revenue fell under the cap.
Though the Coach Society received over $50,000 for the first time in 2025, the $131,000 check did not arrive until January 2026, according to announcements from the Nash. As a result, the Coach Society’s first detailed IRS reporting requirement would be due in 2027.
‘For the public’
In his 2025 charitable gaming application, Roberts stated his group’s mission was “to collect, preserve, store, display and creatively interpret for the public the importance of the Abbot-Downing Company of Concord, NH,” and, “To provide the general public the opportunity to be educated about horse-drawn vehicles’ role in the development of the United States.”
The language is nearly identical to the longstanding by-laws of the Abbot-Downing Historical Society, according to its secretary.
John Stallard is the assistant executive director of the Carriage Association of America, a national carriage preservation organization that also works with and promotes local groups. He said his organization had never worked with Roberts or his group and hadn’t heard of it before being contacted for this story.
Regional experts haven’t worked with him since 2011, either.
“I’m not aware of anything,” by Roberts, said Sutton, or Sut, Marshall, a well-known Concord Coach collector and preservationist who lives in Conway.
The only potential evidence the Monitor found of Roberts’ current work with coaches came from a property record from his Gilmanton home, stating that he “restores carriages” in his barn. The Monitor was unable to independently verify that work: his home was last visited by a town assessor in 2013, according to planning records, and it’s unclear if the barn was examined.
Tom Prescott, of Concord, has a collection of his own that he keeps in a self-funded mini-museum on the Heights. It’s open to the public.
“There are less than 150 [Concord] Coaches left in the world. We know where most all of them are,” Prescott said. “I’ve never seen a list with his name on it.”
‘Lacks authority to investigate’
The state’s screening of charities’ eligibility is minimal: to qualify, organizations must show paperwork proving they have been registered with the state and the IRS as nonprofits for at least a year.
Representatives for the New Hampshire Lottery and Gaming Commission declined to be interviewed for this story.
In a written statement, Cooley Arroyo, the commission’s chief compliance officer, said that qualification standards for charitable gaming are prescribed by state law.
“The licensing staff is dedicated to ensuring that each charity satisfies the criteria established by law to demonstrate eligibility,” Arroyo said. “Under current law, the commission lacks authority to investigate or inquire as to how a licensed charity utilizes funds received through participation in charitable gaming.”
The Nash doled out more money to state nonprofits than any of its peers last year, so getting on its calendar can mean a high financial windfall for charities. The top 14 grossing charities last year all partnered with the Nash.
The casino’s impact is even more striking when measured by dollars earned per day of partnership: 94 out of the top 95 nonprofits with the highest average daily take-home all worked with the Nash.
Nash representatives declined to be interviewed for this story.
In written statements, General Manager Eric Althaus said the Concord Coach Society was kept on the Nash’s calendar because of its pre-existing relationship with the Lucky Moose and the River.
Those casinos, also in the Nashua area, were bought by the Nash’s parent company, ECL Entertainment, in 2023. ECL later closed them to make way for the newer, larger facility.
Althaus said his casino worked with charities that partnered with the Lucky Moose before it closed to ensure those groups weren’t “out in the cold with no dates.”
In the changeover, however, the Nash allowed the Concord Coach Society to double-dip into the charitable gaming system.
Before it partnered with the Nash, Roberts’ organization had already gotten a $35,000 payout from the Lucky Moose in April. His charitable gaming haul for the year was over $166,000.
Under a “completely new process,” the Nash reviewed its list of charities for 2026, Althaus said. The Concord Coach Society didn’t make the cut and is due to receive no funds.
Rafferty, the previous owner of the River and Lucky Moose, said he first partnered with the Concord Coach Society in 2019 after a phone call from Roberts, whom he’d met through his charitable gaming advocacy at the statehouse.
“He called me up one day and said, the Concord Coach Society is doing good work, and you should support them, and they’re legit,” Rafferty said in an interview. “He encouraged us to put them on our calendar, and we did.”
After the vouch from Roberts, Rafferty said he visited a coach museum in the Concord area — he couldn’t remember the exact location, but said Roberts was not present. He said it convinced him that Roberts’ group was worthy.
Rafferty said he was unaware that there were two separate groups around Concord dedicated to coach preservation. When asked if it was possible that he confused Roberts’ group for the Abbot-Downing Historical Society, Rafferty said he didn’t know.
“I cannot comment on whether we picked the wrong charity out of the people who really do it,” he said, “That never even occurred to me, frankly.”
‘What’s he doing with it?’
In January, Robin Briscoe said she got a text message from her sister, who at the time was scrolling Facebook on a beach in Cancun. She’d seen a picture from her local casino, the Nash, awarding a $130,766 posterboard check to the Concord Coach Society.
“She was like, ‘Congratulations, you guys! What are you going to do with all the money?’” Briscoe recalled. “And I’m like, ‘What money? That’s not us.’ ”
The Abbot-Downing Historical Society gets most of its revenue from its annual membership dues, investments, donations, and fees it provides when sending a coach to an event outside Concord, according to its current officers and IRS filings.
City officials have secured a grant to begin cleaning up the old stables building that is being eyed as a future coach museum.
Briscoe joined Abbot-Downing around 2008, a few years after the schism with Roberts. Seeing him hold the Nash’s big check, she and others in the group cried foul.
“I’m not going to say that he shouldn’t have had the money,” said Esther Crowley, the historical society’s secretary. “What I’m going to say is, what’s he doing with it?”
Faced with questions about his organization and its operations, Roberts said he wanted to protect his privacy.
“There’s another group, Abbot-Downing,” Roberts added, before hanging up. “If you want to learn more about coaches, they would be the one to call.”
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.
