For over 150 years, the Mount Washington has been cruising the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee, embodying the linked histories of lake transportation and tourism in the Lakes Region. Built by the Boston & Maine Railroad company, the SS Mt. Washington was launched in July 1872 to transport passengers and goods to key ports around the lake, as seen in early maps such as Calvert’s Map of the Lakes Region (1893). Tourism soon boomed at the Weirs transportation hub.

The Mount dominated lake transportation by the end of the 19th century, carrying more than 60,000 passengers annually. However, with the advent of automobile transportation and gradual decline of the railroad, the ship was sold in 1922 to Captain Leander Lavallee, who promoted area tourism with destinations around Lake Winnipesaukee. The original Mount burned at the Weirs landing in December 1939, where the fire also destroyed the wharf and railroad station.

Captain Lavallee then acquired the SS Chateaugay on Lake Champlain, and had that steamship cut into 20 sections and transported by train to Lakeport for reassembly. The new SS Mt. Washington II was launched in August 1940. The Mount has since undergone many changes, including lengthening and renaming as the MS Mount Washington. From a steam-powered sidewheeler to the 230-foot motorship today, the celebrated Mount endures as an icon of life on Lake Winnipesaukee.

In May of 1780, a young man named Peter Ayers met Shaker leader Ann Lee in the tiny community of Niskayuna, New York. Born in Voluntown, Connecticut in 1760, Ayers was 20 years old and a veteran of several Revolutionary War battles including Bunker Hill and Saratoga. After years of military service, Ayers was intrigued by the Shakers’ vision of a higher calling but was not ready to join the group.

In 1781, he returned to the army and served at the Battle of Yorktown. After three more visits with Shaker leadership, Ayers converted and became a missionary for the Society. In 1792, he accompanied his close friend Elder Job Bishop who was appointed to formally establish Canterbury Shaker Village. Over the next sixty-five years, Ayers proved to be an invaluable member of the community.

In August of 1840, former Governor of New Hampshire Isaac Hill published an account of the then eighty-year-old Ayers. Hill described him as “a most extraordinary man” with the energy of a person half of his age for whom “there was no scripture he could not quote in defense of his belief.”[1] Ayers died in 1857 at the age of 97.

[1] Isaac Hill, “The Shakers,” The Farmer’s Monthly Visitor 2, no. 8 (1840): 116. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/62626