George Bucher Ayres


One of my greatest hopes for my book would be that people would run with my research and find interesting facts about the people I mentioned in it. Hagerstown historian and Western Maryland Room stalwart Jeff Brown has done just that. He has found some great stuff about George Bucher Ayres, and I would like to share it with you here.

Ayres had been around Hagerstown for a while when, in 1864, he opened a photo studio with B.W.T.'s father. The partnership only lasted a few months, when the pair sold out to B.W.T., who held the studio until 1907. As you will see, Ayres was a bit of a Renaissance Man, but he was probably best known for buying a photograph studio and finding, printing, and selling the above photograph.

Jeff has found some interesting information about Ayres' early years in Hagerstown. We have been trying to find a photograph of the original train station ticket booth that was in Hagerstown during the Civil War. The Franklin Railroad, which started in Hagerstown and went north towards Chambersburg, had just sold out to the Cumberland Valley Railroad right before the war, but the details of why and when have evaded us. It turns out that Ayres is the connection. So, I will start transcribing the articles Jeff has found and we can watch the picture emerge.