Bicentennial Quilt - The Dolly Madison

The Dolly Madison made her first trips on the Connecticut River in 1964, after having spent two years on the Potomac River as an excursion boat from Washington, D.C., to Mount Vernon, Virginia. Together with her sister ship , the Martha Washington, she carried many school children to visit George Washington's plantation, named in honor of Admiral Vernon, a British officer under whom Lawrence Washington had served.

Built at Warren, R.I., at the Blount shipyard in 1961, Dolly Madison appropriately returned to New England as the first craft to revive passenger service on the Connecticut River, an industry which had lain dormant since 1931 when the Hartford-New York line ceased operations.