Blount must have designed the ships to use a limited number of plate shapes. Seems like hundreds of concrete molds couldn't work. Must have been a fun place to work. Lots of explosions every day when production was ramped up!

The best I can muster for certified yankee ingenuity was "Stillman's Patent 1848" saw set. One Abel Stillman ultimately from New York State invented it, but I think may have grown up in Rhode Island or Connecticut. He probably shared an ancestor in common: George Stillman. A friend of mine found one of these saw sets at a flea market in N.H. and sent it along to me. It's a treasured possession. Some day I might even learn how to use it {grin}.

Not that it really matters, but I misstated in the earlier post: Abraham Manchester's store was in Adamsville, not Little Compton.