SIGNED BY DEACON WILLIAM STILLMAN (1767-1858), WESTERLY, RHODE ISLAND, 1793-1809

"A natural born mechanic and inventor," William Stillman (1767-1858) was born in Westerly, Rhode Island, where he pursued his career as a clockmaker and silversmith from 1793 to 1809. He subsequently removed to Hopkinton and secured patents for the first cloth-shearing machine, a veneering plane and bank locks. At the time of his death in 1858 at the age of 91, he was the oldest resident of Westerly and is buried in the town's River Bend Cemetery. See The First Hundred Years: Pawcatuck Seventh Day Baptist Church, Westerly, Rhode Island, 1840-1940 (Westerly, 1940), pp. 105-106; Frederic Denison, Westerly (Rhode Island) and Its Witnesses (Providence, 1878), p. 238).