Deacon William Stillman of Westerly, Rhode Island and Burlington, Connecticut.

William Stillman was born in Westerly, Rhode Island, on May 4, 1767. It is recorded that he was a self-taught clockmaker developing considerable skills over his lifetime. His first clock was made when he was a boy of fourteen. It was a wooden geared clock that struck the hour on a piece of glass. He made wooden geared clocks from 1786 to 1789. He moved to Burlington, Conn, in 1789 upon the death of his first wife. Here he took up an invitation to help farm his brother's land. Soon he traveled to Hartford to secure brass clockmaking tools and started working in his brother's blacksmith shop. In 1792, he returned to Westerly, RI, where he began making brass clocks. The embargo Act of 1809 forced him to make a living in another manner. It has been estimated that he may have made as many as 200 clocks over a career that lasted almost 20 years. An inventive person, he secured a patent for a veneering plow on March 16, 1801. A compass that was made and signed by him is known. It sold at Christie's in 2014