The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

when an injury forced him to drop out. He later built vessels at Toledo, Saginaw, Michigan, and Port Clinton, Ohio. He was still living in 1899. Prior to 1856, the records are vague as to which vessels were built in Milan. Among them were the schooners Monsoon (1848), Japan (1853), Tartar (1853), Dolphin (1854), E. St. John Bemis (1855), and Berlin (1854). On November 11, 1856, Merry and Gay received a contract from the Treasury Department for the construction of six revenue cutters. Their cost was to be $4,050 each, but each cost $2,333 more to build than the contract price.98 Captain W. G. Pease was to superintend their construction for the Treasury Department. These vessels were accordingly named the Aaron V. Brown, Jeramiah S. Black, Howell Cobb, John B. Floyd, Jacob Thompson, and Isaac Toney. All except the Floyd were transferred to the Atlantic Blockading Squadron at the outset of the Civil War. A story is told that Captain Pease accused James Gay of using a type of wood not called for in the contract in the construction of the knees of the vessels. Accordingly, Gay poked Pease on the nose on the front steps  to the Old Mansion Inn. This fracas ended the chance for Merry and Gay to receive any more government contracts.99 Merry and Gay ceased operations shortly after the revenue cutters were finished. This cessation undoubtedly was hastened by the losses incurred in building these boats. Edwards stayed on to build either for himself, or for Henry Kelley. Kelley was a lake captain and had commanded several vessels owned by Ebenezer Merry. Later he apparently took over the Merry and Gay yard, and became a builder and owner of vessels. Kelley was born in New York State, and reputedly drove mules on the Erie Canal in his youth. He moved to Milan in 1856, later serving on the town council, and was a member of the Erie County Board of Commissioners. He died at Milan in 1903, at the age of eighty-seven.100 His master builders were William Raynor, who came from Hoboken, New, Jersey, and D. Gilmore. Raynor also built vessels for Alfred Minuse, a lake captain and vessel owner, and for Augustus Mowry, a prominent Milan businessman. Some of the Raynor-built vesse1s were the schooners Milan, Jura, and Seventh Ohio. Kelley launched the schooner Day Spring on May 25, 1860. His account book shows the cost of the small (eighty-seven tons) schooner to be just under $4,500. Some of the costs, broken down, were as follows: 59