@roger,
the brick ballast story is a bit of a chestnut. WHile there were several hundred loads of brick for ballast on old precolonial ships, brickmaking and pottery was one of the first endeavors to go big time in the colonies. The great deposits of the Columbia and Potomac clay pits were used for pottery and , mixed with sand, became where most of the "salmon" bricks from which the cities of Philly, Boston, and New York were built. There weren't enough ships with ballast that could meet the demands of all the building going up in the colonies.
many homes in the deep wilderness were built of bricks that were dug, molded and baked right on the site of the building. The Dickinson mansion in Dover Delaware (john Dickinson the "penman of the Revolution") was built as a small brick cabin by Dickinsons father. That humble house was built using high fire British ballast brick. The largere segment of the Dickinson mansion was completed by making bricks right on site, and one can see the tone difference between the ballast brick and the later salmon brick (which had to be painted with a varnish sealer to prevent the bricks from washing apart. High fire brick wasn't really made in big batches until coal became available in the late late 1790's
care home, whic just now is being built