Will stick my neck out...
Okay, I will open another door...
Your canoe was probably made at the BN Morris factory but appears to be one of his "factory direct" Veazie Canoes. In order to compete with other canoe builders who sold directly from a factory and didn't have to deal with a middleman, Morris offered his canoes at a lower price if they were sold directly from the factory... under the name Veazie Canoe Company.
A Veazie is a BN Morris canoe. The standard Veazie was trimmed in maple or ash, was less expensive to build, and the company made more money by eliminating the middleman... all without having to build a canoe of lesser quality.
Your canoe appears to be trimmed in mahogany and has the short deck with the gentle concave curve. So, yours is a higher grade canoe than the usual Veazie...this was a higher-end option.
I'd date your canoe around 1915 or so, give or take a couple years, for a couple reasons. First, the deck on your canoe is seen as an option in the later Morris catalogs and is the standard deck on the Tuscarora model in the 1917 and 1919 catalogs. And (this is profoundly interesting to those of us who are Morris nuts) in examining the less-than-huge-sampling of Morris boats in my research project, this deck (the concave one) appears more often than the heart shaped short deck on Morris canoes that are approximately 1915-1920--- perhaps a tad earlier.
Now I will yak for a bit about the serial number plate-- this is the second reason I date your canoe "around 1915 give or take..." .
3-digit serial number on rectangular brass plate on the stem says "Veazie" to me... BN Morris used an oval for 4-digit serial numbers, which may have begun with the change in canoe design we see in the 1902 catalog (where he began calling them "Type A, model 1" and such)... and went to the rectangle as the serial numbers approached five digits (in the 9XXXs)... which I believe was 1911 or later. The oval, with rare exceptions that could be explained by repair work, is seen on the inwale and the rectangle on the stem.
All known Veazie canoes have a rectangular serial number plate, located on the stem... so it's my feeling that these canoes fit into the same time-frame as BN Morris canoes of 9XXX on. And, with this canoe, if you factor in the mahogany short deck of the late-Morris period, it seems more likely to me that this canoe is around 1915, give or take a couple of years.
This is information that will appear in the December issue of Wooden Canoe, complete with pictures... so if you are a member of WCHA, you will see this information again... but in a more official-appearing format.
I believe 514 is a record-low serial number... thank you very much for contributing to the BN Morris/Veazie Canoe Project of WCHA! Look for the exciting article in the *next issue* of our favorite journal, Wooden Canoe. And please, anyone, if you have contradictory information please argue with me. This is how we dig out the answers.
Kathy