The Davistown Museum

Davistown Plantation

Allen Goodwin Papers. University of Maine Special Collections, Orono, ME.

Correspondences from Montville/Liberty during the Civil War. Maine State Archives, Portland, ME.

(1869). Water-power of Maine, hydrographic survey of Maine. Sprague, Owen & Nash, Augusta, ME..

(1897). Biographical review, volume XX, containing life sketches of leading citizens of Sagadahoc, Knox and Waldo Counties. Biography Publishing Co., Boston, MA.

(1927). A brief history of the town of Liberty: Celebration of centennial anniversary: August 25, 1927. Newell White, Printer, Thorndike, ME. IS.

"So many were coming in to settle at this time (1816) that the Proprietors and Twenty Associates sent an agent here to give titles to the land and collect pay. John Edwards had already obtained title to his land at the understood price of $1.50 per acre when the agent came insisting the price was to be $2.50 per acre. The settlers, in order to maintain their rights, held a secret meeting in William Lampson's house where they decided to take the agent's papers away from him and give him a good scare. They swore themselves to eternal secrecy, signing the pact by writing their names with their own blood. After sending one of their number on a day ahead to spy out the agent's exact whereabouts, they went one dark winter night to Hazen Ayer's in Montville. Benjamin Tibbetts was chosen to knock at the door and keep Mr. Ayer out of the way while the rest, dressed as Indians, captured the agent. All went as planned and they took him to St. George's lake and threatened to drop him in a hole they had cut in the ice if he made any resistance. They then took his saddle bags containing his papers and let him go, returning to Lamson's they burned the papers. The 'Indians' were Joel Clark, William Lamson, John E. Dodge, Andrew Glidden, and many others, some living in Palermo and Montville." (pg. 31-32).
"Few of the present roads in the western part of the town were built by the early settlers. Instead of following the valleys they were built on the brow of the hills. The road from East Palermo (then called Boynton's Corner) followed a northeasterly course thru the Ira Boynton pasture and field, joining the present road at the turn near Young's farm, followed the present road to the Lamson place, then across what is now R. M. Trask's, C. R. Nelson's, and just below the Richard Bagley house. On the portion of this road now discontinued were the homes of William Lamson and Joel Clark. A road began near the cemetery in Hostile Valley, crossed what is now John Blanchard's pasture, the present road below the old Leman barn, Edwin Bachelor's pasture and joined the present little used road at the Old Kenniston place. Another, and probably later road out of the Valley, was from the Glidden turn in an easterly direction across W. J. Knowlton's sheep pasture to the old Kenniston place. Enoch Whitehouse and Alvin Baird had comfortable homes and good farms on this road. A road led in a southerly direction from the Augusta-Belfast road to the Brown place on the side of Kager mountain. The roads from the old Cargil place on the South Liberty road to Sherman's Corner and from Rex Prescott's to the Augusta-Belfast road near Carl Turner's with the cross road connecting the two have been discontinued or fallen into disuse, although as late as 1885, twenty-seven families lived on these roads. The road from Sherman's Corner to Marshall's Shore formerly curved to the south passing near Moses Johnson's house. A part of the present driveway was the town's highway. There were other old roads hard to trace now." (pg. 78-79).
"Nearly every place had its own cooper shop where lime casks were made. These were hauled to Rockland by ox teams. Farming was developed as soon as possible after clearing the land and good crops of wheat, corn and oats were raised. Dairying has always been carried on quite extensively. Until about 1900 stock raising was an important industry." (pg. 80).

Baily, Francis, F.R.S. (no date). Journal tour in unsettled parts of North America in 1796 and 1797. Baily Brothers, London.

Baxter, James Phinney, Ed. (1889-1916). Documentary history of the state of Maine. Vol. XXI. The Maine Historical Society, Portland, ME.

Beaudry, Michael. (1998). Montville/Liberty and the Civil War. Unpublished manuscript. IS.

This is a primary source of information about the mills and merchants in Liberty and Montville in the mid 19th century.
The list of mercantile activities in Liberty and Montville compilated by Beaudry will be cited in the Davistown History Project.

Beaudry, Michael. (2001). The eccentric hermit of Davistown. Unpublished manuscript. IS.

Biscoe, Mark W. (2004). Merchant of the Medomak: Stories from Waldoboro Maine's Golden Years, 1860 - 1910. Lincoln County Publishing Co., Newcastle, ME. IS.

See the annotations for this citation in the Maine History Contemporary Sources bibliography.

Dalton, Pete and Dalton, Cyndi. (1994). Into the valley of death. Union Publishing Co., Union, ME.

Davis, James and Ely, Samuel. (1796). The appeal of the two counties of Lincoln and Hancock, from the forlorn hope, or, mount of distress; to the general court, or, to all the world. Charles Peirce Printers, Portsmouth.

Dennie, Joseph, Esq. (1811). Biographical sketches of Major-General Henry Knox. Maine State Library, Augusta, ME.

Donahue, Tom. (1996). The Kingdom in Montville, Maine: A technological diary 1789 - 1994. Prepared as part of the course work for the IETP 650 class "Technology: Its Evolution and Social Impact" offered at the University of Southern Maine. Published by Tom Donahue, Freedom, ME. IS.

"Smith Cram, born 1762, was a Revolutionary soldier from Pittsfield, New Hampshire. He was one of the first settlers in the Kingdom area and is credited with building the first sawmills in Montville in 1778-79." (there are no page numbers in the booklet). The sawmill dates should be 1798-99.
"Jonathan Dutton bought a half interest in Smith Cram's sawmill in 1815, and purchased the other half in 1817. In 1828, Jesse Cram (son of Smith) is noted as the mill owner, perhaps as the result of his marriage to Martha Dutton. There is also an 1814 reference to a grist mill owned by Ebenezer Everett and Richard Small and run by Seth Milliken that in the 1820's 'went off in a freshet (surge of spring water and ice.)' Timber was a plentiful resource in the area. As late as 1835 a tree was cut in nearby Liberty that measured seven feet in diameter at the base, and yielded 10,610 feet of square- edged boards. Old records also include references to a mill called 'Sucker Mill' and one by the bridge called 'Greatworks' on the old road to Belfast."
"Smith Cram Jr., was listed as the tithingman in the Montville town records of 1812." He "later left the area and worked as an engineer. He became noted in the mechanical world as builder of the first drydock in New York City, and the first steamboat to run on the Kennebec River. He has also been mentioned in connection with a suspension bridge across the Niagara River below the falls, and a double-hulled steamer that served Penobscot Bay until it collided with another ship and sank in Camden Harbor."
"The Cram water wheel was developed around 1850 by Elijah, son of Jesse Cram. It sat horizontally, turning a vertical shaft. The wheel itself was cast iron, about twenty inches in diameter with a series of fins surrounded by cups to maximize the thrust taken from the flow of water. The bottom of the wheel was of an inverted conical shape which bore down upon a wooden plug formed from a pine knot. The wood bearing was said to withstand several years of continuous use. On the top of the wheel was a two inch metal shaft about five feet long. A keyway was cut into the top of the shaft and a small iron gear was attached there. A series of other gears and cogs, made from cast iron or maple wood, worked off this first gear developing the power and speed required to run the machines. Power was transfered to other iron shafts that ran the machines by canvas or leather belts. Water was delivered to the wheel from a flume or sluiceway through a downwardly inclined, enclosed wooden trough or penstock. The troughs were round or rectangular and sometimes tapered toward the delivery point to direct a jet of water against the blades. The wheels were generally housed in a wooden enclosure called a tub or wheel case that improved efficiency by preventing the water from escaping sideways. Cram wheels were common in the mills of the area for many years though none are in use today."
"Eva Cram, the only child of Ira and Etta (Philbrick), married Frank Bennett, a blacksmith and machinist who took over the machine shop on Mill stream. Frank was an inventor who developed an improved model of the Cram Wheel that had a more efficient turbine action, and was designed to allow for quicker repairs when the iron fins broke off. The style of the wheel appears similar to the water turbines developed by Benoit Fourneyron at about the same time in France. Frank later bought a grist mill on another branch of George's River in Liberty, where he relocated his machine shop to take advantage of the newly harnessed power of the water flow from Lake St. George."
"Several of his [Bennett's] patents were offered for general sale, such as the Liberty Tongue and Groove Stave Machine and Bennett's Improved Stave Chamfer and Crozing Machine, and a hand water pump, some of which are still in the Liberty area." Illustrations of these machines from his brochures are reproduced in the Davistown History Project section.

Dwight, Timothy. (1969). Travels in New England and New York. Vol. II. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Eaton, Cyrus. (1851). Annals of the town of Warren in Knox County, Maine with the early history of St. Georges, Broadbay and neighboring settlements on the Waldo Patent. Masters, Smith and Co., Hallowell. Reprinted in 1887 by Masters & Livermore, Hallowell and in 1968.

This book contains a large body of information about the history of Thomaston, St. George and Warren that is pertinent to the history of the early years of the Davistown Plantation, Montville and Liberty. Most of the annotations are in our information file for Warren, but other annotations are in the Maine History: Antiquarian bibliography, Native American: Contemporary sources bilibliography and in the information file Wreck of the Grand Design on Long Ledge, Mount Desert Island.

Eaton, Cyrus. (1865). History of Thomaston, Rockland and South Thomaston, Maine. Vol. I. Masters, Smith & Co., Hallowell, ME.

Ely, Samuel. (1795). The unmasked nabob of Hancock County: The scales dropt from the eyes of the people. Charles Peirce Printers, Portsmouth, NH.

Ely, Samuel. (1797). The deformity of a hideous monster discovered in the Province of Maine by a man in the woods looking after Liberty. Maine State Library, Augusta, ME. X.

Ely, Samuel and Davis, James. (1796). The Davistown resolves: The appeal of the two counties of Lincoln and Hancock from the forlorn hope, or mount of distress; to the general court, or to all the world. Printed by Charles Peirce, Proprietor of the Work, Portsmouth, NH.

Gould, Albert Trowbridge. (1950). The St. George's River. Privately printed by Mrs. Albert Gould, Portland, ME. IS.

Appendix I reprints Captain Antleir of Elliot's list of the 571 vessels built at Thomaston between 1787 and 1920.
Many of the casks and wood fittings for these ships were produced by the coopers and millwrights of the Davistown Plantation, later the towns of Liberty and Montville.
An excellent history of the St. Georges River, except it fails to describe the double origin of the river at not only Quantabacook Pond in Searsmont (East Branch) but also the river's most historically significant West Branch originating in Lake St. Georges and powering the mill towns of Liberty and South Montville prior to joining the East Branch at Searsmont Village.
The author does note, however, "it is the purpose of this book to tell the story of the St. Georges River so far as lies within the ebb and flow of the tide, that is, as far as the lower falls at Warren..." (pg. xi).
"Those who are interested in the early history of the river region above the Warren dam will find Ben Ames William's Come Spring entertaining reading." (pg. xi).

Halldale School. (1947). A brief history of the town of Montville. (publisher unknown).

Hurwitz, Alfred. (1975). History of Liberty, Maine 1827 - 1975. Liberty Historical Society, Liberty, ME.

"I was three or four years old and was quite ill with the stylish La Grippe the night of the great fire. I was in the big downstairs bedroom next to the Dennis House. I think it must have been eight or nine o'clock that winter evening when the church bell rang and there were shouts of 'Fire'! The room was brighter than with sunlight. Mother took a big, dark blue blanket and pinned it over the entire window. A neighbor came running with the message: 'Hattie Clough says for you to wrap Leta in a blanket and bring her over there to stay'. My father had been quite ill and it was his first day out of the house. The whole north side of the village street was in flames. Papa's competitor's stores were burning. He opened his store to receive salvaged goods. He and many other men climbed on roofs and hurled pails of water on the burning buildings, but the entire business block burned. A valiant effort saved the white Dennis house." (pg. 21-22).
"Only after the stage road was changed to go through Liberty and hotels, stores, and shops sprang up there did the mill-minded men, including Ira Cram, see that the outlet of St. George's Pond was a more dependable and forceful source of power than the Kingdom Stream. A series of mills, cooper shops, even a hat factor and a tannery started moving out of The Kingdom to set up their wheels along the roaring outlet stream back of the stores and hotels in Liberty." (pg. 35).
"After the various mills in the Kingdom had been abandoned, spring freshets swept away the small dams and most of the wooden debris. One building which had been Frank Bennett's machine shop, later Volney Follett's blacksmith shop, and now our home, remained standing, straddling the brook when it was at its highest pitch, but high and dry most of the year. Dave told us this structure, badly wracked by years of neglect, was the one building that survived the last big freshet - when what remained of seven other little industries had all gone down stream. With the departure of the industries went the school houses, the stores, the post-office - and gradually the people themselves, until there was little life left in The Kingdom." (pg. 35).
"Most of the men and boys who worked in the stave mills of those early days had at one careless moment or another lost a finger, a thumb, or even half a hand. That seemed understandable as Dave [Boynton] took a straight piece of wood to demonstrate the leger-de-main that went with sawing out a stave. Each stave was curved on both edges and in order to accomplish this the operator had to flip the stick by a deft twist of the wrist and put it up to the saw first on one side, then on the other - completely reversed. Hard to describe, but harder to do. Yet even with gnarled old hands, Dave would do it with such quickness that the eye could scarcely follow the action. After such a demonstration he would hold up his hands with great pride. 'There they are - all ten of 'em. I never gave a saw a single bite.'" (pg. 37).
"Up the hill towards the village was the big Walker house where Don's sister lived. That was the finest house in town for many years. Some folks say that Don was pretty mean to have it set out in his will that the house should be torn down and the land turned over to the birds. Some even thought it was because he was mad with the Town of Liberty and warn't goin' to have taxes paid out of his estate after he was dead, but I know better. One time Don thought he'd like to go down to Kentucky and see the home where his father grew up. He'd heard about what a fine place it was and had some memories of having visited there as a kid. He hunted up the property and was dumbfounded to find it made over into cheap tenements and it was so run down that he could hardly recognize it. - old junk all around the dooryard where he had remembered the flower gardens. He made up his mind that that wasn't goin' to happen to the nice house in Liberty - so he made plans to have it torn down, and now there's just half a millstone there with a bronze plate which says it's a bird sanctuary." (pg. 55).
"'When the big tannery first started Hunt built that road up along the river just to haul shavings from Ivan Davis' shovel-handle shop to run the boilers in the tannery. Then Briggs Turner built a blacksmith shop where young Ivan Davis' house is. Charles Marden had a big house 'bout where the cannery is. He had five or six youngsters - two little boys. One got drowned in the millpond and in the next day or two the other one died. 'Twarn't long before his house and barn burnt and he lost seven horses.'" (pg. 56).
"We came then to the big buildings deserted by the cannery, now occupied and considerably remodeled by a relatively new resident of Liberty, David McLaughlin, operating the Liberty Salvage Company. ... I would have assumed that Elden would look on these young people as useless, but on the contrary he appears to be very hopeful that they will be the ones to bring Liberty back to 'amountin' to somethin.' 'That David fellah is a damned good workman, and he ain't for throwin' everything away just because it's old. He'll make some use of almost any old thing, and I never see a man work up iron any better'n he can. It's a good thing to see a young man workin' here in these buildings, and there's a lot of good stuff here for him to work with. I hear he's had a college education, but it don't seem to have hurt him any. Now he's educating his hands and that'll go well with what he's already gut in his head. He made a big wood stove outa one of them big retorts and it was as good or better'n the ones they used to make right over there in the foundry years ago.'" (pg. 57-58).
"50 years ago only 3 houses existed where now stands our beautiful village with its 15 manufacturing establishments, 10 stores, telegraph office, telephone exchange and a prospective railroad! How is that for prosperity in so short a time?" (pg. 67).

Hutslar, Donald A. (1992). Log construction in the Ohio Country, 1750-1850. Ohio University Press, Athens, OH.

Knox, Henry. Henry Knox Papers. Bangor Public Library, Bangor, ME.

We have reproduced Memorandum of an agreement between Henry Knox and Life Wilson, eighteen hundred as an information file. This agreement put Life Wilson in charge of the saw mills and grist mill of Warren owned by Henry Knox and specifies his responsibilities.

Knox, Henry. (1790). Land advertisement. Evans Microprint.

Lang, J.W. (1873). A survey of Waldo County, Maine, historical, physical and agricultural. Maine Agricultural Board.

Liberty Centennial Committee. (1927). The town of Liberty: Its history and geography. Newell White, Printer, Thorndike, ME.

Liberty Historical Society. (1975). History of Liberty, Maine: 1827 - 1975. Liberty Historical Society. Hutchins Brothers, Thorndike, ME. IS.

Maresh, Isabel Morse. (September 27, 1990). Out of the past: Montville: Davistown in the early years. The Republican Journal. Belfast, ME. pg. 7. IS.

Maresh, Isabel Morse. (September 30, 1993). Out of the past: A farmer's life. The Republican Journal. Belfast, ME. pg. A7-A8. IS.

Monvel, Jacques Marie Boutet de. (1792). Journal of observations (mineralogical) upon Waldo Patent. Maine State Library, Augusta, ME.

Moody, Robert E. (1932). Samuel Ely: Forerunner of Shays. New England Quarterly. 5. pg. 105-134. X.

Moody, Robert, Ed. (1974). The Saltonstall papers: 1607-1815. Vol. II: 1789-1815. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA.

O'Leary, Wayne M. (1996). Maine sea fisheries: The rise and fall of a native industry, 1830 – 1890. Northeastern University Press, Boston, MA.

See the annotations in the Maine History Sources: Primary bibliography.

Overlock, Florence. (1976). Historical scrapbook, Freedom, Maine 1794-1976. Freedom, ME.

Philip and George Ulmer vs. Samuel Ely, May 1796. Hancock County, Common Court of Pleas Record Book II. Case 197. Maine State Archives, Augusta, ME.

Porter, Joseph. (1890). Memoir of General Henry Knox of Thomaston Maine. Maine State Library, Augusta, ME.

Robinson, T.W. (1944). History of Morrill. Morrill Historical Society, Belfast, ME.

Shula, Jeff. Bernice Cram looks back on a long life in Liberty. The Republican Journal. Belfast, ME. (date/page unknown). IS.

Shurtleff, James. (1798). A concise review of the spirit which seemed to govern in the times of the late American war, compared with the spirit which now prevails; with the spirit of the goddess of freedom who is represented as making her appearance upon this alarming occassion. Peter Edges, Augusta, ME. X.

Sibley, John Langdon. (1851). A history of the town of Union, Maine, to the middle of the nineteenth century. Benjamin B. Mussey and Co., Boston, MA. Reprinted 1970, 1987 by New England History Press, Somersworth, NH.

"Indian corn was planted on burnt ground. By some of the early settlers, the ground was ploughed before the grain was put into it. This mode of cultivation was inconvenient among the roots, stumps, logs, and knolls, which abounded in every new field; and experience soon taught the lesson that corn came to maturity sooner when planted in the warm black mould than in the ploughed soil. In 1840, according to the town-valuation, 3,151 bushels were raised; according to the United States memoranda, 4,960. The year 1831 was the most remarkable for corn which has ever been known in Maine. It flourished like weeds, and ripened very early. Ezekiel True, of Montville, harvested one hundred bushels on the last day of August. It seemed as if every kernel grew which was dropped anywhere on the ground. Success, however, with Indian corn is uncertain. An early frost has often ruined the crop." (pg. 106).
"Archibald Anderson, of Warren, and a man named Davis, hunted here in the fall and spring for many years. After an unsuccessful search during four days, Davis, almost famishing, once returned to his old camp, near Crawford's River, and kindled a fire. With great astonishment he soon saw the sand and ashes, on which it was built, begin to move. He was not disturbed by their surging and sinking; but knelt down and delt heavy random-blows among them with his hatchet. In a short time, he was luxuriating on a roasted tortoise, which had unceremoniously imbedded himself in the ashes." (pg. 387).
See the other annotations for this citation in the Native Americans: Contemporary sources bibliography.

Stahl, Jasper Jacob. (1956). History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro: Volume one: The colonial and federal periods. The Bond Wheelwright Company, Portland, ME. IS.

This text contains an immense amount of background material pertaining to the area just south of the Davistown Plantation. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Liberty - Montville.

Taylor, Alan. (1990). Liberty men and great proprietors: The revolutionary settlement on the Maine frontier, 1760 - 1820. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC. IS(2).

This is the most important source of information on the early years of the Davistown Plantation.
The annotations for this important history are posted in the primary Maine history sources bibliography.

Taylor, Alan. (1993). Regulators and white Indians: The agrarian resistance in post-revolutionary New England. In: Debt to Shays. Robert Gross, Ed. University of Virginia, Charlotteville, VA. X.

Turner, Frederick Jackson. (1999). The significance of the frontier in American history. In: Does the frontier experience make America exceptional. Etulain, Richard W., Ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, MA.

Williams, Ben Ames. (1940). Come spring. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA. W.

Williamson, Joseph. (1877). History of the city of Belfast, in the state of Maine, from its first settlement in 1770 to 1875. Loring Short and Harmon, Portland, ME. Reprinted in 1982 by the New England History Press. IS.

The annotations for this history are posted in the bibliography of Maine town histories.