OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING
AT THE
DAVISTOWN MUSEUM
The Davistown Museum offers many opportunities to learn about its missions of exploring tools, history, and art and their relationships, with a focus on tools and their roles in Maine and New England’s maritime and industrial history. There are activities for learners of all ages and teachers at the museum in Liberty and on line at www.davistownmuseum.org.
Education Director Judith Bradshaw Brown holds a doctorate in literacy education from the University of Maine and is responsible for the education components of the museum, for which she created the Children’s Corner in Liberty and wrote Tools Teach: Learning the World Via the Study of Tools, a guide for teachers and students, available in print and for download on the museum website. She encourages teachers, parents, and students to contact her about ways in which the Davistown Museum can accommodate learning for all ages.
The children’s corner offers activities for all ages and interests, including:
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An OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE A SCULPTURE/SIMPLE MACHINE from items gathered from the tool/antique stores associated with the museum. Artists are provided with all materials and then offered the opportunity to display their pieces at the museum for 6 months or take them home for a small donation to cover costs. The parts available are sorted according to simple machine categories and there are many books and other activities that discuss and teach the concepts of simple machines. Depending on their ages, children can make the sculptures/simple machines on their own, but parents are encouraged to and often enjoy participating. The young artists can then return to the museum to see their work displayed and show it proudly to others. This is currently the most popular activity in the museum and can be done by drop in visitors or organized for field trip guests as a group learning activity, with a focus on the simple machines aspects of the materials available if desired. |
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A SCAVENGER HUNT, during which young visitors (preschool with adults-high school) search for significant and interesting pieces in museum exhibits and learn about them and their creation and history from information they find at each location. The items, which represent holdings in the museum’s areas of tools, art, and history, include:
- wampum;
- an early American draw shave,
- early American ship caulking tools (with an opportunity to use a caulking iron and cotton to caulk a piece of a ship’s hull),
- an early American cobbler’s bench and tools;
- a huge floor map of the area of Maine in which the museum is located
- a wooden sculpture by contemporary Maine artist Dan Falt
- a huge tapestry based on a painting by Maine artist Alan Magee, who worked with Belgian weavers to create it using a Jacquard loom
- Print PUZZLES, including word searches and crossword puzzles that based on simple machines and the Early American tools and history covered in the museum
- BOOKS AND TOYS relating to art, tools, and history for use in the museum and for sale in the children’s section of the museum store.
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- TOOLS TEACH: Learning the World through the Study of Tools
In Tools Teach, Davistown Museum education director Judith Bradshaw Brown, EdD, collaborates with museum founder and curator Skip Brack to present resources and ideas for teaching and learning about tools, technology, simple machines, American history (with a focus on Maine and 19th-century rural/coastal New England), and how they all relate. Skip is convinced that “hand tools provide an opportunity to learn about local, regional, and American history. A study of the edge tools* and other hand tools used and made by Maine and New England ship carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, and farmers provides a unique way to illustrate and understand the evolution of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the society in which we live.” This is the approach of the Davistown Museum, offering a fascinating and rarely used window into history, science, culture, and economics. Tools Teach opens that window for teachers and students. Among Skip’s areas of interest and expertise are tools and their history and Maine/New England history, while Judith has a long and rich background in K-12 and teacher education, and they joined forces to create the museum’s first publication for teachers, which they plan to expand to meet the needs of the teachers and students with whom they work.
* For those unfamiliar with tool vocabulary, edge tools are those which are made to cut, e.g. axes, planes, chisels, etc. They have to have a special edge, with harder and higher quality steel than that used for other tools or the rest of the edge tool. Their production involves an understanding of and expertise in the chemistry of iron-making and has often led to the ascendancy or decline of world cultures.
- LOAN PROGRAMS
- TOOLS: The Davistown Museum offers thelps teachers utilize hand tools and their changing styles as a window for looking at the larger pattern of social and technological change, which occurred from the colonial period to the Industrial Revolution in Maine and New England. The Davistown Museum offers representative sets of small, easily shipped hand tools typical of those made and used by shipsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters and boat builders in the 18th and 19th centuries. These sets are available for loan to teachers who would like to use them to enrich the teaching of history, chemistry, physics, building trades, art, other content areas, or combinations thereof. These groups of related tools are available for loan to educational groups or institutions for the purpose of teaching about the history of hand tools and their changing forms before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution. They may be used independently of the museum offerings to supplement/expand curriculum, but teachers may also use them in conjunction with activities in Tools Teach, with field trips to the museum, or with visits from museum staff.
- BOOKS
- FIELD TRIPS
Teachers may arrange field trips to the Davistown Museum by contacting Judith Bradshaw Brown at judith@davistownmuseum.org or (207)288-5126. The museum field trip program is in its early stages, and, consequently, fees and programs will be determined after discussing the teacher’s and student needs on an individual basis. We have thus far hosted Boy/Cub Scout troops and high school/college classes and can tailor programs for any age students and area of study covered by the museum.
Museum staff are available for lectures, classroom demonstrations, and consultations by contacting Judith Bradshaw Brown at judith@davistownmuseum.org or (207)288-5126. The museum school visit program is in its early stages, and, consequently, fees and programs will be determined after discussing the teacher’s and student needs on an individual basis.
The Center for the Study of Early Tools offers primary and secondary resources for anyone interested in learning about early American tools, their history and related American history. The carefully organized and documented tool collection is a unique resource, unequaled anywhere else. It is available at the museum or for loan for hands-on opportunities to learn about the maritime culture of Maine and New England in the years before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution. In addition to the tool collection, the Center includes a library and reading room in the museum building in Liberty.
The Davistown Museum tool exhibition now includes over 2,000 tools and artifacts dating from the 18th and 19th century or earlier. The Museum exhibition "An Archaeology of Hand Tools" organizes the Museum tool collection with specific reference to Maine's unique history. The exhibition begins with a small selection of tools from or representative of Maine's first colonial dominion, a series of settlements along the Maine coast that were abandoned after the beginning of the Indian Wars in 1676. Our exhibit continues with tools from the 18th century, during which time Maine was resettled. The Museum exhibitions include large numbers of tools from the boomtown era of Maine's early and mid-19th century, as well as a selection of tools characteristic of the Industrial Revolution, which reached its maximum period of growth after the Civil War. The Center for the Study of Early Tools includes not only the tools in the permanent exhibition in the main hall of the Museum, but a growing collection of representative tools to be made available for lending to educational institutions.
- Maine-made edge tool collection: An extensive exhibit of over 50 Maine-made and signed edge tools and numerous other Maine-made planes, measuring devices, and other implements. The tools in this display typify the finesse of the Maine shipsmith and the tools he made for his fellow shipwright. Tools from this collection are available for loan to other institutions. For more information on this collection see our Maine-Made Traveling Exhibition page.
- The Museum plane collection: The predominant tools of Maine's maritime culture were woodworking tools; the Davistown Museum's collection contains a representative selection of the wide variety of tools used by Maine's shipwrights, housewrights, carriage makers, coopers, and other trades utilizing woodworking tools. A particularly strong point of the museum exhibits is our collection of planes, which date from the earliest examples of signed English and American planes to a small selection of planes made by Maine's 20th century planemakers. A mission of the educational program is to utilize hand planes and their changing styles as a window of opportunity for looking at the larger pattern of social and technological change, which occurred from the colonial period to the Industrial Revolution in Maine and New England. The Museum publication The Registry of Maine Toolmakers is part of this effort to document the role of Maine's toolmakers in Maine and New England history.
Curator and historian Skip Brack is available for lectures at organization events and in classrooms. His knowledge of early tools and Maine/New England maritime/Native American history makes him a sought after lecturer and consultant. He chooses relevant tools from the museum collections to illustrate his lectures and to offer hands-on opportunities for the audience to see and touch the tools he is discussing. He has thus far presented his work at the Maine Historical Society, Bath Maritime Museum, Yarmouth Historical Society, Montpelier-The General Henry Knox Museum, the Atlantic Challenge Foundation, and other organizations. Contact him at curator@davistownmuseum.org or (207)288-5126 to discuss your needs and schedule and to make arrangements for him to visit your organization.
- Native American artifacts: The Davistown Museum has a small collection of Native American artifacts, many of which originate from outside New England. Nonetheless, these diverse artifacts play a role in our educational programs by illustrating the wide diversity of natural materials utilized by Native Americans for tools and other objects. One of the exhibits showcases significant site-specific collections of woodland era stone tools from a lower Merrimac River village site in West Newbury, MA, from a community that may have once been part of the southwestern component of the confederacy of Mawooshen, a community of Native American villages stretched along the New England coast from Schoodic Point to Massachusetts. The Native American exhibits are intended to introduce visitors to the interesting pre-history of Maine and New England before the arrival of European settlers and lead them to the much more extensive collections at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor and Maine State Museum.
- an extensive library of antiquarian and contemporary history texts and journal articles
- a large collection of books on hand tools, technology, and trades of the past
- the environmental history archives of the Center for Biological Monitoring and extensive website bibliographies.
- The Davistown History Project includes a small but important collection of local town histories, ephemera and records, which provide an opportunity to learn about the local history of the Davistown Plantation (Liberty and Montville) or to begin the process of exploring one's genealogical links to the early residents of the area.
- Loan Programs : Tools
Students of all ages, parents, and teachers are encouraged to surf the Davistown Museum website, visit the museum, and select their own subject matter about which to learn/teach, read, and write:
- The history of hand tools from the Stone and Bronze Ages to the Industrial Revolution
- Maine and New England history
- Chemistry and history of steel and toolmaking strategies and techniques
- The role of woodworking tools in the maritime and industrial trades of Maine and New England
- Native American history
Following is a selection of specific topics for which the Davistown Museum offers resources for exploration.
Native Americans in Maine |
Archaeology of Maine |
Colonial trades |
Confederacy of Mawooshen |
Great Pandemic-Native American |
Native Americans and trade goods |
Natural resources used by Native Americans |
Native trails and colonial routes |
Use of wampum as money |
Great pandemic of 1617 |
Damariscotta shell middens |
Mast trade |
Pre-Colombian European explorers |
Vikings’ Forge at L'Anse aux Meadows |
Maine's forest resources |
Merchant adventurers of Elizabethan England |
How to forge an iron tool |
Flax dressers |
Ancient Pemaquid |
Rediscovery of cast steel |
Coopers of Davistown |
Popham Colony |
Sheffield steel in colonial America |
Lime industry |
George Waymouth's voyage - 1604 |
Saugus Iron Works |
Shipwright’s &/or ship carpenter’s tool chest |
Pilgrims visit to Maine in 1621/22 for food |
Early planemakers of Southern New England |
Cobbler and his tools |
Indian wars |
Maine's early planemakers |
Railroads and steam boats |
Coasters and the West Indies trade |
Cast steel production in America |
Story of cast iron |
Cod fishery of coastal Maine 1614 - |
Maine's ax makers |
Industrial Revolution |
Clear cutting of Davistown Plantation |
Water mills of the Blackstone River Valley |
Tanneries and Canneries |
Agricultural failure and forestry regrowth |
Water mills of Liberty and Montville |
Maine in art history |
The state of Maine has a great Maine history library and resource center at the Maine Historical Society. The Maine State Library and Archives are also an important Maine history resource available to area residents. The first priority of the Davistown Museum library, divided into five sections on three floors of the museum, is to provide local residents, Liberty Tool Co. customers, museum visitors and those with a special interest in ferrous metallurgy and the history of hand tools, access to books and materials not readily available at other institutions. The Davistown Museum's focus is on the hand tools of New England's maritime culture in the age of wooden sailing ships. The library of the Center for the Study of Early Tools is the cornerstone of our library collection, which includes journal articles and a wide variety of books and references on local, Maine and New England history, Native Americans in Maine, art and artists in Maine and environmental history. Books in the library collection are available for on-site use whenever the museum is open.
The Davistown Library includes the following:
- Davistown History Project library: a small collection of books and journal articles about regional Maine and local history and genealogy, including a growing collection of files on the families who first settled here, located in a dedicated room on the third floor.
- Center for the Study of Early Tools (CSET) library: an extensive collection of reference books on the history of tools and technology located on the second floor. This library also includes books on colonial and New England history, archaeology and pre-history and a large collection of catalogs of American tool manufacturers. This library is open by appointment whenever the museum is open; a variety of additional tool reference texts are available for visitor perusal in the main hall on the third floor whenever the museum is open.
- Numerous journal articles and a small collection of contemporary books on Native Americans in Maine located in the print room on the third floor of the museum.
- The museum's small collection of books on art and artists working in Maine is intended to complement our exhibition of about 90 Maine artists, many still at work, and our occasional special exhibitions of their art. This section of the library is in the print room on the fourth floor.
- The environmental history library on the fourth floor of the museum contains an extensive collection of journal articles on chemical fallout issues ranging from chlorinated hydrocarbons to anthropogenic radioactivity.
- The environmental history library also contains the archives of the Center for Biological Monitoring and their many publications, including those documenting the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company.
- Current periodicals within the libraries include Maine History (Maine Historical Society), The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Tools & Technology: The Newsletter of the American Precision Museum, Maine Archaeology and other relevant publications as funding permits. The Museum also sponsors subscriptions to the following journals at the College of Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine: Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, American Antiquities, and Northeast Anthropology.
- The Hulls Cove office of The Davistown Museum contains a wide variety of Maine, New England and US history books as well as many duplicates of the books on hand tools in history in the CSET library. When sufficient funding is available, or if donations of these basic history references can be obtained, additional copies will be added to the CSET library. The library in Hulls Cove is open by appointment only.
- The specialty of The Davistown Museum is its extensive Internet bibliographies. We hope our Internet presence helps offset our inaccessible location and the lack of publicity about our museum, its collections and its role as a regional history information resource.
- The Davistown Museum website also includes links to other Maine history resources, museums and websites, as well as to Internet information resources pertaining to tools and technology, art and artists, and environmental issues.
- We hope that museum benefactors, members, visitors and other interested parties will consider donating to the Library copies of the most interesting books listed in our bibliographies. If you have other interesting books or documents relating to the history of Maine or the Davistown Plantation, the Norumbega bioregion, Native Americans in Maine, art and artists in Maine or on the history of hand tools and their production that you would like to donate to The Davistown Museum, please contact us. Donations of materials not relevant to the collections of the museum are still desirable because they can be sold to raise money to furnish the library with the many interesting books that are now available on Maine history and art.
Visiting researchers, scholars and students: The Museum is now ready to welcome visitors to use the Center for the Study of Early Tools library. Overnight stays may be arranged in the Center for the Study of Early Tools apartment. Please contact Judith Brown. Facilities are available for visiting students.
Library Inventory Listing
- A list of Archaeology texts in the museum library and Archaeology or history-related journals.
- Other books in the Davistown Museum library that have been donated, but are not listed in one of our bibliographies.
- Library display listing: these are texts located on display within the exhibition and not within the library stacks.
- We are currently in the process of cataloging our library collection into an on-site searchable Past Perfect database, located at both the museum and at the Hulls Cove office.
Bibliographies (The IS at the end of a bibliography listing indicates that the Davistown Museum has a copy "in stock.")
