The Ancient Dominions of Maine

The roots of the Davistown Museum lie in the conjunction of the exploration of old barns, cellars, and workshops beginning in 1970 during the search for old (useful) woodworking tools by the Jonesport Wood Co. (West Jonesport, Maine 1970 – 83), and the subsequent purchase of the Parmenter General Store, now the Liberty Tool Co., in Liberty Village (1976). Historical questions immediately arose: who were the artisans who left their tools in that ancient Columbia Falls barn (1971), one of our first early tool location stashes, and what was the context of their use (shipbuilding on the Pleasant River in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century). Later, from 1976 to the present, the many visits to Waldo, Knox, and Lincoln County 19th century (or earlier) farm or boat workshops, and soon many more along the coast of New England, reinforced our quest for more information about Maine and New England maritime and industrial history. Who were the people who lived in these old houses? What did they do? How did they survive the long cold Maine winters before global climate change?  What did they manufacture at their water mills or downstream (from Liberty and Montville) boat shops and ship yards?  What vessels did they build, when and where did they sail? What cargoes did they carry? What forest products were milled in the villages of the Norumbega back country? Most importantly, what were the tools they used to successfully settle the New England wilderness, and how and where were they made? And always the intrusion of a compelling unanswered question: who were those First Nation indigenous inhabitants of Maine’s central coast hill country, called Wawenocs by 19th century historians; and where did they go?

It soon became evident that the modest selection and content of the local town histories of Liberty, Montville, Jonesport, Beals Island, Columbia Falls, or the larger communities of Thomaston, Rockland, Camden, Union, Boothbay, and Wiscasset were only a starting point for a more detailed exploration of the local and regional history of coastal Maine. The search for answers to our many questions soon led to two realizations: that local history could not be understood without an understanding of the prior history of not only First Nation indigenous peoples and the first European visitors and settlers of ancient Pemaquid, but also of the interrelationship of the history of the Davistown Plantation settlers with the broader scope of the maritime and industrial history of Maine and New England. Secondly, our interests immediately focused on hand tools as the most interesting and useful of material cultural artifacts (accidental durable remnants) for the exploration of the palimpsests (layers) of local, regional, and New England history – The Phenomenology of Tools as it were. The first two volumes recounting our journey through the labyrinths of local and regional history are these modest chapters on the local history of the Davistown Plantation (The Davistown History Project) and ancient Pemaquid. The major focus of our attention, aside from our inquiry into Native American history (Volume 4 of the website), has been the phenomenology of hand tools and what they tell us about our cultural history (Volumes 6 - 11 of our website). Following our detailed examination of the origins and roles of hand tools in New England history, Volume 12 is our catalog of art on loan or in the permanent collection; Volume 13 is our Museum educational programs. The later volumes of this website on environmental history (Changes in the Land) explore the impact of our pyrotechnical society on the environment. The chapters that follow this section in the website series, Radnet Nuclear Information on the Internet, are the ancient archives of the predecessor to the Davistown Museum, the Center for Biological Monitoring.

History of the Davistown Plantation (Volume 2)

Table of Contents

Introduction
Davistown History Project Questions
History as a Palimpsest
Historical chronology for the Davistown Plantation, Liberty and Montville
Historical Context of The Settlement of Davistown
Origin of the Davistown Plantation
Early history of the Davistown Plantation

One of the founding missions of The Davistown Museum is preserving and enlarging community awareness of the history of the Davistown Plantation, later the hill country towns of Liberty and Montville.  An understanding of this community history begins with town histories and other writings noted below devoted to this subject.  The written and oral traditions of families, villages and their artisans and tradesmen form the core and are the basis of community awareness and continued recording of this history.  Liberty and Montville's local historical societies, historians, raconteurs and senior citizens have a collective remembrance that is essential to the reconstruction of this history.  In so far as The Davistown Museum is successful in this mission, it is dependent on community support and participation.  Those who best understand the roots of local history are the members of the families who have lived this history.  The history of the Davistown Plantation can only emerge from a collective effort of recording and perpetuating this oral and written tradition.

The essence of the Davistown History Project is the process of trying to answer a series of questions.  Expanding awareness of local history means these questions are never fully answered.  History does not have the stasis of a mathematical equation.  Whatever history is constructed can be deconstructed or altered when new information becomes available.

The early roads used by the first settlers to bring cordwood, sawn lumber, staves and lime casks to the market port of Belfast follow ancient trails and pathways used by others who preceded European settlement in the Davistown Plantation.  Exploring the palimpsest that is the Davistown Plantation means peeling back layers of history and peering back in time to the ancient dominions of Maine.  The maritime culture of the first wave of settlers in Davistown was, in fact, a third wave of colonial settlers moving inland from the immediate coast of Maine.  This third wave succeeded a second wave of settlement along the edges of the Maine coast from 1710 - 1765, which was kept in check by the Indian Wars and the dangers of settling at inland locations.  The first wave of European settlement in Maine began with the 1607 settlement of Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec River.  This flourishing first colonial dominion of Maine was terminated by the Indian Wars, which swept New England after 1675.  The Indian Wars of 1676 - 1759 ended this first dominion of colonial Maine and restricted the second wave of resettlement to Maine's immediate coast until the defeat of the French at Quebec in 1759, and the ensuing treaty of 1763, finally opened up the state of Maine to the great migration of the post-Revolutionary War era.

The startling presence of another culture, which flourished in coastal Maine just prior to European settlement of New England, is the most compelling of all palimpsests in the history of the Davistown Plantation.  Is it some historical coincidence that the domain of the Native American confederacy of Mawooshen, which stretched from Schoodic Point in Frenchman's Bay, west and south to Massachusetts Bay, exactly matches the cartography of the region of Norumbega on European maps? Rosier, the chronicler of George Waymouth's 1605 voyage to Pemaquid and the St. Georges River, recounted the knowledge of captive natives of this confederacy, the story of which was later published by Samuel Purchas in his Purchas, his Pilgrimage of 1613.

The ancient dominions of those who first lived in coastal Maine prior to first European settlements give rise to a whole other set of questions.  Who lived in this region before the English established the first settlements at Pemaquid, Monhegan, Newagen, Fort Popham, Sheepscot and elsewhere?  Where and how did they live?  Did they practice any form of horticulture?  If so, what were the inland locations of their gardens?  What factors led to their sudden departure?  What archaeological sites attest to their presence on the Maine coast?  How long did they live here, and who preceded them?  What were the natural resources that were most important to these earlier inhabitants of the Maine shoreline?  Where were they located; How were they utilized?  How did they differ in language and lifestyle from the Native Americans living in the eastern sections of the maritime peninsula?  Where was this cultural dividing line?  Did this invisible barrier disappear along with the native communities who lived here?  Did Native Americans from the eastern maritime peninsula  migrate to this area when the original inhabitants of the central Maine coast dispersed?

The history of the Davistown Plantation is a palimpsest of artifacts and events in time.  Its presence beacons us to go back, not just to the boomtown years before the Civil War or to the milieu of the first settlers, but to a prior era when before 1760, Davistown was Indian country.  It took European explorers and settlers two centuries to clear the land of the Native American communities who were its original inhabitants.  What happened in these two centuries is equally important and as intriguing as what happened in Davistown in the two centuries that followed.

• 2500 B.C. - 2000 B.C.  The archaic maritime cultures of coastal northern New England and the Maritime provinces of Canada are suddenly replaced by the Susquehanna tradition and its entirely different tool assemblage.
• 2000 B.C. - 1000 B.C.  The Susquehanna tradition marks the end of the archaic period and gives way to an interregnum that is followed by the appearance of the Eastern Woodland (Abenaki) Indians.
• 1000 B.C. - 1500 A.D.  Increasingly sedentary village centered Abenaki tribes utilizing ceramic implements and possibly with some degree of horticulture dominate coastal Maine east of Schoodic Point until contact with European fishermen, traders and explorers.
• 1500 A.D.  First European contact of the historic period brings disease, dislocation and rapid cultural change. Expansion of the fur trade marks the beginning of the  European exploitation of the resources of Norumbega (the area between the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers including the backcountry of what will later be the Davistown Plantation).
• 1600-1620.  Period of Native American dislocation.
• 1600.  The beginning of 160 years of extermination, warfare and migration of Native Americans in the Norumbega region as well as of the tribes to the west and south.
• 1607 - 1608.  Popham's expedition to the mouth of the Kennebec River establishes the first documented English settlement in Maine.  After a hard winter with disease, fire and conflict with the Native Americans, most, if not all? settlers returned to England.  Overwintering fishermen establish a second Maine settlement on Monhegan Island.
• 1607 - 1615.  Intertribal Indian warfare breaks out as a result of pressures created by the European market for furs.
• 1617-1619.  A great pandemic wipes out most coastal New England Native American tribes as far south as Narragansett Bay (except on Martha’s Vineyard).  Spread of contaminated trade goods (rum, cloth, metal pots) and careening (cleansing the ballast) of European ships utilizing captured Native Americans provide a key pathway for transference of European infectious diseases.
• 1617-1619.  The period of Wawenoc dislocation and scattering.  Small surviving bands of Wawenoc, Kennebec, Androscoggins and other tribes move up the Kennebec River to Swan Island, Cushnoc, Teconnet?
• 1620.  Use of the Muskingum by the Wawenoc Indians as a winter hunting grounds ends as the influx of European settlers to coastal Maine settle at the former tidewater village locations of the dispersed Wawenocs.  Any future Native American hunting and trapping in the Muskingum would be by Etchemins who migrated from eastern Maine to fill the void left by the Wawenoc diaspora.
• 1630-1675.  The great migration of English Puritans to New England commences and continues prior to the outbreak of the religious wars in England (1645); rapid settlement of Maine coastal regions west of Penobscot Bay (1620 - 1675) by the English is accompanied by French settlements in Maine east of the Penobscot Bay.
• 1675-1676.  Outbreak of the King Philip's War, the first of six French and Indian Wars (French vs. English) completely depopulates the English settlements on the coast of Maine west of Wells; in effect, a second colonial diaspora (scattering) occurs, which ended the first colonial dominion of Maine.
• 1713.  Gradual resettlement of coastal Maine resumes as a second wave of English settlers begin to trickle in.
• 1724.  Slaughter of the remnants of the coastal tribes of Norumbega (Wawenocs) and those formerly living west of Norumbega (Kennebecs, Sacos and Androscoggins) at the great massacre of Norridgewock.
• 1759.  Fall of Quebec and the end of the French and Indian Wars.  Rapid resettlement of the Norumbega coast and back country by southern New Englanders.
• 1775 - 1785.  The war for Independence further exacerbates the demand for free land.
• 1780.  First English settlers move into the Davistown Plantation.
• 1790.  The first road built out of Belfast is the Davistown Rd., which appears to have two branches, the first going north of Quantabacook Lake (where Bartlett's mill was) to the Kingdom.  The second branch goes first to Searsmont Center and then to Liberty Village via South Montville and was built later.
• 1798.  The first saw mill was built in the Kingdom section of Montville.
• 1807.  The Davistown Plantation is incorporated as the town of Montville.
• 1810-1840.  The boomtown years of what was the Davistown Plantation.
• 1815.  White Indians attack Joseph Pierce, a Proprietor's agent of the Twenty Associates, at Marshall Spring's White Horse Hotel, just west of Muskingum on the Cushnoc Trail.  (This site can be found just east of Maritime Energy on Route 3 in Liberty.)
• The Davistown area is rapidly cleared of forest and planted with crops.
• Numerous resource based industries established in Davistown Plantation especially at the Muskingum (The Kingdom), Liberty Village, South Liberty and other smaller crossroad villages in the Plantation area.
• The mills and shops of Liberty and Montville help supply wooden components for shipbuilding activities in Waldoboro, Warren and Thomaston, which reached their peak production during this time.
• 1827.  The town of Liberty separates from Montville.  Coopering becomes the dominant trade in Liberty and Montville as coopers supply wooden containers for the downeast cod fisheries, lime casks for the lime coasters and lumber for the West Indies trades.  Many other wood products are milled for local and regional needs.
• 1840.  The beginning of the Industrial Revolution coincides with the decline of population and mercantile activities in  Liberty and Montville.
• The fertile soils of Ohio attract residents from Liberty and Montville as the soils and resources of the area are depleted.
• 1850-1865.  The shipbuilding era in Waldoboro, Warren and Thomaston declines.  The Civil War marks the demise of the cod fishery in Maine and the dominance of an Industrial Revolution that impacts the Liberty/Montville area only in the form of several post Civil War tanneries and a turn of the century cannery.  Mercantile activities that continue in Liberty and Montville after the Civil War represent vestiges of the historic maritime culture that flourished here at the beginning of the 19th century.

When the first European settlers arrived at Plymouth in 1620 they were a prelude to a great migration of Puritan dissenters who came to settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony beginning in 1630.  Both before and immediately after 1620 the Maine coast became a destination of English fishermen and French traders, some of whom already resided in isolated coastal communities in the Penobscot region (English) and east of the Penobscot River (French.)  Puritans seeking trade opportunities also flocked to Maine after 1620, establishing colonial trading posts.  What was a trickle of settlers to Maine in the early 17th century became a flood after 1630 and by 1675 the population of coastal Maine during the first colonial dominion was in excess of 10,000 people.  (Map of European migrations.)

During this first colonial dominion of 1620 - 1675, there were no documented European settlers in the Norumbega backcountry, including Davistown.  Undoubtedly, some of the early coastal residents followed the Sheepscot, Medomak and St. George rivers up to their watersheds in the Davistown Plantation to hunt and to trap following the great pandemic that eliminated most of the Wawenoc Indians from the coastal regions between the Kennebec and the Penobscot rivers.  To what extent surviving bands of Wawenocs or newly arrived bands of Etchemins served to deter hunting and trapping in Davistown is not known and probably will never be known.

The end of the first colonial dominion (1620 -1676) marks the beginning of a second great diaspora.  The advent of King Philip's War and the violence which followed dispersed all of the colonial settlers in Maine west of Wells with the possible exception of the island dwellers on Monhegan.  What ensued was an interregnum in Maine history.  Only after 1710 did small numbers of European settlers begin moving back into the coastal areas.  By 1714, small communities had been reestablished in many locations along the central Maine coast; the nearest one to the Davistown Plantation was Warren, downstream at the head of the tide on St. George River.  During the mid-18th century, Warren, Waldoboro, Thomaston, Wiscasset, Boothbay and Damariscotta became important shipbuilding centers.  These communities first exploited the timber immediately along the shore, which was rapidly depleted.  The shipbuilding industry then became dependent on more inland timber resources.  One of the first reports of timber being harvested from the Davistown Plantation involved the cutting of masts for the King's ships in Montville circa 1720(?).  These huge masts were then transported from Montville to Waldoboro by oxen, following the Indian trail from the outlet of Lake St. George in Liberty to the head of the harbor in Waldoboro.  Today's route 220 from Liberty to Waldoboro follows what appears to be this same route to the sea.  The Indian wars, which continued until the 1750s, prevented the systematic harvesting of the rich timber resources of inland areas until after 1760.

The history of the Davistown Plantation originates with the proprietary claims issued by the Council for New England under Charles I (1629 - 1632).  Brigadier General Samuel Waldo and his partners eventually obtained the English Letters of Patent for the Waldo Patent, which included the Davistown Plantation, one of the three major proprietary patents issued for what is now coastal Maine.  Competing land claims and the uncertainty of clear title combined with the post-Revolutionary War land rush to encourage the first English settlers to begin reclaiming the backcountry of the Waldo patent once occupied by the Wawenoc Indians of Norumbega.  The first English settlers started coming to the Davistown Plantation in 1780.  In 1785, the Massachusetts General Court reaffirmed the proprietary entitlements of the Plymouth Patent and of General Henry Knox and his associates.  This created a conflict between settlers moving into the Davistown and other backcountry communities hoping for free land, and the proprietors wishing to extract as much money from the sale of their titles as they could.  The three decades which followed the resettlement of the Davistown Plantation by coastal Maine and southern New England residents constitute a period of unrest and conflict over the proprietor's land patents culminating in the White Indian attack at the Marshall Springs Hotel in Montville in 1815.  During this time, the Davistown Plantation evolved into the boomtowns of Montville and Liberty.

The essence of the turmoil and conflicts which were a component of the early settlement of the Davistown Plantation are explored in detail in Alan Taylor's Liberty Men and the Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820.  Taylor succinctly summarizes the issue of land claims that in the years after the Revolutionary War provided the context of the rush to settle the Maine frontier by land hungry residents of southern New England.  "Three major proprietary claims, based on letters patent issued between 1629 and 1632 by the Council for New England of Charles I, covered almost all of mid-Maine.  On the west the Pejepscot Proprietors claimed the Pejepscot Patent: the land four miles back on both sides of the Androscoggin River from its mouth to its 'uppermost falls.'  In the center the Kennebeck Proprietors (also known as the Plymouth Company) laid claim to the Plymouth Patent: about three million acres located fifteen miles deep on each side of the Kennebec, Maine's central and most important river.  To the east, Brigadier General Samuel Waldo and two companies of his partners, the Ten Proprietors and the Twenty Associates, claimed the Waldo Patent: about one million acres located between the Medomac and Penobscot rivers.  The Great Proprietors did not possess clear legal title to the lands they claimed.  Drafted in England by lawyers who had never seen the Eastern Country, the three major patents were vague and overlapping.  Worse still, the three major patents were also in conflict with ten smaller proprietary claims: the royal Pemaquid Patent and nine claims based on Indian deeds."  (pg. 12-13).

Taylor's historical survey is the most important introduction to the history of Davistown; it provides essential background for understanding the context of the later histories of Liberty and Montville.  The other histories containing information about the early days of Liberty and Montville are: A brief history of the town of Liberty, Celebration of Centennial Anniversary, Aug. 25, 1927,Hurwitz, 1975, History of Liberty, Maine 1827 - 1975 and Tom Donahue, 1996, The Kingdom in Montville, Maine: A Technological Diary 1789 - 1994.

Taylor cites a Henry Knox comment to illustrate the unspoken tradition of a search for economic gain which stretches back to hopes and motivations of the first English (and Spanish, French and Basque) merchant adventurers who visited the Maine coast in the 16th century: "No part of the United States affords such solid grounds of profit to capitalists, as the District of Maine. -- General Henry Knox, November 11, 1795." (pg. 11).  Needless to say, settlers coming to Maine from southern New England also shared Knox's hope for the opportunity of economic enrichment.

Taylor uses the reminiscences of Benjamin Tibbetts of Liberty, Maine, printed in the Belfast Republican on November 20, 1885, when he was 100 years old, as an introduction to his study of the unrest and backcountry resistance that characterized the rapid settlement of the mid-Maine coast, including backcountry towns like Liberty and Montville.  Taylor summarizes the themes in his historical survey of the settlement of the Maine frontier: "This study examines four phenomena that converged in Benjamin Tibbetts' life: migration to the frontier, labor applied to wilderness land to create property, a spiritual search for divine meaning, and organized resistance to the Great Proprietors.  Widespread in mid-Maine, the settlers' resistance began in the 1760s, lapsed when the Revolution seemed to sweep away the proprietary claims, and revived in the 1790s, after the proprietors reasserted their demands for payment.  Initially the insurgents called themselves Liberty Men or Sons of Liberty: defenders of a Revolution betrayed by America's great men.  But their foes called them White Indians, on account of their disguises and their supposed savagery." (pg. 3).

Tibbetts was one of the last survivors of the initial wave of settlers that had moved into the Davistown Plantation; he moved to Liberty in 1815, had 12 children, 50 grandchildren and was famous for his prowess as an ax man and a farmer.  Tibbetts participated in the famous White Indian raid of September 5, 1815 at the Marshall Springs Hotel in Montville against the proprietor Joseph H. Pierce, Jr.  "The surge of settlers into the backcountry occurred at the same time that the American Revolution encouraged heightened aspirations among the common folk.  The Revolution did not cease in 1783 when the Treaty of Paris ended the war with Great Britain; during the 1780s and 1790s the diverse people who had united against British rule fell out over the social and political implications of their Revolution. ... Benjamin Tibbetts was but one among thousands throughout the American backcountry who combined frontier migration, hard labor, evangelical seeking, and property contention."  (pg. 5).

Taylor continues "Wild Yankees, Anti-Renters, Whiskey Rebels, Regulators, and Liberty Men believed in a different American Revolution, one meant to protect small producers from the moneyed men who did not live by their own labor, but instead, preyed on the many who did."  (pg. 6).

Taylor then summarizes the objectives of the Great Proprietors whose interests are symbolized by Henry Knox's quote above.  "The Great Proprietors, in contrast, insisted that America's commercial development required the emergence of a more efficient, complex, and hierarchical social order where property would become concentrated in the hands of the capitalists who best understood how to employ it to create more property."  (pg. 8).

The summary of Taylor's introduction puts the origins of the Davistown Plantation in the proper national historic context. "In Maine, the process of frontier settlement intersected with America's Revolutionary settlement: the resolution of whose values and whose property interests would be legitimated by the Revolution.  In the immediate wake of the war, thousands migrated from southern New England to mid-Maine in pursuit of autonomy as small farmers.  In their new settlements they gradually acquired improved property in the land, and they developed evangelical meetings hostile to the commonwealth's Congregational establishment.  When, in the 1780s and 1790s, the proprietors revived their dormant land claims, the settlers exploited their distance from political and religious authority to organize a resistance that safeguarded their new property.  But the Great Proprietors were committed to a more hierarchical and paternalistic world view.  They worried that the combination of frontier migration, evangelical religion, and the recent Revolution had produced a centrifugal force that would tear social order apart.  As was the case throughout the American backcountry between 1790 and 1820, the conflict between agrarian and elite ways of defining the Revolution produced a deadlock that became an opportunity for a new breed of political leaders to gain power; Jeffersonian politicians reframed political ideology in a manner that permitted compromise legislation and defused the confrontation.  The conflict between Great Proprietors and Liberty Men and the ultimate triumph of the Jeffersonians were symptomatic of a more widespread social and political transformation: the making of a liberal social order."  (pg. 9-10).

Taylor's maps are an important component of his text along with his many footnotes and extensive bibliography; the one on page 27 differentiates the backcountry communities such as Davistown from the communities along the shore that were settled prior to the Revolutionary War.  The focus of Taylor's history centers on the Norumbega region, especially the communities west of the Kennebec River as well as eastward to the Penobscot and ranging as far north as Frankfort, Clinton, Norridgewock and Industry and as far west as the Androscoggin River in Lewiston.  Of historical interest, and also potentially confusing is the fact that many communities, including Liberty and Montville, had different names in 1800 than they have now.  The following is a selection of some of the more important towns in the Revolutionary period of the Maine frontier, with the current name being followed by the 1800 designation:  Albion (Freetown), Brooks (Bryant Ridge), China (Harlem), Freedom (Beaver Hill/Smithtown), Jefferson (Balltown), Liberty/Montville (Davistown), Lincolnville (Ducktrap), Morrill (Great Meadow Settlement), Mount Vernon (Washington Plantation), Northport (New Canaan), Palermo (Sheepscot Great Pond Settlement, Claytown), Wiscasset (Pownalborough), Searsmont (Quantabacook), Sommerville (Patricktown), Swanville (Lee Plantation), Troy (Bridgestown), Unity (Twenty Five Mile Pond Settlement), Whitefield (Balltown/ Hunts Meadow) and Windsor (Malta, New Waterford, and Pinhook).  Morrill, Searsmont and Belmont were all part of a large plantation called Green Plantation.

In the History of Liberty, published in 1975 by the Liberty Historical Society, the early history of Liberty, its grants and the Waldo indenture and agreement between the heirs of General Samuel Waldo are briefly summarized.  Alfred Hurwitz, the author of this history, notes that James Davis from Massachusetts was one of the first settlers of Montville, arriving in 1780.  He settled with his wife and 12-year-old son, William, in Davistown, probably near the current location of the Maritime Energy facility on Route 3.  Davis was a Presbyterian Elder, a Liberty Man and a rebel.  He wrote with Samuel Ely in 1796 The Davistown Resolves, a pamphlet calling for unified resistance against Henry Knox and the Great Proprietors.  He is referred to in the Henry Knox Papers as "Old Davis".  His son Elias was the first child born in the settlement, in December, 1781.

The History of Liberty contains little additional information about the early settlers, it focuses on the formation of Montville in 1807, and the incorporation of Liberty in 1827.  Donahue's The Kingdom in Montville, Maine provides additional information about Montville, which constituted the northern half of the Davistown Plantation.  Donahue notes that Montville was settled in 1778, had 6 families by 1790 and 50 families by 1800.  Smith Cram, one of the first settlers in the village known as the Kingdom, built his mill in 1798-99.  Ezechial Knowlton and others may have had mills running by 1797.

The rapid settlement of Davistown resulted in the establishment of numerous villages possibly beginning with the Kingdom and then soon including Center Montville, South Montville, Liberty Village, McFarland's Corner, Sherman's Corner, Peavytown and South Liberty.  The flood of settlers into Davistown and other backcountry coastal towns came as a result of a lack of land in southern New England and a timber shortage, which had reached critical proportions before and during the Revolutionary War.  The wealth of timber resources and the hope for free land (an illusion) in Maine, provided the impetus for rapid population increase in the late 18th and first three decades of the 19th century.

The result was a booming economy, with rapid construction of coastal ports and towns.  Liberty and Montville appeared to play a key role in the construction of the many brick buildings in Portland and Boston by being the center of production for the wooden lime casks necessary to carry lime from the lime kilns of Thomaston to be used for the production of mortar.  This lime was transported south to the coastal cities of southern New England and the midAtlantic states by a specially designed variation of the ubiquitous "coasters" built in the many shipyards of coastal Maine.  The lime cask production utilized the south branch of the Davistown Rd. to Searsmont Center.  Other products of Liberty and Montville's thriving community of coopers were shipped to Belfast by the north branch of the Davistown Rd.  These commercial activities help explain why in Joseph Williamson'sHistory of the City of Belfast, the first road leading out of town in 1790 was called the Davistown Road.  The organization of The Davistown History Project is in part an attempt to answer the question: why would such a road be constructed at such an early date?  What was in Davistown in 1790 that required a road to Belfast, or roads to Waldoboro, Union or Thomaston?  Clearly the booming economy of coastal Maine depended on the vast timber resources of areas such as Davistown.  The rapidity of road construction is a testament of the importance of timber in the early days of Davistown.  Less than 100 years after the first settlers came to Davistown, the land was cleared of forest and the local economy was in rapid decline.

Mike Beaudry
 

In Come Spring, the romantic novel about the settlement of Union, Ben Ames Williams describes an odd eccentric, hermit from the area of Davistown (Montville) that Williams calls "I'm Davis."He has a long white beard and hair, dresses in animal skins, hunts and traps from the Kennebec to Penobscot Bay.His home is a hovel dug out of the stream bank at the headwaters of the Georges River, beyond Quantabacook and Ruffingham Meadow.
 

The question is often asked, " Did such a character actually exist, or was this merely the whimsical creation of Williams?"
 

The answer is that the "I'm Davis" character is rooted in historical fact, but that the character was based not upon a single person, but the merging of two very peculiar people that lived in the early settlement of Davistown.
 

The first was a person that went by the name "Davis".Cyrus Eaton, in the Annals of Warren, describes him as follows:
 

1784. About this time, began to appear in the woods, and occasionally visit the settlement, a man by the name of Davis, one of those singular characters that sometimes vary the picture of life; a sort of "Leatherstocking" of the wilderness, hovering on the borders between civilized and savage society.He lived a solitary life in the woods, clad in skins, and subsisting on the products of the chase, which formed his sole occupation.He had no intercourse with the settlers, except an occasional visit for the purpose of exchanging furs for ammunition and other necessities; but his path was frequently crossed by the hunter, who was oftentimes entertained by him with such refreshments as his camp afforded.On these occasions, he was hospitable and social, talked of his dangers and accidents by "flood and field, he hair-breadth 'scapes," and causeless frights, with apparent satisfaction; but it was evident his heart was not with his guests - he sighed not at their departure, and returned with pleasure to the society of his own feelings.His grotesque appearance, his hairy costume, his beard descending to his breast, and his white locks streaming to the wind, excited the curiosity of children, and rendered his coming a memorable event.Nor was his behaviour more free from whimsical peculiarities, than his dress.One of these was that of bowing, with great reverence, when favored with the sight of bread.Whether this proceeded from religious, or other motives, his distant and taciturn manners rendered it difficult to determine.He shifted his quarters to various places, as convenience required, and followed hunting and trapping from the Kennebec to the Penobscot.From his long residence in the present town of Montville, that place, before its incorporation was called Davistown.Of his early history, and the time of his coming hither, nothing is known.Rumor ascribed his eccentricity to disappointment in love, and it was said that he had one daughter in the western country to whom he contrived to remit the proceeds of his hunting.On one occasion, after a hunting tour of some days, he returned to his camp, kindled a fire, and sat down to his lonely musings; when suddenly startled by the most piercing cries proceeding from his fire.At first he could ascribe it to nothing but the foul fiend himself; but a huge tortoise, crawling out from the ashes in which he had made his bed, soon relieved his apprehensions, and afforded him a delicious repast.At another time, he was confined to his camp near starving.In this time, his traps were found by a hunting party from Warren, and, from their neglected appearance, being supposed to be abandoned, were carried off.The owner, however, recovering in season to observe the tracks of the party, pursued them, and recovered his property.He continued this kind of life for a long period, when, his hunting range being gradually curtailed by the settlement of the country, and his natural powers abating, he was at last compelled to receive support from his fellowmen, and is said to have died a pauper, in one of the towns that had sprung up beneath his eyes on the borders of the Penobscot.

Eaton, however, introduces us to a second character that filled the eccentric void left by Davis; and who Williams merged with Davis to create his character "I'm Davis."
 

But the majestic groves and lofty peaks of Montville, were not slow to attracting another kindred spirit, to enjoy its primeval society, before it should all be transformed by the sturdy hand of advancing industry.Toward the close of the [18^th] century, a man equally eccentric, but more communicative and intelligent, by the name of Barrett, wandered hither from New Hampshire, and for more than 40 years, passed a life of solitude in the woods of that town.

Timothy Barrett, at the age of 30, came to Davistown in 1793.He lived a hermit's life.His home was a cave dug into a clay bank ledge up above Ruffingham Meadow, on a stream that now bears his name.The Montville Comprehensive Plan says he dug a canal between Center Stream and Thompson Brook to furnish power for the old mill below [ Barrett's mill].In 1807, Barrett sold his 62 acres to Samuel Campbell for $100 and moved to the shore of True's pond.His manner of living did not change with his move.The following was recorded in the Rockland Opinion:

Sixty years ago the coming summer four of us visited Timothy Barrett.He was dressed shabbily and his habitation was decidedly primitive.It was made of poles stood apart at the bottom and drawn together at the top.He had a small stone fireplace on one side, and on the other a nest - it could not be called a bed.He had a piece of white cloth about his head and his feet were bare.We told him we should not think his food would be good.He said it was not.His bread was not half baked.His hut was near a mill pond on which he had a floating garden, a raft of logs with soil enough on them to grow vegetables.The way into his habitation was through a grove of young wild trees interspersed with bearing apple trees, of which, by his leave, we partook - not the trees but the apples.

Timothy Barrett died in 1847.

Sources:

Eaton, Cyrus.Annals of Warren.Masters & Livermore : Hallowell.1877.

Goodwin Papers.Special Collections.Fogler Library.University of Maine, Orono.

"History." Montville Comprehensive Plan.1991. 

(THE DAVISTOWN RESOLVES)

THE

MOUNT OF DISTRESS;
TO THE GENERAL COURT,
OR
TO ALL THE WORLD

PORTSMOUTH, N. H.

Printed by CHARLES PEIRCE, Proprietor of the Work.

Written by Samuel Ely and Elder James Davis

1796

(The Revolutionary Document that called for a unified and militant backcountry in defiance to Major-General Henry Knox and his claim to the Waldo Patent – Knox, Lincoln and Waldo counties.)

The united cry and heart affecting voice of the two counties of Lincoln and Hancock, is that of the Prophet of Amos, where fays the poor are fold for filver, and the needy for a pair of fhoes, but the author advifes both Counties to choofe a landed Committee of three men to fuperintend the prudentials of their landed intereft – under the jurisdiction of their good Conftitution in each town and plantation, and then to authorife their feveral commitees to meet in one or the other Counties in a peaceable manner to confult the general intereft of the whole, and to adopt the anticipated refolves herein recommended, or fuch others as prudence fhall dictate when convened, which doutlefs will be to forward thofe refolves either by their agents or reprefentatives to the General Court, toplead for an equitous committee to execute deeds in behalf of the State on the fpot, and if this recommendary gift to the two Counties is worthy of acceptance, doubtlefs each town and plantation will publifh their intentions relative to the premifes and each town fay when and where their committees fhall affemble, which plan is confonant to the plan in London, where they convened to numbers of 200,000.

In a folemn manner we refolve to defend the conftitution of the ftate with all its civil officers, at the expence [sic] of life and fortune, unlefs tis where are rights are unjuftly invaded by the unjuft influence of land jobbers to excite civil officers to deftroy and ruin our families, in which cafe our virtuous conftitution does not operate.

The votes and refolves of the County of Hancock or the proceedings of the feveral towns and plantations in faid County relative to the unjuft and illegal title of K[nox] to his fpurious patent, in which we fhall
 

1ft.State the peoples’ Bill of Rights.

2d.Give a list of their former and prefent gievances.

3d.The equitious neceffity of their occafional resolves.

4^th.Shew the wifdom of the united affociation of the people.

5^th.Clofe with an addrefs to all the world.

2d.We fay our emigration on to this land, cant include by no means the fhadow of forfeiture, but muft by the immutable law of reafon and equity give juft and pofitive poffeffion of thefe land as a reward for war services.Thefe are the united fentiments of the firft Congrefs that ever met in America.

3d.Give a lift of the firft as well as the prefent grievances of the people – Their grievances begun as foon as they were landed at Broad-Bay.Waldo first promifed them their paffage free to America, but he ftripped them and robbed them of their houfhold goods and money. – Then inftead of fulfilling his folemn repeated promiffary engagements to the poor Germans, in giving them two hundred acres of land a piece, he fettled the whole of them off of his patent, and they have had all their lands to buy of other proprietors, then inftead of fupplying them with a years provifion, as he promifed them many of them ftarved to death, and many others furvived by boiling nothin but lentile herbs and clams; then inftead of peace they waded through Indian war of feven years, and numbers of them were flain; then their prefent children have confronted Britifh terror and have fought to blood and flaughter to defend their lands and lives; and now though Waldo do forfeited his patent twice under the crown, now comes a K[nox], and claims the whole, who fays he ftands in Waldo’s fhoes, and his whole cry is pay me from two to four dollars per acre, or he will drive all the people from their poffeffions, and this demand has put it out of the peoples power ever to have any more fchools or a preached gospel;In the name of wonder where do we live?Not in a land of freedom, but in Algiers, for we are clogged, fhackled and fettered with a loaded demand, which three quarters of the people can never pay no more than they can create a world.Now after fuch a fyftem of crueltiies, invafions and violations of all the principles of the rights and properties of us poor people, we proceed to agree in the following refoves.

1ft.We refolve that we will not pay K[nox] nor his agents, nor nobody elfe one penny for our lands, but the State only.
 

2d.We refolve K[nox] nor his agents nor no furveyor whatever, fhall be allowed to put a chain or compafs on no land from the North Eaft corner of Ducktrap, to a line running north weft by north till it ftrikes Penobfcot road, which runs to Fort Halifax on Kennebeck river, tho’ no State furveyor fhall be included in this refolve.
 

3d.We refolve in our judgment we fhall leave him a garden fpot above the line, we have drawn, about 140 thoufand acres of land which is almoft feven townfhips, fix miles fquare, and if that will not fatisfy his voracious appetite, a world placed in his heart would ftill make him cry like the horfe leach, give, give.
 

4^th.We refolve that no furveyor nor agent under K[nox] fhall efcape the refentment of the people under the direction of their committees, in cafe they do attmpt to furvey the premifes, or to cheat the people any longer by felling land under K[nox] on this unlawful granted patent.

5^th.We refolve that no civil officer or fheriff fhall be allowed to take or apprehend any man for oppofing or refcuing any man out of his hands when taken.
 

6^th.We refolve that no civil officer fhall be indulged to ferve any writ of ejectment on any inhabitant for taking up or improving any lands on this patent, provided faid writ is iffued by any proprietor or his attorney, till decided by the General Court.

7^th.We refolve that one inhabitant fhall not break in upon the furvey of another where they have done it, they fhall quit the premifes, or we will drive them off by force, that the people may have peace among themfelves.

8^th.We refolve that they ought in juftice to the poor people on this fpurious patent, to have their feveral committees take up and furvey in each of their towns about fix hundred acres of land to fupport the gofpel and fchools.

9^th.We refolve to join all the towns and plantations on this patent as one united body, together with the County of Lincoln, againft all fets of proprietors, who are harraffing the people in law, and to afford them our perfonal affiftance to defend their landed intereft whenever they fhall apply for the fame at the commands of faid committees.

10^th.We refolve that whenever any man in any town or plantation; or any ftranger fhall want to take up or furvey any land for themfelves, they muft make application to the landed committee and furrender their application to their judgement and direction.

11^th.We refolve that there is on this land claimed by K[nox] above feven hundred children, in our judgement, which never had a fhoe or ftocking to wear from the womb to nine years of age, but their extreme poverty is no defence againft an abufive cruel nabob who is continually crying pay me for my land or I will drive you from your bark huts.

12^th.We refolve that in our judgement the General Court will prove as eager and willing to vacate and nullify K[nox]’s oppreffive grant, when they maturely confider the time the grant was made, the few members then in the houfe, the oppreffive effects attending the people, the impolicy of the grant in a free ftate, as King Ahaffurus was to vacate and revoke his bloody edict in favour of Haman againft the poor Jews.

13^th.We refolve that no man can deceive a people more, or cheat them worfe than K[nox], when he knows he can’t warrant nor defend a fingle foot of land, called Waldo’s patent, on account of the numerous train of heirs which are as much proprietors of the fame as he is.

14^th.We refolve that the people on this land and in this country have as undoubted a right to the foil they now poffefs, as Vermont had to theirs, who never was called upon to pay neither State nor Continent for their lands, though above half of Vermont was patent land, granted to York land jobbers; why then are we not as much the owners of this foil by conqueft, as Vermont?If fo, why fhould the people yield up their property to the arbitrary difpofal of any man on earth? Yet left we are called refractory, we are free to pay the ftate for our lands.4 Shew the wisdom of the united affociations of the people; the wifdom, the importance and abfsolute juftice of this affociation of all people in Hancock and Lincoln counties, will abundantly appear for thefe reafons, as

1ft.Becaufe the people have been harraffed and embaraffed by law, with a fet and fets’ of proprietors for near forty years, and are ftill in the bowels of the law.Now,

2d.Becaufe the damages the people have fuftained, and the great cofts in law they have paid, would have purchafed all their lands thirty times over, in its original ftate.

3d.Becaufe we defy according to the prefent different fets of proprietors claiming the fame land, to difcover a fingle circumftance, promifing from any quarter the faintest hopes of obtaining any refpit in law, but muft as thing now are, ftill fuffer the oppreffive feverities of law in the hands of craving land jobbers to the end of time.

4^th.Becaufe the efficatious means of your deliverance from final poverty, from infamous oppreffion, from entailed miferies to pofterity, now depends upon the union of the people; and iffelf-prefervation, if a long ceres of violent abufes, if an accumlation of artful intrigues, if ftrenuous efforts to provoke innocency itfelf, can ftimulate human being to affociate for to refcue themfellves from ruin and tame fubmiffion.Then we as part of yourfelves, are united to call upon you all as one man to adopt our refolves, and defend them in fuch a manner, as we have fincerely recommended, Which brings us

5^th.To clofe with the whole with and Addrefs to all the World.

We are forry to fay, yea we feel reluctant to exprefs our being compelled to difapprove the General Court in giving away fuch immenfe tracts of land, when each individual in the State had an intereft in all public property, and whenever they do on any principle whatever, they injured the State, and fubvert the promotion of republican government, why then is this degrading deftiantion made, or, what can entitle on man to five hundred thoufand acres of land, and another to one hundred, when both have merited in the fervice of their country an equal award for their heroifm and fidelity?Indeed idiotcy itfelf cannot believe in piling up property in fuch a manner on one man, to the robbing of thoufands, which in fact is the very cafe, heaven frobid fuch injuftice, heaven awake your attention, heaven confolidate all your hearts like David and Jonathan into a living band of brothers to arife and ftand forth like herces in defence of your invaded rights and; lands fear not the terrors of thirfty land-jobbers, but remember the intention and purity of our conftitution was made to defend the poor from the rich, the weak from the powerful, the induftrious from the rapacious, the peaceable from the violent, the tenants from the lords, and all from their fuperiors.Motives thus cogent arifinng from the emergency of your unhappy condition muft excite your utmoft diligence and zeal to give all poffible energy to have our refolves fupported, as we firmly believed they are calculated for your relief, and will put a ftoppage to the ruin of your families, yes, you know that the tranfcendent nature of freedom, and an equitable enjoyment of the rights of men, will always elevate thofe who unite in the caufe of justice; but if the Court will be deaf to our cries, and afford us no relief, let us adopt Vermont plan, by voting ourfelves into a feparate State, from as they did, an affembly of our own, nulify and vacate patents as they did, then peace will reign triumphant, and there will be none in the Province of Maine to make them afraid.

1. Query.Was ever any people on earth fo abufed in law, as the counties of Lincoln and Hancock.No, no, no.
 

2. Query.Was ever there fo much money, time and pains loft by a poor people in America.No, no, no.

3. Query.Was there ever a people before harraffed in law, for thirty-five years, that ever bore it with more patience or perfeverance.No, no, no.

4. Query.Was there ever before three or four diftinct fets of proprietors making equal claims to the fame lands.No, no, no.

5. Query.Will there not be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and to a thoufand different fets of claimants, heirs and proprietors to the fame patent which K[nox] owns.Yes, yes, yes.

6. Query.Then who on earth is fafe or fecure to purchafe a fingle foot of land of K[nox].Anfwer, Nobody.

7. Query.Then what Fool will ever buy of him.Anfwer, there is no fuch fools.

FINIS.

The Freedom of the PRESS is effencial to the fecurity of OUR RIGHTS.

The high point in both population and commercial productivity of Liberty and Montville appears to be around 1835-45.

The baseline data for the historical register for Liberty and Montville has been obtained from the following sources: A Brief History of the Town of Liberty:  Celebration of Centennial Anniversary:  August 25, 1927,  History of Liberty (Hurwitz, 1975) and The Kingdom in Montville, Maine: A Technological Diary 1789-1984 (Donahue).  The Davistown Plantation became the town of Montville in 1807; Liberty was split off from Montville in 1827. The location of early settlers, mills and other historical information given below is the name of the location at the time it was established.  To avoid confusion we do not use the word Davistown in the listings below.

This registry will be perused by the residents of Liberty and Montville.  Hopefully, they will enrich our knowledge of the earliest residents of the Davistown Plantation, the location of surviving early homes and other buildings and the mercantile history of both the Davistown Plantation and the many villages that comprised Liberty and Montville.  Visitors to this website with additional information, please contact the Museum by email, snail mail or fax.