The Davistown Museum

The Mast Trade
We also suggest you check under loggers and sawyers in the toolmaking trades bibliography.
Additionally, we have an information file on lumbering in Maine.

Albion, Robert G. (1926). Forests and sea power: The timber problem of the Royal Navy 1652-1862. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Reprinted in 2000 by Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD. IS.

Crowe, Mike. (February 2003). All shook up. Fishermen's Voice. pg. 1, 6-7. IS.

See annotations of this article in the Maine Town Histories bibliography under Bangor.

Barry, William David and Peabody, Frances W. (1982). Tate House: Crown of the Maine mast trade. National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of Maine, Portland, ME.

"Through a series of parliamentary acts, stretching back to 1691 and augmented over the following decades, the crown claimed all white pine trees measuring more than twenty-four inches at the butt." (pg. 11).
"Masts might weigh as much as eighteen tons and were baulked or hauled by as many as one hundred oxen." (pg. 10).
"If masts were baulked out in the summer, giant wheels, later called galamanders, were employed. But sleds were safer and cheaper and more men could be gathered in the cropless season. Mast roads served to open the backcountry..." (pg. 10).
"Mast ships boasted huge stern ports through which the great sticks were hoisted and stored." (pg. 10).
"The White Pine Acts were first challenged in court in 1734, when John Frost of Berwick, Maine, sued a contractor working for the Boston-based mast agent, Samuel Waldo. Frost claimed that trees growing on his land could not belong to the crown. After a decade of transatlantic legal battling, nothing was decided. In the following years, settlers resorted to sawing up pine, damaging trees of size, fighting surveyors' men and, by the 1770s the courts were less able to enforce the laws." (pg. 12).
"Of the early surveyors general, David Dunbar of Portsmouth was the most rash. In 1730 he arrived at lumbering settlements on Maine's Sheepscot River where 'with an armed force, (he) turned them from their lands, seized their timber, (and) burned and destroyed their houses.'" (pg. 12).
"Though less thoroughly documented, the resentment of inland settlers toward the government's pine policy was as real as that of the coastal merchants toward trade regulations. Thus, backwoods anger smoldered and flashed until it became one with the general fire of the Revolution." (pg. 13).
"Samuel Waldo, the mast agent at Boston, was one of Massachusetts' most powerful and ambitious merchants. He was a prime mover and chief proprietor of the Muscongus or Waldo Patent..." (pg. 13).

Carlton, William. (March 1939). New England masts and the King's Navy. New England Quarterly. 12(1). pg. 4-18.

Carroll, Charles F. (1973). The timber economy of Puritan New England. Brown University Press, Providence, RI.

Chapman, L. B. (1896). The mast industry of Old Falmouth. Collections and Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society. Second Series. 7. pg. 390 - 404.

Defebaugh, James Eliot. (1906 - 1907). History of the lumber industry of America. 2 Vols. The American Lumberman, Chicago, IL.

Kyan, John Howard. (1839). An answer to the supplemental chapter in Lord Anson's life (by Sir John Barrow, Bart.) in reference to the preservation of timber for the Navy. Printed for the author by W. H. Cox, 5, GT. Queen Street, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, London. X.

Malone, Joseph J. (1964). Pine trees and politics: The naval stores and forest policy in colonial New England, 1691-1775. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA.

Manning, S.F. (1979). New England masts and the King's broad arrow. Thomas Murphy, Publisher, Summer Street, Kennebunk, ME. Revised edition by Tilbury House, Gardiner, ME.

"To 'twitch' a log is to move it over the ground by brute strength without benefit of wheels or runners. It is one of those expressions used by woodsmen which harks back to the mast trade." (pg. 24).

Pike, R.E. (1967). Tall trees, tough men. New York, NY.

Smith, David Clayton. (1971). Lumbering and the Maine woods: A bibliographical guide. Maine Historical Society, Portland, ME.

National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of Maine. (date unknown). A catalyst for independence: The mast trade in the Province of Maine. Tate House, Portland, ME.

"This twelve minute video relates the history of the mast trade, how it affected the economic and social development of the region and planted the seeds of a revolution."

Thurston, F.G. (1940). Three centuries of Freeport, Maine. Freeport, ME.

Wood, Richard G. (1935). A history of lumbering in Maine, 1820-1861. University Press [of Maine], Orono, ME. Reprinted on April 10, 1961 in The Maine Bulletin, Maine Studies No. 33. IS.

Some quotes about the mast trade excerpted from this book can be found in our information file on lumbering in Maine.