The Davistown Museum is happy to announce that we have completed our climate controlled Tools Teach study and storage areas with adjoining reference library and sleeping facilities. Our Tools Teach program has been expanded to include the following components.
Our Tools Teach publication will include extensive photographs of the basic tools characterizing each trade. The text will have an introduction summarizing the historical context of the tools illustrated in the text. Our Hand Tools in History series provides extensive additional historical information for the student who wishes to make a more detailed study of New England's maritime and industrial history. All publications are available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com.
The Davistown Museum is a regional history, tool, and art museum in the hill country of central coastal Maine. The theme of the Museum, as formulated in a 2005 exhibition of the same title, is The Marriage of Tools, Art, and History. Museum operations now take place in three locations: the main facility in Liberty Village, the History Information Visitors’ Center in Searsport, and the Hulls Cove office and Sculpture Gardens, the location of Pennywheel Press Publications and additional library facilities.
Specific Museum Missions with respect to our educational outreach programs include:
Our focus as a regional museum is the role that hand tools have played in New England’s maritime and industrial history. A more detailed statement of the mission of our educational outreach program is:
Tools: To locate, recover, restore, preserve, catalog, display, and interpret the hand tools of New England’s early American industries. Our special emphasis is on the shipsmiths and edge toolmakers who made the hand tools that facilitated the florescence of New England’s maritime and industrial economy from 1607 to 1930. Relevant trades include the iron forgemaster, blacksmith, shipwright, cooper, wheelwright, sail maker, pattern maker, and, after 1870, machinist, tool and die maker, and mechanic.
Educational Outreach: Our vision for the future is to disseminate our knowledge and provide access to our collections to more people, especially scholars, history investigators, and students, through whatever means are available to us.
To further this mission, we regularly offer public presentations on subjects such as the history of Davistown Plantation (now the towns of Liberty and Montville) from 1800 to 1865, or the industrial and maritime history of Maine and New England. These activities combined with our comprehensive website provide those without access to the hands-on experience of the DTM with an introduction to the collections and the possibilities for study and exploration.
Important future missions of the Davistown Museum include making available trade-specific tools that help tell the story of New England and America’s maritime and industrial history to public education institutions through our School Tool Loan Program, expanding our on site hands-on access to our extensive tool collections, and developing our new online Tools Teach Program. These ongoing efforts will further the DTM educational goals.
Tool Collections: The Davistown Museum has one of the largest collections of hand tools on display and available for public examination in the US. Our special focus is on the edge tools (woodworking tools such as axes, adzes, and timber framing chisels), which played a key role in the success of the New England colonies and the American Revolution. Visitors to the Main Exhibition Hall on the third floor of our Liberty facility (see photo tour) will encounter an extensive and accessible display of edge tools and other artifacts, which illustrate life in early America and the transition to an industrial society beginning in the 1840s. Unlike any other museum, many of our tools are available for students and visitors to handle and examine (at their own risk). One focus of our third floor display area is the historic variations in the metallurgy of edge tools: natural steel, German steel, cementation steel, crucible steel, drop forged steel, and the variety of techniques used in their manufacture. Our tool cataloguing area is located on the second floor of the Liberty facility, where visiting students have an additional opportunity to examine the tools in our collection. Our first floor workshops now include a new and extensive climate controlled tool storage facility, which allows students additional opportunities to examine tools in our collections. This facility was made possible by a grant from the Maine New Century Community Program for Historical Facilities and will play a key role in the growth of our Tools Teach Program.
On Site Library Resources
Liberty: The Davistown Museum was recently the beneficiary of the library of the EAIA (Early American Industries Association) writer Elliot Sayward. In conjunction with the large collection of books on tools, the history of technology, and New England maritime and industrial history already assembled by the Liberty Tool Co. and the Museum curator, the Museum’s Center for the Study of Early Tools library provides one of the largest selections of titles on these subjects. The Museum libraries are unique in that they allow visitors, visiting students, and readers immediate hands-on access to the library collections in conjunction with nearby comfortable reading rooms. Library locations at the Liberty Museum building include the Elliot Sayward Memorial Library on the third floor, an extensive selection of our most frequently used references in the Main Hall, the Center for the Study of Early Tools library on the second floor, and the newly expanded library resources adjacent to our new climate controlled tool storage facility on the first floor, which will also hold additional selections from the Elliot Sayward Memorial Library. The Liberty facility also includes the archives and library of the Center for Biological Monitoring and our environmental history library on the fourth floor. Overnight accommodations are now available for visiting students and scholars.
Searsport: In the spring of 2010, the Davistown Museum opened its History Information Visitors Center in Searsport next to Captain Tinkham’s Emporium. The library collections at this location are divided into Native American, early American industries, the Classic Period of American toolmaking, and a greatly expanded environmental history library pertaining to chemical fallout and the biohistory of industrial society. The Searsport reading room is open whenever Captain Tinkham’s is open and includes a comfortable reading area and online access.
Hulls Cove: The Hulls Cove office is the location for Pennywheel Press Publications and is the home of the Curator. Its extensive reference library is available to interns and visitors by appointment only (curator@davistownmusum.org).
Publications
The publications of the Davistown Museum are a key element in its educational outreach and Tools Teach Program. The courses listed in the Tools Teach Program are all linked to one or more Museum publications and are referenced in the preliminary course descriptions that follow. Visitors interested in our Tools Teach Program contents can review Museum publications, many illustrated below, by clicking on Publications in the sidebar. Status, ordering, and pricing information is available for each Museum publication. Museum publications, as well as the Tools Teach Program, are divided into two sections. Our Hand Tools in History series (See cover illustrations below), seven volumes including Norumbega Reconsidered, are basic references used in the first component of our Tools Teach Program, a description of which follows. Our recent ad in the New York Times Book Review (12/5/2010) advertises both our Hand Tools in History series and our survey of the impact of industrial society on a World Commons with finite and easily depleted resources.
A natural follow-up to our survey of the role of hand tools in history is our examination of the larger panorama of the biohistory of the florescence of industrial society, the topic of the second component of our Tools Teach Program, the Phenomenology of Biocatastrophe publication series. Unfortunately, a rapidly accelerating world water crisis, cataclysmic climate change, emerging viral and bacterial infections, and ubiquitous endocrine disrupting chemical fallout have now merged into the alarming evolution of the age of biocatastrophe. The latest museum publication series links these developments to declining ecosystem diversity and productivity; the evolution of a global consumer society; an increasingly predatory shadow banking network; rapidly expanding personal, corporate, and governmental indebtedness; and declining public resources to meet the challenges of an aging industrial society under increasing social stress. In this context, the accelerating contamination of all world food webs with environmental chemicals, as manifested in increasing ecotoxins in the breast milk and maternal cord blood of the women of all nations, demands systematic documentation and informed debate as the defining historical event of the 21st century. This latter publication series forms the context for the second component of the Tools Teach Program.
The nuclear disaster, which began in Japan on March 11, 2011, was the impetus for our newest environmental publication Fukushima Daiichi: Nuclear Information Handbook. It incorporates the archives of the Center for Biological Monitoring in the context of the ongoing accident in Japan. This publication is available in soft cover or Kindle from Amazon.com.
Opportunities for Learning at the Davistown Museum
Tools Teach
Tools Teach: A Guide for Teachers and Students: Pre-school-Secondary
Judith’s summary of the educational resources available at the Davistown Museum provides an excellent overview of the opportunities for learning about tools and their role in history prior to our development of our online Tools Teach Program.
The first course in our online Tools Teach Program is Basic Machines: See Vol. 14, Tools Teach: A Guide for Teachers and Students: Pre-school-Secondary by Judith Bradshaw Brown. (This text will be the first section of our upcoming publication, Tools Teach: An Introduction to Early American Industries.)
Our new online publication will incorporate our existing tool collections, website resources, Museum publications, and bibliographies in conjunction with online photographs of specific tools of interest, and hopefully, donations of tools or photographs of tools from collectors and institutions throughout the nation who have material artifacts relevant to our course presentations. Please visit our Fundraising Campaign page if you have tools or photographs to donate to the Museum Tools Teach Program. Of course we welcome your membership in the Museum as well as your generous gifts to our fundraising campaign.
On Site, Hands-on Access to Tools and Other Artifacts
When the Davistown Museum opened in 2000, it was different from other museums in that it provided hands-on access to much of its tool collection for visitors interested in the forms and metallurgy of early woodworking tools. Since 2000, the Museum collections have grown from a few hundred to thousands of tools, all selected for their historical importance. Newly discovered and recently donated tools are added to the collection weekly. Criteria for selection include important maker’s signatures, metallurgy, unique forms, particular trades, unidentified tool forms, tools signed by local toolmakers, and those signed by unknown toolmakers. As noted, visitors have hands-on access to tools not only in the Main Hall displays, but also in the second floor cataloguing area and the new first floor Center for the Study of Early Tools work areas.
School Tool Loan Program
A long term objective of the Museum collections has been to make individual tools available for loan to public schools as well as to other institutions. Individual tools have been loaned out to historical societies, other museums, and an occasional visiting teacher. Our new climate controlled tool storage facility at Liberty will greatly assist us in expanding our School Tool Loan Program. With the help of future fundraising efforts, and the donation of additional tools from other collections, we hope to expand our School Tool Loan Program to include presentations on specific trades such as cooper, edge toolmaker, shipwright, and blacksmith.
Tools Teach Courses
The following is a preliminary list of our Tools Teach courses, divided into Tools Teach History courses and courses pertaining to the environmental history of industrial society.
Tools Teach History Courses
Mission: To utilize the hand tool collections, publications, libraries, and internet resources at the Davistown Museum (DTM) as well as those at other museums to facilitate the study of the maritime and industrial history of New England and other related subjects. Many other important publications will also be cited as the online course content is posted.
(WIP = Works in Progress, spiral bound copies only, not available from amazon.com)
Note: This is a preliminary listing of Tools Teach courses and associated publications and is subject to modification.
Environmental History Courses (Center for Biological Monitoring)
Mission: To utilize the online and library resources of the Davistown Museum and the environmental chemical biomonitoring databases of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), other governmental agencies, and non-governmental environmental organizations (NGOs) to document ecotoxins in biotic media, including humans.
Beginning in 2003, the Davistown Museum had its first visiting intern. We have had summer and winter interns up to the summer of 2010. We now have a dedicated studio apartment, including kitchen facilities, available for a visiting intern.
The Davistown Museum now has an internship available that includes a use of a cabin adjacent to the Davistown Museum, which has a small kitchen and bathroom facilities. Visiting interns will also have access to the visitors and staff kitchen, staff shower, libraries, and reading couches in all areas of the museum. Internships, if not associated with a college semester schedule, may range from 8 weeks to 16 weeks and include use of all Museum facilities (3 locations), including:
Interns or intern sponsor(s) are requested to reimburse the Davistown Museum at the rate of $400 per four week internship/study period for facility expenses.
Intern responsibilities include:
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:
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* 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.
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.
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:
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 an excellent 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:
Library Inventory Listing
Bibliographies (The IS at the end of a bibliography listing indicates that the Davistown Museum has a copy "in stock.")
