Volume 10:
Registry of Maine Toolmakers
Table of Contents
European Precedents
American Iron
Changing
Toolmaking Technologies
Toolmakers
in Maine
Shipbuilding
in Maine 1607 - 1900
Maine's
Edge Toolmakers
Coopers
and Others
The
Origins of Planemaking
Planemaking
in Colonial New England
Maine's
Earliest Planemakers
Toolmaking
as a Commercial Activity in 19th Century Maine
Maine's
First Documented Toolmaker: Robert Merchant and his Wantage Rule
Registry
Information Sources
Maine
Toolmakers and Manufacturers Bibliography
Registry Appendices
1. Maine
Planemakers Working before 1900
2. The
History of Shipbuilding in Maine
3. A
Guide to the Metallurgy of Edge Tools in The Davistown Museum
4. Woodworking
Tools of the 17th and 18th Centuries
5. Abiel
F. Walker, Planemaker of Alna, Maine
6. Quick
Reference List of Important Edge Toolmakers
7. Whalecraft
Manufacturers of New Bedford
The Registry of Maine Toolmakers is an ongoing documentation of the toolmakers of Maine's maritime era, 1607 - 1900. Its focus is the edge toolmakers and planemakers who supplied the tools for Maine's ship carpenters and timber harvesters, including blacksmiths who specialized in toolmaking. A discussion of their historical milieu begins with the role of imported English edge tools in the tool kits of the first colonial settlers and a description of the prosperous colonial iron working, plane making and shipbuilding industries that arose in southern New England in the 18th century. In the nineteenth century, a vigorous Maine edge toolmaking industry developed, competing with the larger, more well known edge toolmakers of southern New England. This registry also includes listings of known toolmakers for other trades, including coopers, carriage makers, cobblers, farmers and others.
Information sources include the labyrinth of the Early American Industry Association's Directory of American Toolmakers (DATM), Emil and Martyl Pollak's A Guide to the Makers of American Wooden Planes (revised by Thomas L. Elliott), Maine Business Directories of the 19th century and Don Yeaton's Axe Makers of Maine. Previously unknown toolmakers have also been identified during the last 35 years as a result of the search for early tools by the Liberty Tool Company. Other sources include tools found and donated by the Liberty Tool Company customers and benefactors of the Davistown Museum. The Maine Business Directories provide another rich source of information on edge and other tool manufacturers who worked during the years in which the directories were published. The 1855 Maine Business Directory lists over 950 blacksmiths working in Maine. Most, but not all, of these blacksmiths would have made tools at some point in their careers; only a few are listed in the current edition of the Registry of Maine Toolmakers. Many of these blacksmiths would have made only small quantities of edge tools for Maine's flourishing shipbuilding industry. As manufacturers of unsigned natural, forged or weld steel edge tools (see Appendix 3 for definitions), their identities will often remain forever obscured. After 1900, this Registry includes only contemporary planemakers working in Maine in the late 20th century.
By constructing this registry, we hope to draw attention to the need for further research to identify the early toolmakers working in the Province of Maine before 1820 as well as the many Maine toolmakers working after 1820, who played such an important role in the rise of Maine's shipbuilding industry. We know very little about who those toolmakers were, where they lived, what tools they made and why they made the tools they did. We can be thankful that one major artifact of colonial era material culture, the Merchant wantage rule, survives from this earlier time and is now in the Davistown Museum collection. We hope this spectacular fragment of American history, and the Registry of Maine Toolmakers that it inspired, will be the jumping off point for further research into the identities and activities of the many Maine toolmakers who played such an important role in colonial Maine and the vigorous shipbuilding industry that followed.
Woodworking tools predominated in the tool kits of the earliest settlers of the Province of Maine. Despite the obvious role of imported tools from England, housewrights, millwrights, shipbuilders, coopers and timber harvesters were also dependent on the hand tools produced by the many blacksmiths who accompanied the great migration to New England and their descendants. One mission of this registry is the identification of the edge toolmakers, blacksmiths and planemakers who manufactured the tools in those first kits. The hand-made hand tools of the 17th and 18th century, many imported from England, but many forged in America, gradually gave way to factory-made hand tools in the 19th century. The mass production of factory-made tools after the Civil War, made possible by the availability of efficient die-forging machinery using low carbon steel, gradually outstripped the production of hand forged tools by individual blacksmiths and small factories. Nevertheless, many small independent tool manufacturing companies in Maine and New England flourished in the brief interregnum between 1820 and 1885, when an amazing growth took place in New England and Maine's manufacturing economy. This growth helped sustain Maine's golden age of shipbuilding, providing many of the cargoes (cotton, coal, lumber, lime, ice) on its coasting schooners and transoceanic Downeasters. By 1885, many of these toolmakers, especially Maine's edge tool makers, had disappeared or faded into obscurity as a small number of large tool manufacturing companies dominated hand tool production in the late 19th century.
Out of almost 1,000 toolmakers listed in this registry,
less than 100 are known to have worked before 1840. Only six toolmakers
can be identified as working during the 17th or 18th century in the Province
of Maine. Of these, four are represented by tools in the collection
of The Davistown Museum (Joseph Metcalf, Thomas
Waterman, John Flyn and Robert
Merchant). We don't have any examples for the other early Maine
toolmakers including Samuel Dennett (chisels and caulking irons) or John Brown of Pemaquid, Maine's first known blacksmith (died 1659). Hundreds
of as yet unidentified toolmakers also worked in Maine during this time.
Early 19th century Maine toolmakers are also difficult to locate and document;
before Maine became a state in 1820, we have identified only a small portion
of the hundreds of toolmakers who worked in the first two decades of the
19th century. Presumably, additional 18th century and early 19th century
Maine toolmakers will be identified as Maine tool collectors and historians
become aware of the existence of this registry and as we continue the search
for New England's early tools and toolmakers.
The Davistown Museum exhibition "An Archaeology of Tools" ends with the classic period of the Industrial Revolution (1865 - 1900) and the rapid expansion in the variety of iron and steel alloys, manufacturing processes and tool designs that characterize this industrial florescence. When we examine earlier periods of American technological history, the further back we go, the more we find tools in early settler's tool kits that were imported from Europe, either by immigrants or commercial trading companies. This raises questions about the origins of early tools in our and other collections that were found in New England, not only in archaeological sites but also in workshops, cellars, old factories and other industrial environments, and are in many cases one or two centuries old.
When the first settlers arrived in coastal Maine in 1607 to attempt settlement at Ft. Popham, the indirect process of iron production utilizing blast furnaces had spread through Europe, producing cast iron that needed refining before being forged into edge tools. Smaller direct process bloomeries also smelted iron ore which could be forged into tools or further refined to eliminate slag inclusions. In 1600, European toolmakers were just making the transition from centuries old direct process natural steel and forged steel making techniques to more modern practices. In particular, the cementation furnace for producing "blister" steel from refined wrought iron was just coming into wide use. The steel produced in the cementation furnace was then welded onto iron handles, sockets, etc. to make edge tools of a higher quality than those forged directly from a loup of smelted iron. "Weld" steel edge tools were the most common form of edge tools produced in America between 1620 and 1860.
Until the mid-18th century, changes in how tools were forged were very gradual, with slow improvement in furnace and forge design, and the thermal and mechanical treatment of iron and steel. In the 16th and 17th centuries, southern Germany (Nuremberg, Augsberg) was the center of flourishing hand tool, sword, armour and clock making industries. German steel makers had access to high quality iron ore containing manganese mined in Styria (Austria). The manganese in this ore helped neutralize the deleterious effects of sulfur, promoting uniform distribution of carbon. This facilitated direct process production of natural steel in Germany's large high shaft "Stuckofen" furnaces, which were almost as large as blast furnaces. German toolmakers were considered the best in Europe. The cutlers of Sheffield, England, and Swedish ax makers were also highly regarded for the excellence of their edge tools. Nonetheless, tools of English and French manufacture, rather than from Germany, dominated the tool kits of Maine's first settlers.
Tools that predate the rise of American manufacturers
can be found in the Maine State Museum in a small display of iron tools
recovered from the Norridgewock, Maine, site of Father Sebastian Rale's
mission settlement, last inhabited by remnants of Maine's Abenaki (Wabanaki)
Indians. English colonists destroyed this settlement in 1726.
The iron tools discovered there in the 20th century were almost certainly
made in France and brought to this country with other supplies for the
mission in Norridgewock. The Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor also has a
particularly important tomahawk that dates to the late 17th century; one
of 200 allegedly supplied to Native American fighters during the Indian
Wars and in excellent condition, the Bonaventure hatchet from the Frank
Siebert collection (see below right) illustrates the finesse of the European
blacksmith in the era preceding weld steel and cast steel edge tools.
These archaeological remnants are a reminder that Maine's first European
settlers, whether French or English, brought the majority of their tools
and iron implements with them when they immigrated to North America.
 Frank T. Siebert Collection, Abbe Museum Bonaventure Hatchet, French manufacture, 1695 formerly owned by Lewis Lolar, Penobscot Photo by Stephen Bicknell |
|
 |
 Jonesport Ax Wilson Museum 12 1/2" long, 11" wide, 5" wide poll, 7 lbs. 13 oz. This ax has a late medieval pattern and a maker's hallmark (above), possibly a touchmark associated with a guild. |
The majority of the edge tools used in the colonies in early 17th century were European in origin and similar to the Jonesport broad ax or the Abbe Museum Bonaventure tomahawk in their ferrous metallurgy, either natural steel or forged steel from refined wrought iron. The first indication of the end of our early dependence on English made edge tools was the construction and operation of the Saugus Ironworks (near Lynn, MA), 1646. The Saugus blast furnace, refinery, chafery and blacksmith shop were as advanced in design as any in Europe; this facility illustrated the colonists' early capabilities for producing significant quantities of cast iron, wrought iron, and blacksmith-made forged steel edge tools especially suited for the needs of an economy dependent on ship carpenters and timber harvesters. The Saugus Ironworks failed after its first decade of operation due to financial mismanagement and internal labor disputes. Other bog iron bloomeries were soon established at Taunton, Bourne, Rowley (1674), Bridgewater (1691), Norton (1696) and other southern New England locations. Late in the 17th century, American colonists also began mining New England's most important ore field near Salisbury, Connecticut. The establishment of the many forges in bog iron rich southeastern Massachusetts marks the expansion of a colonial iron industry that was, by 1720, providing refined bog iron bar stock of sufficient quality to enable American blacksmiths to compete with their English counterparts. Only recently has the colonial bog iron industry become of interest as a late 17th century alternative source of iron for colonial smiths.
John Brown of Pemaquid, coastal Maine's earliest identified blacksmith, would almost certainly have made hand tools while living at Pemaquid. Imported English and Swedish iron bar stock would have been his only source of quality wrought iron before 1646, unless he dried and smelted local bog iron. After the establishment of the Saugus Ironworks and other forges in southeastern New England, cheaper iron, perhaps of lesser quality than the imported iron, would soon have been a cargo on New England's coasting schooners.
The principal tool kit of Maine's first settlers, and one that dominated commercial activities until the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, consisted of a basic group of woodworking tools: adz, broadax, felling and hewing axes, drawknife, auger, froe, pit saw and hand plane. Supplementing these tools in most tool kits were hatchets, hand saws, mauls, hammers, scrapers, squares, and other measuring devices such as marking gauges and travelers, and a few basic agricultural implements (mattocks, shovel, hoe), and the ever-essential hunting knife. These basic tools were the key to the survival of the first settlers coming to New England and formed the nucleus of any established shipyard or woodworker's workshop for over 250 years. Other ancillary trades were also associated with the activities of New England's early woodworkers: blacksmith, cobbler, carriage maker, cooper, coffin maker, and associated domestic vocations such as flax dresser, candlemaker, weaver, and others. In many cases, particularly in the early colonial period, the shipwright and his family were also their own blacksmiths, cobblers, coopers, and flax dressers; early trade specialization was the first indication of a growing market economy. Maine's first toolmakers were the farmers, millwrights and shipwrights forced to supplement the tools they brought from England and Europe with crude implements hammered out from bog iron blooms. Since they were not making tools for a market economy where their signature advertised their wares, few, if any, English or American artisans signed the tools they made for themselves, and these toolmakers remain unidentified. The Registry of Maine Toolmakers attempts to identify the myriad individual toolmakers living in Maine who gradually began making tools not only for themselves, but also for other nearby artisans and communities. The signatures they put on these tools signal the emergence of a market economy, the key component of the vigorous coasting trade that flourished in New England in the years before the spread of the railroad and steamboat.
The commonly encountered English tools of the 18th and 19th centuries obscure the fact that a robust natural and forged steel edge tool manufacturing industry arose in the colonies beginning in the second decade of the 18th century. Bloomery forges produced loups of wrought iron by the direct process of iron production; these iron blooms were frequently refined into wrought iron bar stock before being made into tools. Blast furnaces produced even larger quantities of cast iron for refinement into wrought iron bar stock by the indirect process of iron production. It was this iron bar stock that was hammered and forged into edge tools, often one at a time, by Maine blacksmiths using hand tools and small water-powered trip hammers. The availability of refined high quality wrought iron represented an advance over the natural steel slag containing edge tools produced directly from bog iron without any subsequent refining. Both varieties of edge tools were produced throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in Maine; the forging of primitive bog iron tools at isolated farms and smithies became much more uncommon after 1750. Robert Gordon notes in American Iron that by the late 18th century the colonies were exporting bar iron to England and were the third largest producers of iron in the world. Lack of documentation prevents an accurate assessment of the degree to which colonial blacksmiths and edge toolmakers supplanted imported English edge tools during this period.
While toolmakers in Maine and New England were forging their handmade tools in isolated water-powered bloomery forges and blacksmith shops, an Industrial Revolution that would forever alter the art of tool making was occurring in England. The reintroduction of crucible steel by Benjamin Hunstman in 1742 provided England with a monopoly on the production of high quality "cast steel" for edge tool production for the next century. The introduction of the reverbatory furnace for "puddling" wrought iron in 1784 by Henry Cort, combined with the adaptation of the steam engine to blast furnace operation, further increased the efficiency and productivity of English iron production. Herein lies the roots of the illusion that all edge tools were imported from England. They were not. Maine and New England toolmakers soon adopted the new European advances in blast furnace and puddling furnace design and operation as well as English innovations in machine tool design and production.
The tool collection on exhibition at The Davistown Museum consists of a mixture of smaller English cast steel edge tools, especially carving tools and plane blades, and American-made natural, forged, weld steel and imported weld cast steel tools. By the late 18th century American blacksmiths were producing many of the larger heavy duty natural, forged, and weld steel timber framing and harvesting tools (slicks, broad axes, adzes and augers) so important to the shipbuilders of the Gulf of Maine region. After 1800, discs of English cast steel were imported to America and incorporated in American-made edge tools of equal quality to English imported tools.
The most important sources of information on the predominance of smaller English joining and carving tools are Goodman's The History of Woodworking Tools and his classic study, British Planemakers from 1770. The latter contains a comprehensive listing of English planemakers, specimens of which often turn up in American tool chests, and an extensive catalog of British plane blade manufacturers. Though American planemaking began in the late 17th century in southern New England, reliance on English cast steel plane blades continued almost to the Civil War. The importance of the Sheffield, Birmingham and Lancaster steel industry and its major tool designers, manufacturers and vendors (Peter Stubs, James Cam, Butcher, Timmins, etc.) is repeatedly demonstrated by the frequent appearance of English-made hand tools in American industries, crafts and tool collections dating before 1860.
By the early 18th century, iron ore deposits to the south of New England became an important source of American iron, gradually supplanting foreign imports for all but the best grades of refined iron and steel. Coastal New York, New Jersey and Maryland were all sources of colonial iron. Pennsylvania, due to large iron ore deposits, both in eastern Pennsylvania and in the Pittsburgh area, soon became the most important iron producing region and remained so until the mid-19th century when ore fields in Michigan and Minnesota were opened. Coasting traders began bringing iron from Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland to New England by 1720, but not before a vigorous colonial bog iron mining industry had been established in southeastern New England. It was the Saugus ironworks, combined with southern New England's bog iron forges, that provided the opportunity for many English blacksmiths who had arrived in the great migration (1630 - 1645) to learn the trade of toolmaking. Some of these blacksmiths, like John Brown, settled in the ribbon of villages along Maine's coast in the 17th century.
Maine's first colonial settlers had several options to supply their need for edge tools. Other than food, nothing was more essential for survival than steel edge tools and iron agricultural implements. Isolated farmers and fishermen needing an iron tool could utilize bog iron, common everywhere in the swamps of Atlantic coastal plain, dry it, forge it into a bloom in an open hearth furnace, and make the primitive slag-laced tools still occasionally found today in tool chests and collections. A second option would have been Swedish iron or English edge tools available at local trading posts (Cushnoc, Pemaquid, Pejepscot), village wharfs or from coasting traders -- an expensive commodity many settlers could not afford. In between these two stark alternatives lay a solution that helps explain the successful survival of isolated colonial settlements in coastal Maine and elsewhere. Once refined bog iron bar stock made in the colonies was available as an alternative to imported iron and edge tools, American blacksmiths hammered out significant numbers of hand forged tools for the use of communities where they lived and worked. The proof of this lies in the large numbers of forged iron implements, hardware and natural or forged steel edge tools that frequently appear in New England tool chests. The rather primitive appearing forged chisel, auger or drawknife made in colonial New England in 1690 is difficult to distinguish from one made in 1760. Imported English tools, in contrast, have distinctive stylistic characteristics (handles, forms), often have the hallmark of their makers, and look a little more sophisticated than their colonial counterparts. Both imported English and colonial-made hand tools would be found in 18th century Maine tool kits.
The Indian Wars that started in 1676 and resulted in the depopulation of coastal Maine halted most tool production in Maine between 1676 and 1740. The Merchant wantage rule in the Davistown Museum collection, an anomaly of this interregnum, illustrates that colonial toolmakers, even in an isolated Maine village in 1720 in the middle of the French and Indian Wars, could produce an artifact as finely crafted as any European import.
By the time of the American Revolution, colonial blacksmiths were capable of an amazing production of weapons and iron equipment best symbolized by the huge chain manufactured to block the British from entering the Hudson River. After the Revolution, importation of English tools continued; with the help of the trade embargo (1807) and the War of 1812, a vigorous American tool manufacturing industry arose, leading to the industrial explosion of the 1840s. The small foundries and toolmaking enterprises of the early 19th century utilized both imported weld (blister) and English crucible cast steel, and American-made blister steel, in edge tool production; they dominated the manufacture of heavy duty framing tools for ship building and timber harvesting. Imported English cast steel plane blades, carving tools and saw steel illustrated the concurrent florescence of a Sheffield edge tool industry whose reputation -- at least for these applications -- was not overcome until American toolmakers mastered the alchemy of crucible cast steel production during and after the Civil War.
The anomaly of numerous high quality steel edge tools in the Davistown Museum collection made by Maine, New England or unidentified early 19th century makers and not stamped "cast steel" suggests enterprising American blacksmiths and small forges were able to produce steel edge tools of equal quality to the best examples of imported English cast steel prior to their mastery of England's crucible steel production methods (c. 1860). These high quality steel edge tools may have been made from "sheaf" steel, reworked blister steel refined again by knowledgeable American blacksmiths specially for the New England shipbuilding and timber harvesting industries. Even more intriguing, they may have been produced by esoteric methods now almost forgotten, for example, halting the fining of iron in a puddling furnace while there was still sufficient carbon content to form steel; co-fusion, the carburizing of wrought iron in melted cast iron, and lastly, the reversing of the fining process in an open hearth furnace, by adding carbon to wrought iron to produce steel. These observations apply especially to the larger tools of the shipwright -- slicks, broad axes, framing chisels, lipped adzes -- not commonly encountered with English hallmarks. The art and science of the ferrous metallurgy of these early 19th century Maine and New England edge toolmakers remains undocumented.
Thus the mystery of the history of toolmaking in Maine in the 19th century. In its first colonial dominion, 1607 - 1676, Maine shared the challenges, shortages as well as the resources and traditions of southern New England toolmakers. In Maine, the Indian Wars interrupted both settlement and the evolution of commercial toolmaking for decades. When gradual resettlement after 1720 became the land rush of 1780 - 1820, imported English tools and tools made in southern New England were gradually supplanted by the rise of an as yet undocumented Maine toolmaking industry. The purpose of this Registry is to further identify Maine toolmakers working during these years as well as during the boomtown years of Maine's shipbuilding era, 1820 - 1885. Maine's vigorous edge toolmaking industry briefly overlapped with the factory system of mass production of edge tools and other hand tools that evolved after 1860. Once the American factory system was firmly established, English toolmakers became less important as a source of hand tools. Only a few decades remained before most Maine edge toolmaking would be superseded by the mass production of southern New England and New York toolmaking factories. Ironically, Maine edge toolmakers, who often made their fine edge tools out of imported English cast steel, may have mastered alternative strategies for making edge tools at the same time the Buck Brothers, Underhills, T. H. Witherby and others learned the secret of cast steel production. For a few decades after the Civil War, Maine's edge toolmakers continued making tools for both Maine shipwrights and timber harvesters, but the factory system of mass tool production was growing rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. Low carbon steel produced first by the Bessemer process, then by the Siemens-Martin open hearth process, allowed huge quantities of inexpensive die-forged tools made in Massachusetts and Connecticut to replace most Maine toolmaking operations. Only high quality edge tools, which could not be made with low carbon steel or malleable cast iron, continued to be made in Maine's smaller factories. Ax making was the last Maine tool industry to be subsumed by the massive American conglomerates such as the Stanley Tool Company now dominating tool production. The American Axe & Tool Co.'s purchase of many Maine ax makers in 1889 signals the end of the era of individual craftsmen making their own tools, either by themselves or in the small foundries that dotted the Maine landscape in the 19th century. But what was the principal use of the edge tools made by Maine and New England toolmakers during the previous 300 years?
The most important consideration in documenting Maine's toolmakers working before 1900 is the fact that shipbuilding formed the nucleus of Maine's economy until the Civil War and remained an important industry even into the early 20th century. The florescence of Maine's resource derived activities of fishing and timber harvesting would have had no viability without the ships that transported these and other commodities. New England's ship designs, shipbuilders and their cargoes, routes, captains and their adventures are well documented. In contrast, the toolmakers who made the hand tools that made New England's vigorous maritime economy possible have been overlooked or forgotten.
Our search for early Maine toolmakers includes artisans, mostly blacksmiths, who made tools for the shipwright as well as the timber harvester. Important subsidiary categories of tool users include joiners doing finish work on ships, the all important cooper, who provided so much of the cargoes of the coasting and West Indies trades, and ancillary occupations of importance: spar maker, block maker, rope maker, sail maker, wagon maker and supporting domestic trades, all of whom needed hand tools for their work. With the blossoming of the Industrial Revolution and the appearance of machine made tools and power driven woodworking tools in Maine shipyards (1840-1865), the complexities of shipbuilding tool kits increased and included both patternmakers' and machinists' tools.
The first ship constructed in America by EuroAmericans was the pinnace Virginia built at Fort Popham in 1607 and later sailed back to England with some of the discouraged Popham settlers. The turmoil of the English revolution in the 1640s reduced the supply and availability of English ships, and New England colonists began a long tradition of shipbuilding that finally ended with the era of the racing Gloucester fishermen and, in Maine, with the huge four-, five- and six-masted schooners built at Bath, Waldoboro and other Maine locations in the later years of the 19th and first decades of the 20th centuries. Between this final era of bulk cargo schooners and the first cod fishers of colonial times lies a remarkable florescence of shipbuilding that culminated in Maine in the golden age of shipbuilding between the years 1835 and 1885. The Chesapeake Bay region, New York and southern New England were the center of American shipbuilding activities until the early years of the 19th century. With the exception of Kittery and York, few ships were built in Maine until the end of the turmoil of the French and Indian Wars (1686 - 1759). After the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and the opening of eastern Maine -- the Pleasant River settlements -- a vast influx of immigrants began moving to Maine and vigorous, though often undocumented, shipbuilding activities began. After the Panic of 1857 and the Civil War, Maine's shipbuilding continued to flourish despite the opening of the Suez Canal (1867) and the growing use of steam power for ocean-going and coasting passenger carriers. The longevity and durability of this shipbuilding era is a testament to the skills of the shipbuilders and sailors of the era and to the skilled toolmakers who made their shipbuilding tools.
The Gulf of Maine bioregion includes important Massachusetts shipbuilding centers north of Cape Cod: North River [Hanover, MA], East Boston [MA], Mystic River, Medford [MA], Essex, [MA], Newburyport, [MA] and the Portsmouth, [NH], tidewater of the Piscataqua River. These centers dominated shipbuilding activities in New England until the early 19th century. Timber harvesting, privateering, the growing cod fishery, the neutral trade and a vigorous West Indies trade prompted increasing shipbuilding activities in Maine until, by the 1820s, Maine was approaching the importance of New York and Massachusetts as ship building centers. By the 1830s, Maine had equaled the output in numbers, though not in size, of those locations and, by the 1840s, Maine led the nation in tonnage and number of ships built.
Jasper Stahl, in his History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro notes that, by 1838, the Waldoboro customs district (Thomaston, Warren, Waldoboro and Boothbay) was surpassed in ownership of sailing vessels in Maine only by Portland (44,661 tons vs. 56,191). Between 1842 and 1856 the Waldoboro district surpassed Portland, with owned tonnage peaking in 1856 at 155,783 tons. It is this florescence of shipbuilding in coastal Maine, just down the St. Georges and Medomak rivers from Liberty and Montville, that closely correlates with the rise of a vigorous edge tool manufacturing industry in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The booming years of shipbuilding in the Waldoboro customs district also coincides with the high point in population levels of the water mill towns of Liberty Village, Montville, South Liberty and other nearby communities.
While the most prolific makers of shipbuilders' edge tools for Maine's shipyards in the 1830s and 1840s were the Underhill clan of Nashua and Boston (see Appendix 6), Maine's growing numbers of shipyards resulted in a vigorous edge tool manufacturing industry within Maine's borders. Though examples of southern New England, New Brunswick, Canada and New Hampshire edge tool and plane makers dominate the tool kits of Maine's shipbuilders and cannot be ignored in the study of the hegemony of shipbuilding in Maine in the years after 1840, the rise of a vigorous edge tool and plane making industry in Maine after 1820 is an intriguing and important component of Maine's state history. The availability of high quality, inexpensive, New England made edge tools, Maine's skilled shipbuilding community, and its deep water harbors and rivers were the key components of the success of the shipbuilding industry of Maine in the 19th century. In turn, Maine's superbly constructed sailing vessels were inexpensive to build and man and constituted the majority of America's coasting and ocean-going fleet after 1840.
For a chronological sketch of the history of the shipbuilding industry in Maine, see The History of Shipbuilding in Maine in Appendix 2.
In Maine, the early years of the republic were characterized by a booming economy based upon forest resources, fishing and the flourishing foreign trade, which was suddenly cut off by the trade embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812. After the depression in the second decade of the 19th century, the booming fishing industry so eloquently documented by O'Leary in Maine Sea Fisheries supplanted the foreign trade as Maine's most important maritime activity. The combination of vigorous fishing, forestry and lime production industries gave rise not only to the planemakers of coastal Maine but also a robust edge tool manufacturing industry, the origins of which are not clearly understood.
While we have evidence of itinerant blacksmiths traveling to and settling in Maine's coastal communities both in the colonial period prior to the great diaspora of 1676 and again beginning in the middle years of the 18th century, there is a gap in our knowledge about edge toolmakers who settled in the far upriver regions of interior Maine, well away from the coastal settlements in the first five decades of the 19th century. These edge toolmakers, predominantly ax makers, have left their signed tools for us to find in tool chests, barns and collections throughout New England. Examples may be seen both at the Davistown Museum and at other New England museums, which also have edge tools in their collections. Names such as Whorff, Billings, Lovejoy, Thaxter, Bragg, Graves and Haskell are typical of Maine made edge tools in the Davistown Museum collection that have been found in Maine. They signal the presence of a robust community of ax and edge toolmakers who lived far inland, making their tools from bar iron and blister steel. The iron and steel they used must have been brought upriver by the same coastal traders who then returned to the cities of the Atlantic seaboard with the forest products harvested with these edge tools. Maine's only known blast furnace, the Katahdin Iron Works, furnished little or none of the bar iron utilized by these blacksmiths as they hammered out their natural or weld steel edge tools. The rise and fall of these inland ax makers parallels and, in fact, documents the boomtown years of Maine's inland forest product economy.
Edge toolmakers such as Vaughn and Pardoe of Union, Libby and Bolton of Portland, T.C. Jackson of Bath and Ricker of Cherryfield, in contrast, occupied coastal locations and help document the booming shipbuilding economy of Maine. While the majority of adzes, slicks and other edge tools utilized in Maine's shipyards in the 19th century were produced outside of Maine by famous and prolific edge tool makers like the Underhill clan, Thomas Witherby of CT, the Buck Brothers of Millbury, MA, or Josiah Fowler of St. Johns, New Brunswick, a thriving community of Maine edge toolmakers produced a surprisingly large minority of the edge tools used in Maine's shipyards and forests after the early 19th century. These tools survive with the signatures of individual edge tool makers whose identities would otherwise have been lost or forgotten.
The individuals and small shops who made tools for one of Maine's most important early industries, the cooperage, are among the most difficult of all early toolmakers to document. Coopers played an essential role in Maine's maritime culture in making barrels, trawl tubs, lime casks, hogsheads, firkins and other essential woodenware found on every fishing vessel and coasting packet or trader for over 250 years. As with many other kinds of tools, coopers' tools were often handmade by the farmers and woodsmen who made many of these products during Maine's long winters. As Maine's robust market economy gradually emerged in the late 18th century, individual families specialized in making only coopers' wares, and individual toolmakers made coopers' tools as part of their output of hand tools for sale. Some Maine toolmakers may even have specialized in making only coopers' tools. The town of Liberty, in which the Davistown Museum is located, had over 30 working coopers at the time of the Civil War, in the twilight of its boomtown years. The mill towns of Montville and Liberty reached peak population levels in the 1840s, before residents began migrating to the rich bottomlands of the Ohio River valley or to California lured by the gold rush, after 1848. This peak in population and water-mill-derived manufacturing coincided closely with the florescence of shipbuilding in central coastal shipyards east of Bath and the Kennebec River in the 1830s - 1850s, i.e. the Waldoboro Customs District. The demand for coopers in Liberty probably lasted longer than in most other coastal locations because the vigorous lime industry in Thomaston required large numbers of lime casks late into the 19th century, long after the factory system and its machinery (see illustration on rear cover) had rendered the handmade woodenware of most coopers obsolete.
Other 19th century industries that gave rise to specialized toolmaking include agriculture, the ice trade that flourished in Maine in the middle decades of the 19th century and the granite trade that flourished in the late 19th century. All utilized edge tools that could have been made by any toolmaker in small quantities. The North Wayne Scythe Co. typifies the rise of the American factory system; a robust agricultural implement manufacturing business, it was among the world's largest producers of scythes during its most active years. Hundreds of manufacturers of agricultural equipment working in the 19th century will remain unlisted in this directory simply because our focus is on edge toolmakers and planemakers. Most manufacturers of Maine's ice harvesting tools remain unidentified. Bicknell Manufacturing Company is a very late 19th century producer of granite quarrying tools; most earlier blacksmiths and companies making quarrying tools also remain unidentified.
A review of European plane designs helps illustrate the changing forms of American hand planes in the 18th and 19th centuries. While the blacksmith fashioning edge tools for shipbuilding remains the most important toolmaker of New England maritime culture, the story of planemakers who made the wooden bodies to hold the plane blades is one of the most interesting chapters of our industrial history. Unlike most other edge tools, almost all plane blades were imported from Sheffield, England, until the mid-19th century, as exemplified by the Waterman plane illustrated below. Yet most hand plane bodies were made by the settlers themselves out of the birch, oak and later beech so ready to hand in New England or from exotic woods derived from the West Indies trades such as lignum vitae, ironwood, rosewood, coco bolo, etc.
William Goodman in The History of Woodworking Tools, traces the history of planemaking back at least to the Romans. The planes recovered from the wreck of Henry the VIII's Mary Rose (Portsmouth Harbor, England, 1545) show that continental plane forms dominated the tool kits of 16th century English shipwrights. The "modern" forms of the hand planes of the 19th century derive not from English prototypes, nor even from the medieval, rather French looking hand planes found on the Mary Rose, but from Dutch prototypes (see Wing, The case for Francis Purdew or granfurdeus disputatus) that influenced English and then American plane design. The basic form of moulding and jointer's planes remains virtually unchanged since the heyday of the Dutch empire in the early 17th century.
A few characteristics differentiate 17th and 18th century American hand planes from the ubiquitous productions of small and large 19th century American workshops:
 Moxon's illustrations of medieval era planes with handle designs that pre-date the open grip and pistol grip handles were already obsolete at the time of his third edition. Moxon, Joseph. (1703). Mechanick |
 This fore plane has an open grip handle typical of the style used on fore planes during the late 17th century and most of the 18th century. 111001T-9 Gutter plane in the Maritime III collection of The Davistown Museum.
|
 This birch fore plane has a closed pistol grip handle, a design that supplemented the open grip handle on most fore and jack planes during the first few decades of the 19th century. TCD1003 Fore plane |
For an excellent and more detailed examination of changing styles of planemaking see: Whelan, John M. (1993). The wooden plane: Its history, form & function.
When attempting to identify the
earliest planemakers working in Maine, one encounters the inescapable fact
that a robust community of planemakers arose in southern New England, centered
in the Blackstone River Valley, as early as 1700, well before the Province
of Maine became a state in 1820. The most renowned southern New England
planemakers were the Nicholson family; Francis Nicholson of Wrentham has
long been considered the first planemaker working in colonial America to
sign his tools. The Pollaks,
in A Guide to the Makers of American Wooden Planes, indicate that Nicholson's working dates are 1728 - 1753. Nicholson
worked with his son, John, and the first black planemaker, the slave Cesar
Chelor. Their planes are among the most sought after by tool collectors.
Donald and Ann Wing have written about
this milieu in their essay, Planemaking in Eighteenth-century
America. As they note, Cesar Chelor was
set free upon the death of Francis Nicholson; the planes he made have become
an icon of American rhykenology.
|
Bob Wheeler, 18th century tool collector and patron of The Davistown Museum, indicates that two other planemakers, Ebenezer Seymour and Nathaniel Potter, may have been making planes in New England at the same time as Francis Nicholson (Wheeler, The Chronicle, March 1993). Ebenezer Seymour was born in Connecticut in 1683, at approximately the same time as Francis Nicholson and is believed to have made planes in the Connecticut town which bears his name. Nathaniel Potter was born in 1693 and apparently made planes in Leicester, Massachusetts, at the same time Francis was making his tools. Other important early plane makers included Thomas Grant and James Stiles of New York City and Samuel Caruthers of Philadelphia. (Wing, Planemaking in eighteenth-century America, pg. 118). The long tradition of southern New England planemakers provides the context of the rise of planemaking in Maine. Among the flood of settlers coming into Maine after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, trained planemakers were probably among the skilled woodworkers who provided the labor force for Maine's growing shipbuilding trades. Only a few of Maine's early planemakers can be identified with certainty; others are just names found on surviving planes in Maine. Hundreds of other planemakers, including the shipwrights who made their own planes, often out of tropical woods, will remain forever unidentified.
Not to be overlooked as predecessors of Gulf of Maine toolmakers and shipbuilders is the robust community of whalecraft manufacturers working in the New Bedford, MA, area in the early 19th century. The production of whalecraft, the iron and steel tools used to capture and kill whales, such as harpoons, toggles, flensing irons, spades and bomb-lances, was often accompanied by the production of edge tools. Thomas G. Lytle in Harpoons and Other Whalecraft (1984) lists these toolmakers in his Appendix 1, adapted in this registry as Appendix 7. Whalecraft production continued in the New Bedford area into the early years of the 20th century and was an integral part of New England's edge tool manufacturing industry; its decline coincided with the decline of the whale fishery. A record of the names and touchmarks of these toolmakers help identify the location of manufacture of edge tools that might otherwise remain unidentified. Many a New England blacksmith or edge toolmaker may have learned their trade in the heyday of whalecraft production (1830s) then traveled north to the booming tool factories, foundries and shipyards of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.
Maine's first planemakers would have been the first colonial settlers living in the isolated fishing and trading villages of ancient Pemaquid, Georgetown Island, Pejepscot and communities to the west. Block planes, jointer planes and molding planes for shipbuilding would have been among the first to supplant or replace whatever imported English planes the first settlers brought. Recycled farrier's rasps would have been a common source of steel for replacing plane blades for those who could not afford English blades. No identifiable planes survive from the ancient dominion of colonial Maine prior to the King Philip's War (1676) and the great colonial diaspora that followed. Planemaking both in southern New England and Maine in the 17th century was a craft based occupation where individuals made their own planes for their own use. The tradition of owner made hand tools continued in Maine and New England well into the 19th century as illustrated by the Abiel Walker hoard (see Appendix 5.)
A number of intriguing examples of the work of early commercial planemakers living in the Province of Maine have surfaced and are also in the Davistown Museum collections. Joseph Metcalf, (born Medway, MA, 1756) the brother of Luther Metcalf (b. Medway, MA, 1765) moved to Hallowell and then to Winthrop, Maine in 1789. Bob Wheeler has identified eight or nine planes marked "J. Metcalf" in large embossed letters as being present in museum or private collections, including a 10 13/16 inch long yellow birch rabbet plane and a rounding plane in the Davistown Museum collection. Rhykenologists note that 18th century planes were usually made of yellow birch; as the forests of southern New England were quickly cut over and the land denuded, beech was substituted for yellow birch by most planemakers. Thomas Waterman (b. Waldoboro, ME, circa 1775), working in the last years of the 18th century, is another early Maine planemaker (see the illustration below). The Davistown Museum has also recently obtained an 18th century plane from the collection of Ben Blumenberg (courtesy of Bob Wheeler,) a complex moulding plane with an 18th century appearance marked "JOHNFLYN". This plane was found in Warren, Maine, and may possibly predate both the Metcalf and Waterman planes in the museum collection.
 A
plane of historic significance in the Davistown Museum collection is the
Thomas Waterman panel raising plane with adjustable fence signed "T WATERMAN",
with a James Cam cast steel blade.
Exquisitely constructed and with distinctly 18th century chamfering, this
plane was most certainly made in Maine in the last years of the 18th century
and is one of the earliest surviving signed Maine-made planes. |
The trickle of colonial settlers returning to Maine in the first few decades of the 18th century became a flood of new immigrants after the Treaty of Paris at the end of the French and Indian Wars opened the Province of Maine for resettlement (1763). Most immigrants would have brought their own tools, many now made in southern New England, or fashioned their own planes and edge tools as needed. But Maine's rapidly increasing population signaled the dawn of a new era, where sufficient demand existed for both planemakers and edge toolmakers to serve a burgeoning market economy.
While Metcalf, Waterman and Flyn and other as yet unidentified planemakers were making tools for this emerging market economy, stubborn Maine shipwrights continued to make their own tools for their own use. Thousands of unsigned, owner-made planes still survive in collections and workshops. Of these, only planes made from exotic tropical woods are of interest to collectors. Their origins lie in the long established West Indies trade that began in the 17th century. High quality, durable tropical woods from the Caribbean islands were easily obtained by New England's shipwrights, who made their own distinctive, but usually unsigned, block and razee planes for the now flourishing shipyards. Emerging commercial planemakers, such as Metcalf and Waterman, didn't normally use tropical woods for their planes (Storer of Brunswick was a notable exception.) Was their preference for birch and then the ubiquitous beech a matter of economy, personal preference, hoarding of tropical woods by shipwrights, long established craft tradition inherited from southern New England planemakers or for some other reason? Planes made from tropical wood are almost always unsigned, making them difficult to date. Yet they keep turning up in New England tool collections, especially those associated with Maine shipbuilding communities.
While Maine's planemakers and shipwrights were making handmade planes based on centuries old craft-based techniques, new methods of toolmaking were evolving in distant locations, such as London and Manchester, England, and then in southern New England. Based upon the invention of new equipment for toolmaking, these changes would gradually alter plane and edge toolmaking techniques in Maine before rendering the hand work in toolmaking nearly obsolete in the late 19th century.
The inventions and innovations of first English and then American machine engineers were of hidden, but critical, significance for the evolving historical milieu of Maine toolmakers. The steam engine first evolved in England due to lack of water power. The textile industry, powered by steam engines in England, soon migrated to America with the help of Samuel Slater, who established the first water powered, mechanized cotton mill in Rhode Island in 1793. The 45 different block-making machines for the Portsmouth, England, naval shipyards, designed by the French inventor Marc Brunel and manufactured by the English engineer, Henry Maudsley, at the Woolwich Arsenal in London between 1802 and 1809, represented the craftsmen's "red sky in the morning." This equipment was still in use as recently as 1950. Slater's mechanized cotton mill and Maudsley's block-making equipment represented the first small wave of an industrial tsunami, which would soon flood England and America with machine tools of every description.
Bench top lathes, screw and gear cutting machines, table engines, compound slide rests, marine steam engines and many other types of machines that make or power other machinery characterize an Industrial Revolution that developed as a result of innovative English and French engineering. This new machinery was soon adopted and improved upon by American engineers and designers. Oliver Evans, Eli Whitney, Simeon North, Elisha Root and, later, George Corliss are only a few of the American inventors who quickly copied and improved the designs of English engineers to meet the needs of an American factory system, which surpassed England's manufacturing capacity by the mid-19th century. The increased use of machinery to replace hand work by Maine's toolmakers can be noted as early as 1825, when the rotary saw mill replaced not only the more inefficient up and down saw mill, but also the whip (pit) saw and broad ax in many Maine shipyards.
Of particular note is John Hall, the famous Portland, Maine, machinist and gunsmith who improved the design of Simeon North's first milling machine at Harper's Ferry Armory. "By 1828, John Hall and Simeon North were producing rifles with interchangeable parts... By 1832, the Norths, Hall and the armories had the world's first machine able to 'mill' or cut, flat and curved surfaces in iron with a powered, rotary cutter to a high degree of precision... By the 1840s, anyone could buy a milling machine from the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, or the Robbins and Lawrence Company of Windsor, Vermont." (Dianne Muir, Reflections in Bullough's Pond, 2000, pg. 129).
The design and implementation of the milling machine and other equipment derived from earlier English models changed toolmaking in Maine from a crafts based effort, often in scattered, isolated communities, to commercial enterprises centrally located in trading centers such as Portland. No better example of this transition to the factory system of tool production exists than the rise of commercial toolmaking in Bangor, Maine, in the heyday of its boomtown years, 1840 - 1860. By this time, Maine planemakers such as Benjamin Morrill, 1832 - 51, and Percy Rider, 1834 - 48, were producing planes in Bangor in much greater numbers than those made by Joseph Metcalf a half century earlier. The availability of new woodworking machinery played a key part in this transition. Even more important in a historical context was the work of some of America's first machinists in the improbable location of Bangor: Samuel Darling and Edmund Bailey, Bangor, 1852 - 53, Michael Schwartz (working in Bangor after 1843) and Darling & Schwartz, 1854-66. The machinist tools they made, often using one-of-a-kind machines that were later perfected and mass produced, are icons in the history of American hand tool production. They signal the rise of commercial toolmaking in Maine and in America. Only a handful of Darling & Bailey hand tools survive. The Davistown Museum has a Darling & Bailey steel rule in its collection as well as a Darling & Schwartz depth gauge illustrated in the registry listings.
Other commercial toolmaking centers in Maine include Belfast, which was famous as a center for screwdriver inventors and manufacturers (Issac Allard, F. A. Howard, J. W. Jones), as was Augusta (Zachery Furbish and George Gay). The waterpower of the Clinton, Oakland and Waterville area gave rise to numerous ax and edge toolmakers (Dunn Edge Tool, Emerson & Stevens, the Billings clan). T. C. Jackson was an important Bath adz maker. George Evans made planes in Norway. Libby & Bolton made edge tools in Portland. E. T. Burrowes, also of Portland, made levels and rules. The names Peavey and Snow & Nealley (Bangor) are icons in the history of American timber harvesting tools; Snow and Nealley continues to produce high quality axes today. Vaughan & Pardoe of Union made edge tools for shipbuilders in the Waldoboro customs district. All of these toolmakers produced large numbers of tools and were commercially successful precisely because they incorporated much of the machinery of the Industrial Revolution in their tool manufacturing activities.
Of particular interest is an advertisement for the Charles H. Reynolds Co. of Lewiston in the 1855 Maine Business Directory Advertising Supplement. The Reynolds ad indicates that they made both steam engines and boilers; it was this type of industrial equipment that played such a key role in gradually eliminating the artisan in many of the activities of toolmaking in the years between 1850 and 1885. Improved designs in trip hammers originated in southern New England in the early 19th century and helped Maine forges, foundries and edge toolmakers expand their production and serve ever larger communities. While Maine's shipwrights were importing edge tools from the Underhills of New Hampshire and Boston via the coasting trade, Libby & Bolton of Portland were also producing edge tools, some of which were later found in southern New England tool chests. By 1860, the mass production of edge tools by companies like the Collins Axe Co. of Connecticut and Buck Brothers of Milbury, MA, was providing stiff competition to the hundreds of smaller Maine edge toolmakers who flourished from 1820 - 1885. Maine's many ax makers continued their vigorous production of tools for harvesting Maine's vast forests until the early years of the 20th century; most other Maine edge toolmakers had faded into obscurity several decades after the end of the Civil War.
By 1865, the mechanized drop-forging of hand tools first utilized in the Collins Axe Factory in Connecticut in 1837 had spread throughout New England. The availability of steam engines to power trip hammers in lieu of water power brought tool factories to cities such as Portland. Cheap, low carbon steel produced by the Bessemer process and then from Siemens-Martin open hearth furnaces helped commercial toolmakers such as the Diamond Wrench Company of Portland successfully produce their uniquely designed wrenches. Using similar modern drop-forging techniques, but using higher quality steel from unknown sources, the North Wayne Tool Company produced huge numbers of scythe blades. Russell Phillips of Gardner utilized machinery to produce his gorgeous, and now highly valued plow planes (1867 - 1870) using recently improved malleable cast iron containing alloy mixes which, even now, remain secret. In the meantime, Maine edge toolmakers were also feeling the impact of the continuous stream of innovations in both machinery and metallurgy for commercial tool production. A vigorous wooden shipbuilding industry continued in Maine coastal communities, especially Bath, but also Damariscotta, Waldoboro, Thomaston and Belfast, building small schooners for the tenacious coasting trade and huge four and five mast schooners to compete with the growing fleet of steam ships and with rail transportation. This was the golden age of American-produced cast steel edge tools, typified by the exquisite slicks and framing chisels of Underhill, Witherby, Buck Brothers and a few Maine makers. These tools had sleek smooth surfaces characteristic of martinized steel with its uniform carbon distribution and represent the highest achievement of American toolmakers. The rise of this factory system of tool production helped commercial toolmaking in Maine to briefly flourish. Ironically, many of the measuring tools made in New England factories were used for the manufacture of machinery that soon rendered the use of many edge and other hand tools obsolete.
Maine's
first documented Toolmaker:
Robert Merchant and his wantage
rule
The milieu of the southern New England
planemakers provide the historical context for considering the significance
of the work of Robert Merchant. His wantage rule is inscribed
"Made by Robert Merchant for Noah Emery, Berwick, 1720". Of the many
known examples of planes made by Francis or John Nicholson, Ebenezer Seymour,
Nathaniel Potter or Cesar Chelor, who were working in southern New England
at this time, or shortly there after, none were ever dated. The Merchant
wantage rule is, therefore, exceptional, even anomalous, in containing
an inscribed date, indicating exactly when it was made and for whom it
was made. It is certainly the oldest signed and dated tool presently
known to have been made in the Province of Maine. This rule only
surfaced very late in the 19th century, having been discovered in a barn
in Eliot, Maine and then consigned to an auction in Portsmouth, NH, in
1998. This tool was used for measuring volumes of beer, wine and
other spirits in an era when it was much safer to drink beer from a hogshead
than water. This wantage rule is a work of art with its fitted slipcase,
meticulous markings and mellowed hue from years of use measuring volumes
of alcoholic beverages. It is also one of the most significant pieces
of early American material culture in any museum or collection in the United
States. This rule forms the cornerstone of the tool collection of
The Davistown Museum, and remains a principle incentive for the search
for the identity of other early toolmakers who worked in the Province of
Maine.
 |
These photographs don't do justice to this carefully constructed rule, which is signed in script "Made by Robert Merchant for Noah Emery" "Berwick" "1720". This signature is clearly visible in the lower photograph on the upper outside fold. Also note the carefully crafted slip case, which requires a ribbon to remove the rule. No earlier signed measuring tool has come to light in any major public American collection of hand tools (Mercer Museum, Smithsonian, Shelburne Museum, Mystic Seaport, Deerfield, Winterthur or Sturbridge Village). |
 |
|
 |
The discovery of the Merchant wantage rule and it's early date of manufacture helped inspire the attempt to locate other early Maine and New England toolmakers. The miracle of its survival for almost 300 years is the source of two observations about the relationship between tools and art, the focus of the collection and exhibitions of the Davistown Museum. First, those rare hand tools that are exceptional in their beauty and excellence of design and craftsmanship are significant as works of art in themselves. As with any sculpture, they give voice to realities about our culture that we cannot put into words. They exist in and of themselves as a significant art form. What they mean or signify can be debated for generations.
The second observation is that many hand tools were used to make works of art. The beauty and grace of Maine's ships, from the ubiquitous coasting schooners to Maine's sleek "Downeasters" testify to the art of shipbuilding. Mention the words "Flying Cloud" to any knowledgeable Maine maritime history buff; unlikely would be the argument that this ship, built in Damariscotta in the 1880s, was not a work of art. Many others of equal beauty slid down the ways of Maine and New England shipyards. They are an enduring testament to the skills of both the shipwrights who built them and the toolmakers who made their construction possible.
Adams, George. (1855). The Maine Register for the Year 1855: Embracing State and County Officers, and an Abstract of the Laws and Resolves: Together with a complete Business Directory of the State and a Variety of Useful Information. Boston, MA.
Astragal Press. (1989). The Stanley catalog collection: 1855 - 1898: Four decades of rules, levels, try-squares, planes, and other Stanley tools and hardware. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
Biographical Review. (1897). Biographical Review, Containing life sketches of leading citizens of Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Knox and Waldo Counties. Vol. 20. Biographical Review, Boston, MA.
Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. (1867). The Maine business directory for the year commencing 1867, a complete index to the mercantile, manufacturing and professional interests of the state, together with much valuable miscellaneous information. Briggs & Co., Publishers, Boston, MA.
Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. (1869). The Maine business directory for the year commencing January 1, 1869, a complete index to the mercantile, manufacturing, and professional interests of the state, together with much valuable miscellaneous information. Briggs & Co., Publishers, Boston, MA.
Cope, Kenneth L. (1994). Makers of American machinist's tools: A historical directory of makers and their tools. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
Cope, Kenneth L. (1999). American wrench makers 1830 - 1915. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
Eaton, Cyrus. (1851). Annals of the town of Warren in Knox County, Maine with the early history of St. Georges, Broadbay and neighboring settlements on the Waldo Patent. Masters, Smith and Co., Hallowell.
Ellis, Alice. (1980). History of Prospect 1759-1979. Town of Prospect, ME.
Godfrey, John E. (1882). History of Penobscot County, Maine. Williams, Chase, and Co., Cleveland, OH.
Goodman, W.L. (1964). The history of woodworking tools. David McKay Company, Inc., NY, NY.
Hey, David. The development of the English toolmaking industry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In: Gaynor, James M., Ed. (1997). Eighteenth-century woodworking tools.
Klenman, Allen. (1990). Axe makers of North America. Whistle Punk Books, Currie's Forestgraphics Ltd., Victoria, B.C.
Kley, Ron. (Spring 1985). Researching early Maine craftsmen: John H. Hall and the gunsmith's trade. Maine Historical Society Quarterly. 24. pg. 410-415.
Mercer, Henry C. (1975). Ancient carpenters' tools together with lumbermen's, joiners' and cabinet makers' tools in use in the eighteenth century. Fifth edition reprinted by the Bucks County Historical Society.
Office of the Librarian of Congress. (1855). Maine business directory. Briggs & Co., Publishers, Boston, MA.
Office of the Librarian of Congress. (1879). The Maine business directory for 1879. A complete index to the mercantile, manufacturing and professional interests of the state, together with much valuable miscellaneous information. Briggs & Co., Publishers, Boston, MA.
Office of the Librarian of Congress. (1881). The Maine business directory, for 1881. Briggs & Co., Publishers, Boston, MA.
Office of the Librarian of Congress. (1882). The Maine business directory, for 1882. Briggs & Co., Publishers, Boston, MA.
O'Leary, Wayne M. (1996). Maine sea fisheries: The rise and fall of a native industry, 1830 – 1890. Northeastern University Press, Boston, MA.
Parks, Edward C. (1857). The Maine register for 1857 with business directory for the year 1856. 82 Exchange Street, Portland, ME.
Pollak, Emil and Pollak, Martyl. (2001). A Guide to the Makers of American Wooden Planes. Fourth edition. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
Roberts, Kenneth D. (1975). Wooden planes in 19th century America. Ken Roberts Publishing Co., Fitzwilliam, NH.
Stahl, Jasper Jacob. (1956). History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro: Volume one: The colonial and federal periods. The Bond Wheelwright Company, Portland, ME.
Wheeler, George Augustus. (1878). History of Brunswick, Topsham & Harpswell, including th
