An Archaeology of Tools
Table of Contents
Preface to the collection
Historical Background
Exhibition Overview
Inventory Key -- A guide to Abbreviations
Collection Catalogs
Historic
Maritime I (1607-1676): The First Colonial Dominion (pdf)
Historic
Maritime II (1720-1800): The Second Colonial Dominion & the Early
Republic (pdf)
Historic
Maritime III (1800-1840): Boomtown Years & the Dawn of the Industrial
Revolution (pdf)
Historic
Maritime IV (1840-1865): The Early Industrial Revolution (pdf)
The Industrial Revolution (1865f.):
Classic
Period of American Machinist's Tools (pdf)
Patented
and Transitional Planes (pdf)
Other
Factory Made Tools (pdf)
Other Collections
Special Collections--Modern Tools or Tools of Special Significance:
Davistown Museum School Loan Program
German Steel
Tools
made from Rasps or Files (pdf)
Interactive
Displays (pdf)
Tool Exam (pdf)
Catalog of Maine Tools
Tools
of Historic Interest not in the Museum Collection
Registry of Maine Tool Museums
The Davistown Museum has produced a number of publications both in print and electronic form on the subjects of tools, art, and history. Below are links to the online versions of the texts. A suggested donation of 10 cents a page helps offset the cost of maintaining the website, researching, and publishing the materials. These may all be purchased from our list of publications.
Steel- and Toolmaking Strategies and Techniques before 1870 (Volume 6) |
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Art of the Edge Tool: The Ferrous Metallurgy of the New England Shipsmith From the Construction of Maine’s First Ship, the Pinnace Virginia (1607), to 1882 (Volume 7) |
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The Florescence of American Toolmakers 1730 - 1930 (Volume 8) |
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Davistown Museum Exhibition: An Archaeology of Tools (Volume 9) |
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Registry of Maine Toolmakers (Volume 10) |
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Handbook for Ironmongers: A Glossary of Ferrous Metallurgy Terms: A Voyage through the Labyrinth of Steel- and Toolmaking Strategies and Techniques 2000 BC to 1950 (Volume 11) |
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Tool Information Files:
Metallurgy Exerpts from R.J. Forbes
Precision Toolmaking Talk by G. O'Connor
History of Tool Manufacturing Bibliography
European Precedents and the Early Industrial
Revolution
Metallurgy
The Industrial Revolution
in America
Collector's Guides,
Handbooks and Dictionaries
Tools of the Trades
US and New England Toolmakers
Tool Catalogs
Tool Journals, Newsletters and Auction Listings
The Davistown Museum exhibition "An Archaeology of Tools" interprets European settlement of Maine and New England through the medium of its hand tools - always for archaeologists among the most revealing of the accidental durable remnants of ancient peoples. Interspersed throughout the tools recovered by the Liberty Tool Co. for the Davistown Museum are artifacts dating prior to the European settlement of North America. The history of the Ancient Dominions of Maine is the history of two cultures, the Native Americans who lived in Maine before 1600 and the Europeans who gradually cleared the landscape of these first inhabitants after 1600.
The mission of The Davistown Museum exhibition "An Archaeology of Tools" is the recovery, identification, evaluation and display of the hand tools of the maritime culture of coastal New England from the first European visitors in the 16th century to the fluorescence of the Industrial Revolution. Particular emphasis is put on the display of hand tools characteristic of the maritime culture of Maine, its shipbuilders and toolmakers, as well as the tools of the trades of the artisans of Davistown Plantation, later the towns of Montville and Liberty.
The many villages and mill sites of the Davistown Plantation evolved into a flourishing community of coopers by the third decade of the 19th century. These coopers, as well as other crafstmen and small manufacturer's establishments and water mills, came to compose important spokes leading to the market and shipbuilding towns of coastal Maine including Belfast, Thomaston, Warren and Waldoboro. The artifacts produced at mill sites such as Liberty, Kingdom Falls, South Liberty, Searsmont, Appleton and Union played a key role in the evolution of the maritime culture of Maine including its Downeast cod fishery, West Indies and coasting trade, lime and granite industries and flourishing lumber and cordwood exports. A study of the maritime history of Maine is incomplete without tracing the evolution of the infrastructure and industries that were the basis for its fluorescence from the end of the Indian Wars (1756) to the Industrial Revolution. The tool collection of The Davistown Museum -- An Archaeology of Tools -- reflects the evolution of tool making from Maine's first colonial dominion to the twilight years of its maritime culture during the late 19th century. Particular emphasis is placed on recovering tools and artifacts characteristic of the trades and mercantile activities of the pre-Civil War communities of Liberty and Montville and the Davistown Plantation which preceded them.
A primary source of the tools on exhibit are those collected by the Jonesport Wood Co., Liberty Tool Co. (located across the street from the Museum) and the Hulls Cove Tool Barn during 31 years of tool buying along and among New England shipbuilding communities. Specific significant tools with special characteristics and/or tool manufacturer or maker's signatures were saved over a period of thirty years and then loaned or donated to The Davistown Museum to form the core of its current collection. More recently, donations and loans from other collectors have allowed the collection of The Davistown Museum to become among the most important in the United States. Particular emphasis has been put on the chronological documentation of tool manufacturers in New England and Maine.
The collection of tools in The Davistown Museum is the result of the recovery of hand tools manufactured either in England, continental locations or in the early forges, foundries and factories of America during the settlement of New England by Europeans in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The hand tools in the museum display were (and continue to be) recovered by the Liberty Tool Co. or donated or loaned to the museum by a number of collectors. These tools are organized in chronological groupings and displayed in The Davistown Museum exhibition entitled "An Archaeology of Tools." The interpretation of An Archaeology of Tools is adapted to the history of the state of Maine and its peculiar anomalies (e.g.. the depopulation of most areas of Maine east of Wells after 1676; coastal resettlement was gradual if sporadic until the fall of Quebec in 1759.) The historical schema used for the collation of these tools in the Museum collection expresses the rhythms of Maine's history -- the ancient dominions of the old maritime cultures of Maine and the gradual impact of the Industrial Revolution on this culture. The study of early tools as material cultural artifacts helps us trace the gradual, at times tortuous, settlement of the Maine coast and its tidewater communities and the later penetration of European settlers into ever more inland locations. The tools used by European settlers in Maine prior to the Industrial Revolution illustrate their near total dependence on a resource-based economy based first and foremost on forest products, with ship building as its most essential industry. The creative use of these forest products by the adept use of steel edged tools allowed the efficient exploitation of Maine's other major natural resource, its marine fisheries as well as the manufacture of the wide variety of milled lumber and cooper's products that, along with fish, were the most important cargos on Maine's coasting and oceangoing ships.
Implicit in our attempt to explore the technological history of hand tools in Maine is a triad: forest products - woodworking tool kits - and the wooden ships they produced (see the appendix on Maine's Resource Based Economy in the Registry of Maine Toolmakers). This triad underlies the organizational plan of the museum exhibition "An Archaeology of Tools." The schema of this exhibition references the ebb and flow of a series of historical events, the details of which can be pursued and explored in the wealth of written literature on the manufacturing of hand tools and the history of technology. The historical background and related literature and research, which constitutes the essential background information for understanding and interpreting the exhibition An Archaeology of Tools, is contained in volumes 6 - 8 of the museum publication series, Hand Tools in History. The specifics of tool manufacturing in Maine are explored in volume 10 of the museum publication series, the Registry of Maine Toolmakers. Together these volumes explore the historical background, steelmaking strategies and tool manufacturing history of New England's maritime era.
Our chronological examination of hand tools in Maine history begins with the following time frame.
An Archaeology of Tools: Exhibition Overview
The Museum displays illustrate the evolution of tool manufacturing in the United States from blacksmith-made hand forged tools (circa 1600 - 1830) to the early years of the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of a vigorous American tool manufacturing industry. The history, techniques and products of American hand tool manufacturing industries before the Civil War are poorly documented. The many American made tools, especially edge tools, surviving from this period help supplement the meager written literature on this subject. While finely made English tools, and to a lesser extent German tools, continued to be imported to the United States until after the Civil War, American tool manufacturing activities can be divided into four general categories. All are compatible with our interpretation of the maritime era of Maine's unique history, the overlap of steel producing strategies and technologies not withstanding.
Historical context for the exhibition "An Archaeology of Tools"
The most important tools in the tool kits of the residents of the historical maritime cultures of Maine (1607 - 1865) are woodworking tools, especially those associated with shipbuilding, boat building and construction of mills, buildings and wharfs. Central among these primordial tools are the adz, broad ax, framing chisel, pit saw, drawknife, hewing ax, hand plane and pod auger. As our exhibition "An Archaeology of Tools" has been collected and organized from the surviving remnants of the workshops and tool chests of 18th and 19th century New England, a series of questions naturally arise as to the origins and prototypes of the iron and steel tools used by the early settlers in New England.
In the late 18th century, what was a trickle of settlers moving into the back hill country of central coastal Maine became a virtual flood of immigrants seeking free land and new opportunities. The extensive network of rivers and streams that eventually led to the coastal tidewater shipbuilding towns of Thomaston and Warren (St. Georges River), Waldoboro (Medomak River), Damariscotta and Boothbay (Davis Stream and Damariscotta River) and Wiscasset (Sheepscot River) provided numerous water mill sites for what was to be a vigorous forest-resource dependent network of coopers, woodsmen, sawyers and millwrights. These newly arrived migrants from forest-resource starved southern New England often followed traditional seasonal patterns of labor to work in the tidewater shipyards or serve as crew for winter and early spring fishing expeditions. The forms (shapes, styles and design characteristics), origins (place of manufacture) and manufacturing methods (ferrous metallurgy) of the tools used by these settlers tell us more about their lives, technology and social milieu than any other material cultural remnants except the written records they left for posterity.
Of particular importance for the newly established villages of the Davistown Plantation, always located at mill sites (The Kingdom, Liberty Village, South Montville and South Liberty) as well as nearby Searsmont, Appleton, Palermo and Union, was an already well established coastal shipbuilding industry. It was the needs of this shipbuilding industry for heavy timber, planking and spars as well as for the ship cargos of cordwood, clapboards, house frames and especially cooperage products (staves, trawl line tubs, water kegs, salt boxes, etc.) that enabled these back hill country mill towns to rapidly grow in the boomtown years of the first four decades of the 19th century. The hand tools utilized in the harvesting of timber resources and the manufacture of wooden products were, along with the essential skills necessary for the efficient use of these tools, the key to the success of these industries. The seasonal and itinerant nature of shipbuilding also meant that many of the same tools and skills used in the boom town years of the inland water mill towns were also the key ingredient to the success of Maine's booming shipyards. A comparison of the number of ships built in the Waldoboro customs district shows an almost exact correlation with mill town population levels in the early and mid-19th century.
As early as 1640, southern New England colonists had been forced to build their own fishing and trading vessels due to the disruption of shipping caused by the English Revolution, 1640 - 1660. With the return of peace after the disruption and uncertainties of the long Parliament and Cromwellian years, New England colonists began participating in, and soon became an important component of an English-based polygon of transatlantic trade that included Newfoundland, New England, the West Indies, the Wine Islands (Madeira, etc.) and European and English ports. As southern New England depleted its forest resources, Maine soon became an important source of forest products. By the time of the American Revolution and the early years of the republic, coastal Maine had become an important shipbuilding center as well as a source for milled and raw timber products of every description. By the 1840s, Maine had become the most important center of America's shipbuilding industry. Of particular importance for both the history of the Davistown Plantation and the formation of the museum is that by the late 1840s the Waldoboro Customs District, downstream from Liberty and Montville, was producing as much as 10% of all wooden ships built in the United States. This florescence of shipbuilding and associated need for cargo, supplies of woodenware and agricultural products explains why local population levels as well as water mill-related manufacturing activities reached their peak levels in the 1840s. The third, fourth and fifth decades of the 19th century thus provide a focus for the museum's tool collection, which begins with the earliest forged iron and imported English tools (Maritime I and II) and ends with the classic period of the Industrial Revolution.
After 1870, fewer but larger sailing vessels continued to be built in Maine, especially at Bath and at surviving larger shipyards at Thomaston, Waldoboro, Damariscotta and elsewhere, but in the era of railroads and steamships, the small community-sponsored coasters and West Indies traders were fast disappearing. After the Civil War, the full rigged downeasters, and later, the huge bulk cargo schooners, the last wooden ships built in Maine, were transporting coal, ice, cotton, lime and granite to the growing cities and mills along the Atlantic seaboard and elsewhere. This final florescence of wooden shipbuilding in Maine played an ironic role in ending the era of wooden ships and the decline of the mill towns located upstream from a now shrinking shipbuilding industry. The decline in wooden shipbuilding in many coastal Maine locations closely correlates with declining population levels and manufacturing activity in the mill towns of the central coastal Maine hill country, in contrast to growing industrial activity in southern New England cities, and Maine mill towns such as Biddeford, Auburn and Lewiston.
The inventory list of the collections of The Davistown Museum is divided by the categories listed below.
The following abbreviations are used in the listing pages:
Status:
DTM Owned
by The Davistown Museum (donation or purchase)
LPC
Loans from a Private Collection except for loans from artists
LA
Loans from the Artist; many of the works in the Annual Art Show are loans
from the artist
BDTM Bequest to the
Museum from a Private Collection
GA
Gift from the artist; these are also part of the permanent collection but
are differentiated from Museum purchases in order to acknowledge individual
gifts.
LSS
Items Loaned for Special Shows
NOM Not
Owned by the Museum
WD
Withdrawn by the Artist
Location:
The letter codes correspond to
those used on the Museum map.
MH
Main Exhibition Hall except display cases
MHC Main Exhibition
Hall, in the Cases (A-L); These will list as MHCK for Main Exhibition Hall
Case K
RR
Reading Room (T) and display cases (R)
DTHP Davistown History
Project room (U)
Ltool Liberty
Tool Co., Davistown Museum Annex, second floor
P
Fourth floor Photography exhibit and stairwell (P, V)
Q
Bathroom (Q)
YX
Stairwell and Entrance Hall (Y, X)
photo: A click-on link to a photograph of the item.
bio: A click-on link to a biography of the maker.
Reference abbreviations
Much of the information in the
inventory listings comes from these essential references and information
sources:
Cope: Cope, Kenneth L. (1993). American machinist's tools: An illustrated directory of patents. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
DATM (1999): Nelson, Robert E., Ed. (1999). Directory of American Toolmakers: A listing of identified makers of tools who worked in Canada and the United States before 1900. Early American Industries Association.
Pollak: Pollak, Emil and Pollak, Martyl. (1994). A guide to the makers of American wooden planes, third edition. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
Pollak (4th ed.): Pollak, Emil and Pollak, Martyl. (2001). A guide to the makers of American wooden planes, fourth edition. Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
Goodman (3rd ed.): Goodman, W.L. (1968). British planemakers from 1700. Third Edition enlarged and revised by Jane & Mark Rees, published by Roy Arnold in 1993, Astragal Press, Mendham, NJ.
The 'Plane' Gentleman: Robert S. Jones, 3042 Conchise Circle SE, Rio Rancho, NM 87124-2271, personal correspondence.
Brack, H.G., Ed. (2004). Registry of Maine Toolmakers (RMTM). The Davistown Museum, Liberty, ME.
