The area that is now the
town of Montville was originally inhabited by the Wawenoec Indians. Between 1629 and 1631 The Council of New England divided
Maine into three major regions, and the region that now contains Montville was purchased by the
brigadier general Samuel Waldo, for whom
Waldo County is now named. The first evidence of European activity in Montville itself comes from about 1720, when timber was harvested in the area. Among the trees cut were white pines, which were used as ship masts by the British
Royal Navy. The first permanent settlement by Europeans in Montville occurred in 1780, when James Davis moved to the area from
Massachusetts. The settlement he founded was named the Davistown Plantation, after James Davis, and grew to encompass all of modern day Montville & Liberty. By 1790 there were six families living on the Davistown Plantation, by 1800 that number had grown to 50 families. Davistown was incorporated on February 18, 1807, under the name Montville, the French word for "mountain town". Twenty years later the southern part of Montville split off, and was incorporated as the town of Liberty. The
patent originally claimed by Samuel Waldo later came under the ownership of
Henry Knox,
George Washington's
secretary of war. In the late 18th and early 19th century, there was an ongoing dispute between the settlers of the region and Knox over who held rightful ownership of the land. This was part of a larger conflict between the poor settlers of Mid Coast Maine and the proprietors who owned the land. The settlers believed that ownership of land meant that you had "improved" it by clearing it of trees, planting crops or building fences. Conversely, the proprietors believed that ownership of land was decided by government-granted deeds. The proprietors attempted to divide the land they claimed into lots so that they could tax the settlers there, but the settlers resisted this and banded together to stop surveying in their settlements. The homesteaders called themselves Liberty Men (likely where the town Liberty's name comes from), and used mainly intimidation tactics to scare off surveyors who entered into their dominion. On September 5, 1815, a group of Liberty men attacked the Marshall Springs hotel in Montville, in a raid against Joseph H. Pierce Jr, an agent for the twenty associates. The twenty associates were the group that took over Henry Knox's land claims after he died in 1806. Through the first four decades of the 19th century, Montville's population rapidly increased. The land was largely deforested, and many farms were started in the area.
Sawmills in Montville and Liberty processed wood, which was then transported to the coast to be used in
shipbuilding. Montville and Liberty also became a center of
coopering, (barrel making) with many of the barrels produced there either being used by fishermen to store their catch, or as lime casts by brick masons in cites to the south, such as
Portland, Maine, or
Boston, Massachusetts. Montville reached its peak population in 1840, at which time there were 2,153 people living in the area. After this Montville's population went into a steady decline for the next 120 years, reaching its low in 1960 with just 366 people. Its population has since rebounded somewhat, and as of the
2020 census sits at 1,020 people. The drastic decrease in population meant that former farmland was allowed to re-wild, and today the vast majority of Montville's land is forested. ==Geography==