Montville prepares for town bicentennial

MONTVILLE – Local officials, residents and volunteers are pulling together to get the town spruced up in time for next weekend’s Montville Bicentennial Celebration.

The celebration will take place the weekend of Aug. 3-4 and will feature balloon rides, history lessons, a Civil War re-enactment, pie-eating contests, music, games for children, and a chicken barbecue.

“We’re going to have a great time,” Debbie Stephens, president of the local historical society, said Tuesday. “Two hundred years is quite a thing. I’m just very pleased about the sense of community we have here. We’ve had a lot of wonderful people in town donating their services and their time for this.”

Painters were putting a fresh coat of stain on the Montville Community Hall this week, while across the road the historic Montville Town House was getting a face-lift as well. A road crew was reconstructing and paving Center Montville Road from Bean’s Corner to the town house.

According to “Waldo County: The Way it Was,” written by Frank E. Claes and published by Down East Books, the town was incorporated as Montville in 1807. A number of families had already taken up residence in the area beginning in the 1770s. The first permanent settler was James Davis, a Presbyterian minister from Massachusetts. After a period, there were so many Davises in the area that the settlement was called Davistown until its incorporation.

The town is famous for its streams that serve as sources for the St. George and Sheepscot rivers. The town had a population of 1,467 in 1870 and according to the latest census had a population of 1,002 in 2000. The town house was built as a church in 1827 and has been used for elections and town meetings since that period, according to Stephens.

“One hundred years ago when the town had its centennial celebration, that building had its own celebration. It has always been one of the most cherished buildings in Montville, and it still is,” Stephens said.

The celebration will kick off at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3, with tethered hot air balloon rides. At 7 p.m. Alan Taylor, author of “Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement of the Maine Frontier,” will give a talk, followed by refreshments. A community dance at the Montville Field Day field will cap off the evening.

Saturday’s events will begin with a road race at 9 a.m. followed by a parade an hour later. There will be a historical address and song at 11 a.m. followed by the presentation of the Boston Post Cane. The chicken barbecue will follow at noon.

There will be a cake-off and blueberry pie eating contest for all ages at 1 p.m. followed by the town house dedication an hour later. The Fire Department will conduct an auction followed by the presentation to the lucky winner of a quilt made specially for the event. Stephens said 25 local women crafted squares for the quilt, which was sewn under the guidance of Sarah Johnson, a former resident of town and owner of Sarah Johnson’s Quilts in Belfast.

Also throughout the afternoon there will be live music, a 20th Maine Civil War encampment, children’s games, woodsmen events, skillet toss, hammer toss and face painting, historical exhibits and exhibits of spinning, porcupine quill basket making, and hand-hewing beams.

For information and to reserve a seat for Taylor’s talk, contact Hannah at 342-5544.