Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820

by Alan Taylor

This detailed exploration of the settlement of Maine beginning in the late eighteenth century illuminates the violent, widespread contests along the American frontier that served to define and complete the American Revolution. Taylor shows how Maine's militant settlers organized secret companies to defend their populist understanding of the Revolution.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1990

About the author

Alan Shaw Taylor is a historian specializing in early American history. He is the author of a number of books about colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for his work.

Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977 and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986. Currently a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, he will join the faculty of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia in 2014.

Reviews

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional. The depth of analysis of the backcountry settlers of Maine is one of the best I've seen.
My bucolic idea of settlers homesteading and clearing the land, baking bread, and looking out for Indians went out the window with this book. The folks from Balltown were just plain bad ass and wouldn't put up with the impositions of the Great Proprietor's form of government nor their ideology. These settlers burned barns, broke men out of jail, threatened others and stuck to their guns in order to not be surveyed and have to pay 4 times the value of their land to the Great Proprietors. They were the Jeffersonians, a group of men who subscribed to the idea that ALL men are created equal, that a man should be able to worship at the church of his choice. The Federalists were considered aristocratic men, religiously dogmatic, “supercilious Lordlings, whose haughtiness you find on trial to be so insufferable.”

This book is indexed as to location and surnames. I'd be happy to do lookups. It also have a large section of bibliography which provides sources as well as many, many pages of notes.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must for anyone interested in the Early Republic or Maine history, though this book is rather hard to find. I looked for this in many a used bookstore, intending to buy it- after all, I'm a graduate student studying Maine in the Early Republic, so this one is sort of a necessity. Couldn't find it anywhere, which is kind of weird, since Alan Taylor is eminent and award winning and all that, and there are always copies of his other books around. Eventually I gave up and got it at the library.
This details the fascinating time in Maine's history when Maine was like the Wild West, except it was the Wild East. Rich men (great proprietors) owned huge swaths of land in Maine, and poor farmers (liberty men) moved up to Maine after the American Revolution to settle these lands. The settlers were hoping that the Revolution would invalidate these huge landholdings. They believed that no one had the right to own a million acres of land, and real ownership came when a family settled on the land, cut down the trees, planted crops, and built a house. The Revolution did not invalidate the claims, however, and the great proprietors demanded payment from these "squatter" farmers. So, in a similar fashion to people in Massachusetts during Shay's Rebellion (as well as other conflicts in other parts of America), the Maine settlers revolted. They formed posses, broke people out of jail, kicked surveyors out at gunpoint, dressed like Indians to threaten messengers, and burned the barns of those they suspected of working with the proprietors. Conflicts like this happened over a really wide area, all the way from the Androscoggin to the Penobscot, basically all of what is now Central Maine.
There were all kinds of religious and political issues mixed up in the conflict too, and Taylor writes about the decline of Congregational Churches and the rise of the Baptists and Methodists, and the decline of Federalist power and the rise of the Jeffersonians. I spent a lot of time thinking about my ancestors. I wonder if they were dressing up like Indians or getting shot at by people dressed like Indians? I don't think they had much money, so I'm going with dressing up.

[Rob Bauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extended review of this excellent book about post-revolutionary America.

Deep in the brooding forests of central Maine’s Penobscot River valley, a young farmer, his wife, and their five children emerge from a lonely, ramshackle cabin on a typical July day. Their faces blackened because the family must burn a fire in their windowless cabin to drive away the bloodthirsty horde of mosquitoes that infiltrates their home daily, they make the walk to their corn fields hoping that the innumerable stinging black flies will, for once, be merciful. While the family weeds the fields, the husband sets himself to the grueling task of felling still another of the seemingly infinite trees that stand in the way of his family’s survival from one year to the next. He labors with the dream that before death takes him he will have cleared enough acreage to provide his children with farms of their own, so that they will be free and independent of the influence of the wealthy families who claim title to this dark, wild, trackless section of the Maine District frontier. All the while, he knows that any day, representatives of those same rich proprietors could call, demanding payment for the lands cleared with the sweat of his own brow. With the Massachusetts courts in the hip pockets of the proprietors, what recourse does this impoverished, unpaid veteran of the Revolution have when that day comes?

The scene portrayed in this fictional account on the frontier of the Maine District encapsulates many of the themes in Alan Taylor’s book Liberty Men and Great Proprietors. One of these themes is the frontier experience itself. To put it simply, the experience could be brutally trying for even the heartiest of settlers. Most of these people came from modest means at best; otherwise, they would never have risked farming in central Maine in the first place. This fact meant that they began with limited farming supplies and livestock. What few animals the average family did possess were constantly at risk from the bear and wolves roaming the wild forests, while the crops themselves faced danger from late spring or early fall frosts, insects, and the short growing season. What meager yield the farmer did coax from the soil still required transport to a market if the family hoped to realize any gain from their tribulations. Sometimes this was sufficient to support the family for the year, but at other times, it was not. Traveler Edward Kendall noted “Nothing, as I am assured, is more common than for families to live for three months in the year without animal food, even that of salted fish, and with no other resources than milk, potatoes, and rum.” (69)

As if merely surviving under these circumstances was not difficult enough, many of Maine’s settlers lacked clear title to their land. Typically, legal title resided with the great proprietors resident in Boston (Maine being part of Massachusetts prior to the Missouri Compromise of 1820), who used local representatives to enforce their claims. Due to the vagaries of disputed boundaries, “creative” surveying, and Indian land sales of uncertain extent, the holdings of these land speculators were never clear or entrenched in a legal sense before the Revolutionary War. This fact, combined with the belief among settlers that the Revolution had done away with claims filed under English law (and the fact that some of the settlers had helped win the Revolution with their own blood and toil, while being paid in an eventually worthless paper scrip) led them to contest the proprietors’ ownership following the Revolution. Only through personal connections, influence, and well-disposed state courts were the speculators able to confirm their titles after 1783. Likewise using the friendly court system to enforce their claims against the settlers actually living on and developing the contested lands, the proprietors attempted to exact payment over the entire period from 1760 to 1820. This caused settler Samuel Ely to exclaim, “The power has already taken away our liberty, and now we must be content or they will take away our lives also . . . We fought for liberty, but despots took it.” (113)

The resistance of the settlers consisted of group violence against the surveyors hired by the great speculators. Disguised as Indians, local communities would turn out en masse to threaten, bully, and sometimes rough up these surveyors, often breaking their instruments and absconding with their survey notes in the process. In only one known instance did the crowds use lethal force. This tactic produced mixed results. The settlers could claim success on the argument that it required 60 years for the proprietors to achieve complete compliance with their claims, however, most did eventually pay for their lands and over time, violent resistance lost its dramatic effect.

There was, however, more to the story than disputed land claims and violent resistance to the proprietors’ legal title, however dubious in nature. The two groups also contested the nature of land ownership and a vision of who should rule in the new American republic. While both groups believed in private ownership of the land, the settlers’ ideology vested proper ownership in actual occupation and use, rather than simple legal title. In addition, the yeoman farmers of central Maine dreaded demotion to the status of renters or land tenants. To them, this meant returning to a state of dependence, akin to slavery, that the Revolution was to have done away with. They dreamed of clearing a parcel of forest that would, one day, provide the same level of independence and economic security to their children that they hoped to enjoy. The proprietors saw things in a different light. True Federalists that they were, they believed the poor frontier settlers were poor primarily due to dissolute habits such as laziness, a penchant for alcohol, and similar vices. Therefore, the way to improve the morals of the settlers was to require payment for their homesteads because that would force the frontiersmen to work hard and abandon their wasteful tendencies. While the reader may question whether they would have persisted with this ideology had the roles been reversed, the hierarchical conception of late eighteenth century society gave this opinion sanction from polite society, and from the legal system as well.

Liberty Men and Great Proprietors is a useful and important book in many ways. First, as with some of Taylor’s other published works, it situates land speculation directly at the center of the revolutionary experience, which is precisely where it belongs. By demonstrating how social standing, access to government and the courts, and a sense of hierarchy clashed with the yeoman desire for land ownership and personal independence, Taylor adds a valuable chapter to our knowledge of society in the decades surrounding the American Revolution. Tying this thread in with the discussion of how to acquire legitimate ownership of the land is a notable insight as well. Taylor does not neglect to explore the role of evangelical religion, part of his research into the daily lives of his subjects, which also includes a bevy of primary sources, and this look at the realities of daily existence helps the reader to sympathize with the titanic struggle that the typical frontier settler faced yearly just to survive. Taylor’s ability to link these various ideological components directly to the results of the experiences of the American Revolution further clarifies how each group, settler and speculator, sought to give their own interpretation of exactly what the Revolution meant. “Gentlemen of property and standing favored a limited reading of the recent Revolution as simply a war for national independence, a war intended to place America’s government in their own hands and to safeguard their extensive property from arbitrary parliamentary taxation.” (5-6) On the other hand, “Agrarians dreaded prolonged economic independence as tenants or wageworkers as the path to ‘slavery.’ They sought an American Revolution that reinforced their fundamental drive—to maximize their access to, and secure their possession of, freehold land.” (6)

Overall, Taylor has written an insightful and at times provocative book. However, a few minor critiques exist. There is not much effort to situate the Maine frontier in the larger colonial/early American republican experience, outside of a few pages in the introduction. The maps Taylor offers are rather crowded spatially, and do not always enhance his discussion. While an ambitious undertaking, Taylor might have discussed the environmental ramifications of the land clearance strategies of the settlers, especially timber cutting, and whether those techniques played any role in their concept of developing the land. Finally, though the settlers often dressed as Indians when driving away land surveys, actual Indians do not appear outside of their role in land cessions. Despite these few lapses, Taylor’s insights combined with high-quality writing make Liberty Men and Great Proprietors a highly recommended book.

[Kevin Moynihan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read one book on the history of Maine, you can't go wrong with this one. Insightful. The author does expose his Leftist views here and there but nothing overtly absurd.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taylor’s history of the backcountry revolts in Maine is a detailed account of how the settlers “squatting” on the land fought against the moneyed gentlemen whose dubious land grants were honored by the legislature. This is an important book for readers looking to understand the years immediately after the Revolution and how the ideals of personal liberty and political freedom were worked out – sometimes violently – on the ground.

[Ron Housley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liberty Men and the Great Proprietors — The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820

Alan Taylor, ©1990, 381 pages

A short Book Report by Ron Housley (June 21, 2024)

Now comes a work by a graduate of Bonny Eagle High School down the street from where I live, recipient of not one but two Pulitzer Prizes for subsequent works, and a finalist for a National Book Award in non-fiction. “Liberty Men” is an earlier work predating Taylor’s rise to academic stardom.

Taylor has a story to tell: of the Maine frontier in the period following the American Revolution, of newly minted “Americans” striking out northward from Massachusetts to create a new life, only to be confronted by the “Great Proprietors” who claimed to have been granted ownership to vast swaths of Maine, granted by the English King, long before the Revolutionary War had even been conceived. The north-bound pioneers became known as the “Liberty Men,” who were not about to accept the elite mercantilism of old England, where landed aristocracy exploited tenants and laborers into perpetual servitude. “The Revolutionary moment lent moral urgency and legitimacy to [the settlers’] effort.” (p. 96)


LEGAL HARANGUES
In the decades following the Revolutionary War, ownership disputes over mid-coast Maine land dragged on. The wealthy beneficiaries of the King’s land “patents,” as they were called, wanted to extract rents and other payments from the settlers. The settlers, many who had bankrupted themselves fighting the Revolutionary War, saw the vast tracts of land as no longer the King’s to dole out and contended that these properties should be treated as frontier land open to homesteading.

Court cases and local skirmishes dragged on for many years before the claims were ultimately settled once the new country was able to deploy civilized remedies for cases such as these.


THE GREAT PROPRIETORS
Collectively, the privileged recipients of England’s Royal patents, i.e., the claimants to large swaths of land, became known as “The Great Proprietors.” The proprietors brought with them from a certain sense of unjustified superiority and a smug claim to “the importance of a natural aristocracy.” (p. 18) Their “Old World” values were in stark contrast to the social and economic revolution taking place in early 19th century America.

Some say that Thomas Jefferson’s Presidency (1801-1809) signaled a second revolution in America — a rebellion against the restraints of old authority.

A moral and political revolution had taken place in 1776, but with Jefferson’s election as President, the follow-up revolution in the early 1800s was social and economic — with thousands of “new” Americans determined to pursue their own goals, their own lives, a screeching departure from what was possible in the “Old World” or even in the colonies before Revolution.

The relatively small band of Great Proprietors in Maine found themselves aligned with “Old World” mercantilist values of the monarchies; but this was a perspective actively rejected by the “New World” American society, particularly by those settlers moving westward and northward, settlers who were untethered to the old mercantilist values.

The drama of Alan Taylor’s history is the conflict which took place between these two views of how society should be organized. Should the lands beyond Colonial population centers be open for settlers to settle, or should favors granted by a defeated King of England be upheld by the new government which was supposed to be dedicated to insuring individual liberty for every citizen? Common sense suggested that “wild lands ought to be as free as common air. These lands once belonged to King George. [But] he lost them by the American Revolution and they became the property of the people who defended and won them.” (p. 95)


CONFLICT OF WORLD-VIEWS
It was inevitable that such opposite orientations would spark conflict. Representative of the “old” mercantilist world-view, we have the unscrupulous Henry Knox, a prominent Great Proprietor who enjoyed flaunting power and living beyond his means. The scheming he deployed to hold onto “his” properties rivals some of the ancient palace intrigue that in Shakespeare’s day got palace schemers outright killed. In the case of Knox, it cost many settlers their livelihood, their peace of mind and their right to the pursuit of their own happiness.

In contrast to Knox and the other Great Proprietors, Taylor describes the early Maine “settlers” as if he were telling us about the human misery and depravity of the Dark Ages: life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” We get long descriptions of the “settlers” struggling to claw bare subsistence out of the land, men at the brink of exhaustion or perpetually at death’s door, or just milli-seconds away from starvation.


THE “GENERAL COURT”
It seems that prior to 1820 when Maine became an actual State of its own, the territory fell under the auspices of the “General Court,” the colonial-era legislative and judicial body that governed Massachusetts Bay Province since the late 1600s. The General Court had the authority to dispose of public lands and to do the King of England’s bidding by handing out land patents to the Great Proprietors, which in turn were inheritable to successive generations.

After the Revolutionary War, this same General Court ruled that the land patents gifted to the Great Proprietors by the English King in the 1600s would be protected by the new government. This ruling seems to be at the root of all the conflict and disruption which is the subject of Taylor’s book.

A gift, after all, is a gift regardless of whether the King had any actual right to dispense such gifts. The decision to legitimize the Royal gifts of land sparked decades of conflict and failed attempts to impose a leasing system upon the “Liberty Men” settlers.


THE STANDING ORDER
Taylor gives us an entire chapter about the development of religion in mid-Maine backcountry and the important role religion played in the land ownership disputes. One of the carry-overs from the “colonial era” was a legislative “Standing Order” mandating that each town tax its citizens to fund a meetinghouse, which in turn was to support a minister — the mandate originally intended a “college-educated Congregationalist” minister.

As the largely illiterate mid-Maine settlers began to clear land and erect primitive housing, they were mostly attracted to the fly-by-night evangelical preachers who promoted overt mysticism over study of accepted scripture. The settlers were most certainly not attracted to “college-educated Congregationalist” ministers. The evangelicals appealed to wild exaltation, whereas the established Congregationalists saw the settlers as poorly educated, difficult to engage, and at the edge of lapsing into religious anarchy. Ultimately the evangelicals dominated in capturing allegiance of the supposedly low mental capacity struggling settlers. At least that is how Taylor seemed to present it to us.

Liberty Men settlers aligned themselves with the evangelical message, and naturally rejected the Congregationalist preachers’ advocacy for the Great Proprietors. The evangelical approach allowed the Liberty Men to claim “direct access” to the Holy Spirit and that, they felt, made them superior to those with great wealth. “When Great Proprietors demanded land payments, settlers could identify themselves as seekers serving God, and their opponents as worldlings serving Mammon.” (p. 143)

Ultimately Henry Knox and the other Great Proprietors subsidized the Congregational churches by supplying both ministers and meetinghouses so they could preach against the Liberty Men. It was not unlike what today we call a “psyop.” Congregationalist ministers preached against the Liberty Men and against their challenge to the Great Proprietors’ claim to ownership of wilderness land, land gifted to their forefathers by English Royal decree many decades prior.


RENTER VS. FREEHOLD OWNERSHIP
My understanding about the objection to the “gifting” of land to the Great Proprietors by an English King many generations past is that such an arrangement would strap the poor peasant settlers with onerous rents into perpetuity, rendering them practically slaves to the Proprietors. Somewhere in this story, there was a shift from the proprietors attempting to extract rents to the proprietors attempting to sell “their” land outright to the settlers — a transition driven by the Liberty Men’s vision of freehold land ownership and their violent resistance to remaining permanent tenants.


RESOLUTION TO THE LAND DISPUTES?
The General Court’s Betterment Act of 1807 struck a compromise, giving the settlers ownership of land "improvements" which resulted from their own labor of clearing and plowing the land and building structures. The compromise was that the settlers would have to pay the “Great Proprietors” an amount based on the value of unimproved wilderness land.

The General Court’s compromise recognized the value of improvements undertaken by the settlers; but also recognized the proprietors’ “right” to a much smaller value of the raw land at issue. The new law laid down the basis for an eventual settlement of the land disputes.

Decades of resistance; night-time raids; property destruction; personal threats; some personal injury and at least one murder ---- all this was required because some long-ago English King thought he “owned” vast tracks of land and had the authority to personally gift it to politically favored subjects in the New World.


DEVELOPING AMERICA’S NEW SOCIAL ORDER
Taylor’s story parallels the cobbling together of a nascent social system of institutionalized liberty, which some refer to as “liberal social order.” As the struggle to create an American social order took shape, the question had to be answered whether political favors to elite groups, such as land grants from a foreign King, would have a prominent place in the new American republic. The advent of the Great Proprietors in a prior generation injected an element of disruption to the American project of creating a social order based on liberty.

Taylor ends his history with a lament that justice was never attained for the Revolutionary War soldiers who were promised land but got none, and who were never paid for their service to country. That was set in contrast to the bounty bestowed upon the War’s officer class, such as Henry Knox, who sallied forth with a privilege, a Royal land patent and bounty to squander as he saw fit.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

A FRIVOLOUS PS: FAMOUS MAINE NAMES
(1)Those of us who live in Maine will recognize many of the names in this story — the story of the mid-Maine Great Proprietors is peppered with characters that are today the names of towns, counties and buildings in the state: Henry Knox, Robert Hallowell Gardiner, Daniel Cony, Benjamin Hallowell, Robert Hallowell Gardiner, Gen George Samuel Waldo, Silvester Gardiner, Gov. James Bowdoin; David Cobb; General Benjamin Lincoln; and my personal favorite, Harrison Gray Otis.

(2) Alan Taylor’s historical accounting was for me a companion piece to the history of John Deere’s company, a story that also had its origins in the decades following the American Revolution. I am only just beginning to develop a sense of the issues at play back then, explaining how our country evolved in the direction it did.

[Tascha Folsoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book operates as a stunning forensic examination of how less powerful white folks were swindled, once and for all, out of the belief that they should enjoy an equal share of the “light, air, earth, and water.” While there are only so many violins one might play for white people in this country, the psychological shift–the sense of disempowerment that the great proprietors were able to inculcate into poorer white folks– has worked in concert with many other efforts to lower all boats save for the most privileged few. (More or less.)

Wealthier men supported and fought in the Revolution expressly to become the landed gentry of our new world without having to pay homage and taxes to British royalty and corporations. They viewed their wealth as a sign of liberal progressivism because their ownership of confiscated Indian land made THEM wealthy, rather than the hereditary wealth of the old world. However, as proprietors, they did not work the land. Instead, squatters suffered unimaginable poverty to clear the rough landscape in an area that would never promise the best yields due to weather and soil conditions. Squatters believed that they fought the Revolution to nullify much of the land ownership as ordained by the King or deeds extracted from defeated/collapsing native populations. They were fighting for an equal chance at liberty, which absolutely depended on land ownership. Consequently, they saw themselves as having rightfully appropriated –through their work and/or war records– the same land for which the proprietors claimed their own legitimate ownership. Therein lies the conflict.

Written some 30 plus years ago, this book sheds as much light on our own time as it does on the Maine frontier from 1760-1820. It’s not so much that I would draw direct parallels between that world and our own; it’s more like looking in a kaleidoscope with similar –yet different– patterns that repeat today:

marginalized and often violent protesters,
protectors of the entrenched hierarchy,
neo-liberal (Jeffersonian) power-grabbers,
hard-working folks just trying to figure out with whom to ally themselves in order to hold onto what they’ve accrued.
great wealth that depended upon the existence of grinding poverty

Reading and contemplating how these patterns both repeat and change provide for a much deeper understanding of our world as it is now and was then.

Every time I read another Alan Taylor history book and say this is the one book I want everyone to read…until I read the next one. You really can’t go wrong…although starting with American Colonies: The Settling of North America and American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 worked out for me.

[Zachary Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taylor follows the land debates in Maine from the 1760s-1830s. Like his later book on William Cooper's Town, he uses these events as a window into understanding a larger post-Revolutionary debate on whether the nation would protect the rich or poor. Settlers moved from MA and improved the land, many unaware that there was already claim to it. These squatters invoked natural law Lockean theory of improvement to justify their claim. Proprietors, many who never stepped foot on the land, disagreed and charged whatever they pleased--often exorbitant--for the land driving many off. Settlers resisted violently, often dressing up as "white indians" to intimidate proprietors and their agents.

Neither the liberty men nor the proprietors won completely in this contest, although the former's vision of an equitable society for the poor definitely didn't come to fruition. Republicans post-1800 compromised between groups by appealing to both (entrepreneurs/populist rhetoric) but made these issues court ones, not mob decisions. Settlers solidarity was also weakened by western migration (too many kids, land sucks) and market integration (many who didn't have horses in 1790s do by 1820s), also the rise evangelical religious conservatism/desire for respectability alongside Congregationalists. The Republican compromise indicative of larger shift to liberal (read individualistic) society--market the best arbiter.

Great resource for me in understanding settler culture, Taylor admits Maine is just one instance of larger phenomenon. Powerful vignette is Joseph Plum Martin, famous Revolutionary Soldier diarist, who dies in midcoast Maine destitute--the Revolution he fought for fails him and others, and you can see Taylor is partial to that

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

based on enjoying Taylor's American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, and my genealogical interest in Maine/New Brunswick (McNeal line), I checked out this book.

It focuses on the fight for ownership of land in MidCoastal Maine. Squatters (the Liberty Men) after the Rev. War, battled in court and with guns the 'Great Proprietors' for ownership of the land. Taylor, based on two books of his that I've read, seems to write for the underdog. In this case, the educated or rich class, sometimes reaping rewards as officers in the war, and using their connections,bribes, shady dealings, and influence in the courts, attempt to make fortunes w/ land grant buying and then selling plots to the farming families.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very good book very much about class - the agrarians who began to settle Maine's backcountry in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War resisting elite claims to the land. Taylor was pretty clearly on the side of the Liberty Men - those who resisted. It's very well written; the introduction does an excellent job of summarizing and laying out the book; interesting narrative. Lots of little episodes of class conflict of farmer v. landowner.

Taylor argues that the struggle between common people and elites during the early years of the U.S. had a large role in shaping the direction of the country, in creating "a liberal social order."

[Chris Perham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. His section on the supernatural economy (settlers looking for buried treasure by the light of the moon) presages Powerball Fever. There is a lot of detail and much of interest to genealogists here.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last 100 pages or so became quite tedious, otherwise excellent.