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.

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.

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 drastic decrease in population meant that former farmland was allowed to re-wild, and today the vast majority of Montville's land is forested.

It borders the towns of Knox to the northeast, Morrill to the east, Searsmont to the southeast, Liberty to the southwest, Palermo to the west and Freedom to the northwest.