History
Perle on Little Dan. 1904
In 1806, Ezekiel True and his family moved from their home in New Hampshire to what was then Davistown, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
He purchased about 700 acres of land in the southern corner of what would become, in 1807, the Town of Montville. A farm was built on the hill and
and the area's first grist mill was built on the Georges River. Ezekiel then began to divide the land between his children.
Son John, received his share in 1816 and built this house and a barn across the road. According to family history, John decided to become a traveling
preacher and sold the farm to his aunt Abigail and her husband Rev.Ebenezer Knowlton.
The Knowlton family moved into the farm in 1827, which was by then in the State of Maine. Their eldest son, Ebenezer, went on to become the Maine State Speaker of the House and represented
this district in the U.S. Congress in the 1850's. The farm was passed on to Ebenezer and Abigail's second son, John Colby Knowlton
in the 1840's around which time another barn was built at the end of the house. The area experienced a steep economic and population decline beginning in the late
19th century. By 1960, the farm had become a summer camp for a family in Massachusetts.
When I bought the farm from them in 1978, the condition of the house and barns was very poor but highly original.
The only significant changes made over the years were in the ell. The main section of the house remained almost exactly
as it was in the early 19th century. The housing market was depressed at that time so the cost of restoration/preservation greatly exceeded the value
of the property. I had the luxury of conducting this financially irresponsible restoration only because
some years earlier, I entered the business of manufacturing wire crystal mounting structures for the frequency control industry
commonly known as "crystal springs". The C.B. radio fad of the early 70's gave us four years of business brisk enough to afford this unlikely project.
Since the farm owes it's current state of preservation to crystal springs, we decided to adopt the informal farm name, Crystal Spring Farm.
Today, the farm is listed on both the Maine Historic Archive and the National Historic Registry as The Ebenezer Knowlton House.
