19th Century Willowbrook Village

The Collection

There was no grand plan in Don King’s mind when he began assembling the collection. He simply enjoyed spending time talking with people in Newfield and the surrounding areas, and he had a keen interest in tools and implements. He began to get a sense that many interesting and wonderful items were disappearing— discarded as family farms were sold—and that knowledge of an important era of American culture and development was being lost.

Shortly after purchasing the Durgin property, he started acquiring the diversity of items that would later become Willowbrook’s collection. Over a relatively brief period of time—only 3 to 4 years—he amassed a large collection and filled the barns at what would become Willowbrook, along with several others in the area, with a wide assortment of items dating primarily from the mid- to late 1800s—reflecting a time when rural Maine and other New England states flourished with activity.

Don scouted the area within a 100-mile radius of Newfield purchasing items that were later restored and placed on display. His primary sources were antique dealers who were eager to sell articles from the 19th century which were not in vogue at that time. Other sources included “pickers” (people who purchase items from individuals and resell them, usually to antique dealers) and donors from Newfield and the surrounding area who viewed this as a welcome opportunity to find a safe and permanent home for their family heirlooms. 

As Don’s reputation and knowledge of his interests grew, many individuals and families donated their prized possessions so that they would be preserved and displayed for the enjoyment of others. Among one of the most important contributions, in 1978, was the 1894 Armitage-Herschell carousel from I. H. Fenderson, Jr. 

Soon he had a collection of enormous breadth, and the idea of exhibiting the objects for the public started to gel. Don was particularly interested in assembling complete collections of items that would tell the story of life in the mid- to late 1800s in rural Maine. A number of items— from carriages and sleighs to tools and implements to household furniture and clothing—came from Newfield itself. During the mid- to late 1800s, Newfield was a center of carriage and sleigh manufacturing, an industry supported by a number of other trades--carpenters, blacksmiths, painters, etc. As farming did not provide a year-round income, other sources of revenue were needed. Farmers supplemented their income with cutting ice, logging, making shoes and brooms, etc. Many tools of these trades are on display at Willowbrook.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Don and Pan visited a number of museums including the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts; the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont; and Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The 1967 visit to the Mercer Museum made an enormous impression on Don when his ideas for Willowbrook were in their infancy. Each of the museums influenced how he would decide to present his collections in one way or another.