History of The Peavey
It was in the Spring of 1857 that Joseph Peavey made the first tool to become known as the PEAVEY. With the first tool began the organization of the Peavey Manufacturing Company, which for over 155 consecutive years now has been making Peaveys and shipping them with other logging tools throughout the U.S. and many foreign countries.
The event took place in Stillwater, Maine in the heart of the booming logging industry. One day a log drive became hung up on the Stillwater Branch of the famous Penobscot River. Joseph Peavey, who invented the Peavey Hoist for pulling stumps and hoisting gates on dams, the first hay press, the first wooden screw vice, the first clapboard water wheel, unspillable inkwell, and many other things, lay flat on a bridge overhead watching the men with their improvised prys trying to free the jam. Seeing the unsteadiness of the prys and realizing they needed something different, the idea came to him that he could make a better tool.
So he jumped up, as the story goes, went back to his blacksmith shop and directed his son Daniel to make a clasp with lips, then make holes in the lips to put a bolt through on which to hang a dog (or hook) and toe rings below the clasp to the bottom of the handle. Finally, a pick was driven into the end of the handle. The tool was turned over to River Driver William Hale who pronounced it a great success.
Later, Joseph Peavey made the first PEAVEY using a solid socket, in place of toe rings, with a driven pick. The improved Patent PEAVEY - solid Socket and Pick combined, later to be called the Bangor or Rafting Peavey, was invented by James Henry Peavey, grandson of Joseph.
The present facility of the Peavey Manufacturing Co. is located just five miles down the river from where this historical event took place.
