The first record of continuous European settlement of the Montcalm area is the 1840 census of Mercer County in what was then the state of Virginia. A 700-acre farm, located where Crane Creek joins the Bluestone, was the property of George Bailey. He, his wife, and six children lived on the farm that included a farmhouse, likely located on the lower slopes of Tabernacle Mountain, an orchard and in what would be today's Main Street, and a field of timothy grass. About one hundred acres of corn field could be found at the top of a mountain on "the opposite side of the river" (either Methodist Church Hill or Browning Lambert Mountain). The farm also featured a small dam on the Crane Creek that powered a corn grist mill, the only one in the area and the farm's most valuable property.