Built in 1865, the church was graced with twelve stained glass windows down the sides of the sanctuary. Each has been dedicated to the memory of a past parishioner. This window was dedicated to Daniel Caldwell Stanwood. An active member of the Congregational Church, Stanwood was a prominent businessman in the town of Augusta who later entered the political ring, gaining election to the State Legislature in 1855. After his death on January 11, 1863, this beautiful window was dedicated to him by his children. Read excerpts from a biography of Daniel Stanwood below. The dedication on the window is further below.
Daniel Caldwell Stanwood was born in Ipswich, March 31, 1811. He received such an ordinary education as was to be acquired in these days in a dame's school of a New England country town. At the age of fourteen years he went to Augusta, Maine, making the journey, as was then usual, in a sailing-vessel from the Ipswich River to the
Kennebec River. He entered the bookstore of A. P. Brinsmade as a clerk, and made his home at the house of his uncle, Jacob Stanwood. In a few years he purchased a part interest in the store; later still he became the sole proprietor, and continued in the business of books, stationery, music, and paper hangings until shortly before his death. But his interests in business were not confined to this store.
In the early fifties he organized the Cushnoc Manufacturing Company, which built a paper mill at Vassalboro, of which he was secretary and treasurer, and virtually the business manager. The company did not prosper, and ultimately it passed into the hands of Daniel C. Stanwood and John S. Sturgis. Located on a stream which was fed from a pond of not very large water-shed, it was frequently stopped for
weeks in the summer, owing to a lack of water, and it never
was a remunerative enterprise.
Daniel C. Stanwood was an active and prominent man in the community in many relations. He was for many years the leader in musical matters in Augusta — leader and manager of the choir of the Congregational Church, occasionally a teacher of a singing-school, the only person in Augusta able to tune a piano, his store the centre of all musical activity, himself the enterprising citizen who per-
suaded the great singers of the day, the bands and orchestras which were then rarely " on the road," to give concerts in Augusta, on the way. He possessed a voice of rare sweetness and cultivation, and was the tenor and leader of the Augusta Glee Club, which gave occasional concerts in the town and even in other places not far away.
He was a Freemason and rose rapidly to the office of Master of Bethlehem Lodge, where he acquired a reputation for excellence in " work" that spread all over the State. He was also an officer in several of the higher organizations of Freemasonry. He was elected the first captain of the Augusta State Guards, the only military
company of the time in Augusta ; and was commissioned by the governor, major in the first (and only) regiment of State militia. He was the first city clerk of Augusta and served in that office several years. In politics he was a Whig ; and when the Know-Nothings and the newly-formed Republican party left the Whig organization little but the name he was one of the " Straight Whigs." This remnant of the Whig party coalesced with the Democrats in the State election of 1855, and Mr. Stanwood was elected, with B. A. G. Fuller, uncle of the present chief justice of the United States, a member of the Legislature. They were gloriously defeated by the Republicans in 1856, in the Fremont campaign.
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