1st Lt. William Stanwood – 11th Regiment Massachusetts Continental Line
Son of David and Mary (Reed) Stanwood, he was born in Brunswick, Maine April 5, 1752; died there June 24, 1829; Corporal, Colonel James Cargill’s regiment, May 17-August 1775; Sergeant, August 26, 1775; became 11th Massachusetts, January 1, 1776; 1st Lieutenant, Novmeber 6, 1776; deranged September 11, 1778. On May 26, 1960, the Standing Committee of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati decided that Lieutenant Stanwood had been deranged when his unit, after Valley Forge, was transferred from White Plains, New York to Danbury, Connecticut, thus making him an eligible propositus under the Rule of 1854. A History of the Stanwood Family in America (1899) by Ethel Stanwood Bolton, claims that he served until October 11, 1780 and offers testimonials to that, however, it can not be verified by any other record available to this author. After the war he was made a Colonel of the Maine Volunteer Militia. He began life as a blacksmith and returned to that trade as well as ship-building and the lumber business. In 1796 he sold for one cent and in 1798 for $16.67 the land which became the campus of Bowdoin College, of which he was an overseer from 1798 until 1815. William was a selectman in Brunswick, Maine in 1798, and a representative in 1794-95. In later life he met with severe losses in his shipping business. He applied for a pension April 27, 1818 at the age of 66.
Abstracted from James Archer O’Reilly III, Memorials of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati (Boston 2004), p. 366-68. William has been represented in the New Hampshire Society since 2015.
