| Visiting
today is similar to calling on Cordelia herself. Preserved like
a comfortable time capsule perched above a busy road of change,
entering the Stanwood Homestead is a unique experience where
the signs of life, dramatic and personal, exist providing the
illusion that Cordie has only forgotten her wide-brimmed, thatched
hat after strolling out the door. That is after all how she left,
locking the door on a fully furnished home filled with long memories. |
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Side View of House |
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At
20 years of age, Captain Roswell Stanwood had the Cape-style
House built in 1850 on the site of a former foundation, in the
days when the Homestead was “out in the country.” Guests
were ushered into the front parlor where shutters covering the
windows, stretched from floor to ceiling, were opened to allow
a flood of sunshine into the room. Mary Jane’s Temple jar
emitting the aroma of dried rose petals would be uncovered as
a teakettle insistently sputtered on the Art Sparkle, parlor
stove. The eye-catching, massive square piano, sailed up from
Boston on the Captain’s ship, would elicit a remark, and
perhaps while awaiting a musician, the guests would converse
and relax on the love seats and horsehair upholstered Lincoln
Rockers. |
Piano |
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Stove |
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A curved wall
winds one deeper into the house where the story of other memories,
photographs, and curiosities unearthed during restoration, await.
UP a precarious, secret back stairs you are transported aloft
to Cordelia’s bedroom where she was born, returned to, and
worked within. This is a well loved and lived in home of common
souls reaching for great deeds. |
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Here the quiet
dignity and simplicity of another age, reflected in the wrinkled,
hand-made windowpanes, pause beneath the roof’s eaves for
visitors but to step in and smell another world |
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| The
Homestead is open, free of charge, during the summer months through
September, between 10 and 4 pm every day, and upon appointment
– dependent upon volunteers. |
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Contact
info:
Stanwood Wildlife Sanctuary
P.O. Box 485
Ellsworth, Me. 04605
(207)-667-8460
e-mail: Birdsacre@hotmail.com
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