Joseph Robinson Bodwell (June 18, 1818 – December 15, 1887) was an American politician who most notably served as the 40th governor of Maine.

He spent the first years of his life living in an "old-fashioned mansion-house, similar to those erected by well-to-do New England farmers" that had been home to his family for five generations.

[1] Facing mounting debt from lawsuits and from co-signing loans for friends, the family sold the mansion and moved to a "less pretentious" home in nearby West Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1829.

Bodwell's mother, Mary How, was the sister of Portland, Maine merchant Daniel How and the family was well-established in Methuen.

A memoriam published after his death said of the move, "It was not poverty, as has frequently been stated, that caused Joseph R. Bodwell to leave the paternal roof at the age of eight years...He left home because his childless sister wanted him and needed his companionship, and he there received the full measure of a sister's affection."

The brothers furnished the capitalists with materials, including wooden housing frames and eventually granite used to build the Great Stone Dam.