Ichabod Goodwin House Photograph Courtesy of Caroline
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Ichabod Goodwin House Photograph courtesy of Caroline (Chadbourne) Geiler Taken in 2000 To Lynda, for her patience and understanding, and to Herbie Geiler (1946 – 2009), a good friend, and an enthusiastic genealogist. In November 2008, reconstructing the manuscript of John Hayes Goodwin seemed like a relatively short project – a few weeks at most. As I write this, May 2009 is half over, but I have a tremendous sense of accomplishment, a feeling of having completed the first part of a significant contribution to the Genealogy of the GOODWIN families. Like so many tasks that we all face, one must have a firm foundation in place before adding to the structure, least it become unstable or top heavy. The first part of this journey (my foundation) is just about complete, and already my thoughts drift to the future when I expand this work to include many more generations of our family tree. I have added cross references, inserted originally hand‐written notes and corrected typographical errors (and some dates) where possible. Most of the corrections enclosed in brackets are of my doing, although there were several included in the original manuscript presumably inserted by J. E. Frost. I purposely used the Courier font, an attempt to preserve the flavor of a manuscript from an era when documents were produced by hand, when there was no automatic spell checking, no automated indexing, and no electric typewriter. I hope you find the enclosed information useful. W. Collier The roots of the present lie deep in the past, and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is. -Prof. Wm. Stubbs Bishop of Oxford Page i The first record that I have noted of Daniel Goodwin in New England is a grant of land made to him by the town of Kittery in 1652. How long had he then been in Kittery? When and where was he born? When and where was he married? When and where did he die? Apparently there is no notation of birth, marriage or death, no gravestone, no probate. Some records formerly assigned to his career may, in truth, apply to a son by the same name. And this is not because Daniel was obscure but because records of the early years are scant. On a few facts we can agree; Daniel Goodwin was a pioneer, a sergeant in the local frontier force, a constable, a member of the church, a tavern proprietor, and a land owner in the parish of Quamphegan, a part of early Kittery that became Berwick and then South Berwick, Maine. He leaves to descendants eligibility for membership in the Piscataqua Pioneers (whose ancestors must have settled on either bank of the river in colonial days), in Flagon and Trencher, Descendants of Colonial Tavernkeepers, and in the Goodwin Family Organization. There are several of his blood in all three. For two centuries no comprehensive Goodwin genealogy was attempted. Then in the 1860's Capt. William Frederick Goodwin (1823-1872), of Concord, N.H., a war veteran, lawyer and teacher (see p. 236) pioneered with a Goodwin genealogy. Unfortunately, he died before a book was completed. To Captain Goodwin the family owes immense gratitude. He contacted relations and gained data long before mandatory vital records were widespread or genealogical research prevalent. For a quarter century Captain Goodwin's papers were retained by heirs and resurfaced when a new Goodwin genealogy was in preparation. John Samuel Goodwin, who uncovered the Captain Goodwin papers, was a Chicago lawyer, a U. S. District Attorney, seeking an ancestor for his Indiana line. Thanks to his persistence we have most of what we know of the Goodwins of Virginia and the volume bearing the appropriate cover title of Five Generations of the Goodwins of Kittery, Maine, published in 1898 and long out of print. Early in his research he discovered the writings of Captain Goodwin of which he comments (p. iii): "...to which I have made numerous additions and from which most of the following data is taken." Of Captain Goodwin he says (p. 55): "It is wholly to his untiring endeavors that the Goodwins of Maine owe the collection and preservation of their family record." The extensive appendices of the book contain material on unidentified connections and other Goodwin families of New England. Page ii While the Daniel Goodwin volume was in progress another New England Goodwin family was undergoing extensive research. James Junius Goodwin (1835-1915), a Hartford capitalist, cousin and former partner of J. Pierpont Morgan, financed research on his own Goodwin line and intensive research on pre-19th century English Goodwins, employing some of his most distinguished genealogical contemporaries. His interest in genealogy was keen, and a memorial biography in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (v. 7 0, pp. 51-55) points out that J. J. Goodwin was the single largest contributor to the fund that made possible keeping H. F. Waters in England engaged in the research that resulted in Waters' Genealogical Gleanings. The Hartford volume, ascribed to Frank Farnsworth Starr, was called The Goodwins of Hartford, Connecticut ;Descendants of William and Ozias Goodwin, and was published in 1891. It was around 800 pages in length and contained much, as well, on the Goodwins of East Anglia. However, more was in store. Among the many researchers on the English Goodwins were Col. Joseph L. Chester, the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, Oswald Barron and Lothrop Withington, and the results were to be unexcelled, perhaps unrivalled. In 1921 J. J. Goodwin was deceased but his family arranged publication of the English Goodwin Family Papers, three volumes of material collected in the search for the ancestry of William and Ozias Goodwin. Parish registers had been widely consulted, and wills were reproduced verbatim. The reader is humble before such a monumental compilation . In 1908, annual reunions of the Daniel Goodwin family were begun. These continued for thirty or more years. Curiously, despite extensive lists of officers reported, no genealogist was elected at the outset. In 1978 Goodwin reunions and a family organization were revived, this time with a publication and an avowed genealogical interest. The following is basically the work of John Hayes Goodwin (1887-1964), with small exceptions that will be noted. John Hayes Goodwin was born at Old Fields in South Berwick, Maine, erected in 1797 by Gen. Ichabod Goodwin and generally regarded as the family hearthstone regardless of one's lineage. Old Fields is a substantial country house, with a later service wing and a large barn, built on land that belonged to the first Daniel Goodwin. Page iii John Hayes Goodwin was educated at a local private preparatory school and Berwick Academy. Afterward followed the golden days and golden years in South Berwick. He became a librarian of Berwick Academy which was so heavily endowed by his kinsmen that it was practically a family preserve. As a librarian, in 1912 he forwarded research to a relation, Harold Goodwin, a Philadelphia attorney who advised him to make the most of his present opportunity to gather all of the records possible on local and family history. Army service in the World War intervened and carried John Goodwin overseas. His health, though never robust, had been adequate, but it was not sustained. He returned to South Berwick to undertake the Goodwin genealogy which became his life work, though little appears to have been added by him after 1940. As his health deteriorated, he passed some time in a veterans' home and later in a convalescent home in South Berwick where he died July 29th, 1964. The John Hayes Goodwin notes once approached completion, and were typed. Publication did not occur, and material continued to arrive. John's sister, Elizabeth Goodwin, occupied Old Fields till its sale. She found some disposition of the manuscript necessary, and presented it to a Goodwin descendant, John E. Frost, then Associate Librarian of New York University. It was stored there till it could be sorted, with duplications eliminated, preparatory to a permanent location. In the interim it seemed advisable to secure a second copy more concise and more easily handled than the original, and without the frequent hand written additions. Several persons, with no association with the family, assisted in the typing. In 1984 a copy was bound and given to the Maine Historical Society together with the original papers. In 1984 Shirley Goodwin Bennett, Alice Goodwin Sharp and Harold T. Goodwin asked that the Goodwin Family Organization be authorized to make and distribute copies since several members wishes to possess their own. Miss Elizabeth Goodwin gave permission. My own authorization (a dubious prerogative) was given with some reluctance only because the typing has never been revised and some typos (and a few misreadings of dates) appear in the original, the copy, and both. Page iv How does this differ from the original? Marginal notes added to the first half-dozen pages of the J. H. Goodwin MS. are bracketed here. Another numbering scheme has been substituted for several reasons. Some material, added by J. E. Frost after the typing and entered by J. H. Goodwin in pen and ink, is deleted. This pertains exclusively to the descendants of Daniel Goodwin of Eliot, and, unlike the original, covers all descendants rather than concentrating on those with the Goodwin surname. This non-conforming section has been revised and updated to become again "The Goodwins of Eliot, Maine," of which a copy is in the library of the Maine Historical Society. A few records from cemetery stones and official vital records have been added, and a section on the descendants of Ebenezer5 Goodwin (pg.