San Diego County Biographies
 
E. F. GODDARD

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


a business man of San Diego, was born at Palmyra, New York, November 16, 1835. 
His mother, Mrs. Maria (Fillmore) Goddard, was a cousin of Millard Fillmore. Her 
father was in the war of 1812, and her grandfather was in the Revolutionary war. 
The Goddards trace their genealogy back to the Saxon conquest. The original name 
was Goder, which signified Priest King, and one of the family was a priest who 
administered the sacrament to Napoleon when on his death-bed.   The subject of 
this sketch was the third in a family of nine children, five of whom still 
survive; one brother, Luther M., is now judge of the fifth judicial district of 
Colorado, and his brother Clarence is a physician at Leavenworth, Kansas.  At 
the age of eighteen years the subject of this sketch sailed on the lakes before 
the mast, and in 1855 went to sea on a whaling vessel from New Bedford, sailing 
on the Atlantic and Indian oceans. He sailed as foremast hand, but was steadily 
promoted until he became the head of the watch. After five years of sea service 
he returned to his home at Leavenworth, Kansas, where his parents were then 
living. In 1860 he was quite extensively connected with the border warfare, and 
in 1862 he ran a freight line from Leavenworth to Denver across the plains, 
carrying a load of corn. Denver was then blockaded by Indians, and at that time 
Colonel Chivington made his celebrated raid at Sandy Creek. Mr. Goddard and two 
brothers
with one team ran the blockade, reaching Julesburg and then back to Leavenworth. 
In 1866 he got up a large mule train from Atchison to Salt Lake, carrying a 
general supply of groceries. They were attacked on Lodge Pole Creek, near Pine 
Bluff, by Indians, and for five days were blockaded with a steady skirmish. They 
lost eighty-six mules and a number of horses, only retaining one wounded mule. 
During the fight several Indians were sent to the happy hunting-grounds. 
Goddard, in the first attack, killed the leader, a renegade white man, and they 
were only relieved by a company of troops from Fort John Buford, and thus 
enabled to drive off the Indians and get the freight train to Denver, where the 
goods were stored. In the fall of 1867, he took a contract to supply the 
commissary department on the building of the Kansas Pacific Railroad to 
Sheridan, and employed Buffalo Bill in killing buffaloes at $250 per month. 
After 1870 he was for three or four years connected with the police department 
at Leavenworth on the detective service. February, 1879, he went to Leadville at 
the opening of the great boom and located the first claim on the snow crust at 
Breese Hill. In the following summer he headed a prospecting party to the head 
waters of the Platte river and Arkansas river. In 1880, backed by ex-Governor 
Thomas Carney, of Kansas, he took an armed party into the Gunnison country and 
located claims on the Ute reservation, some of which have proved very valuable. 
In the fall of 1882 he emigrated to Seattle, running a hotel during the boom, 
and then to San Francisco in 1883, when he opened a freight transfer line across 
the bay from Frisco [San Francisco] to Oakland and San Leandro. In 1885 he came 
to San Diego, arriving December 30, and engaged first in the real-estate 
business, and in the summer of 1886 bought out the Pacific livery and boarding 
stables, corner of Third and F streets, which is one of the largest stables in 
the city, and is doing a good business with a fine stuck of horses and 
carriages, both light and heavy.
        Mr. Goddard was married at Kansas City, in 1870, to Miss Annie Agnes 
Courtwright. They have no children. Under the new charter in 1889, he was 
appointed by Mayor Gunn to act as a member of the police commissioners for a 
term of three years, and being a man of integrity and morality is satisfactorily 
discharging his duties.
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California� Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  122-123