Henry H. Goddard - Early Life

Early Life

Goddard was born in East Vassalboro, Maine, the fifth and youngest child – and only son – of farmer Henry Clay Goddard and his wife Sarah Winslow Goddard, who were devout Quakers. (Two of his sisters died in infancy.) His father was gored by a bull when the younger Goddard was a small child, and eventually lost his farm and had to work as a farmhand; he died of his lingering injuries when the boy was nine. The younger Goddard went to live with his married sister for a brief time, but in 1877 was enrolled at the Oak Grove Seminary, a boarding school in Vassalboro.

During this period, Sarah Goddard began a new career as a traveling Quaker preacher; she married missionary Jehu Newlin in 1884, and the couple regularly traveled throughout the United States and Europe. In 1878, Henry Goddard became a student at the Friends School in Providence, Rhode Island. During his youth he began an enduring friendship with Rufus Jones, who would go on to co-found (in 1917) the American Friends Service Committee, which received the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize.

Goddard entered Haverford College in 1883, where he played on the football team, and graduated in 1887; he took a year off from his studies to teach in Winthrop, Maine from 1885-1886. After graduating, he traveled to California to visit one of his sisters, and stopped en route in Los Angeles to present some letters of introduction at the University of Southern California, which had been established just seven years earlier. After seeking posts in the Oakland area for several weeks, he was surprised to receive an offer of a temporary position at USC, teaching Latin, history and botany. He also served as co-coach (with Frank Suffel) of the first USC football team in 1888, with the team winning both of its games against a local athletic club. But he departed immediately thereafter, returning to Haverford to earn his master's degree in mathematics in 1889.

From 1889 to 1891 he became principal of the Damascus Academy, a Quaker school in Damascus, Ohio, where he also taught several subjects and conducted chapel services and prayer meetings. On August 7, 1889, he married Emma Florence Robbins, who became one of the two other teachers at the Academy. In 1891 he returned to teach at the Oak Grove Seminary in Vassalboro, becoming principal in 1893. In 1896 he enrolled at Clark University, intending to study only briefly, but he remained three years and received his doctorate in psychology in 1899. He then taught at the State Normal School in West Chester, Pennsylvania until 1906.