MEMOIR OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE, 1851-1896. 



By Samuei. Pierpont L,angley, 

 Secretary, Smithsonian Institution. 



George Brown Goode was born at New Albany, Indiana, on February 

 13, 185 1, and died at his home in Washington on September 6, 1896, 

 after a hfe of forty-five years, than which few human Hves have ever 

 been better filled. 



In those years he won the warm affection of a wide circle of friends 

 and the trust and confidence of a multitude of subordinates in the position 

 to which his own abilities had carried him. He interested himself and 

 interested others in ever- widening circles of research, and such varied 

 work that it seemed to those who knew what he was doing, incompre- 

 hensible that one man could accomplish so much in one single life; and 

 when this came to an end, its cessation was like the loss of a part of them- 

 selves to those who knew him best, by whom he is remembered with an 

 affection which men rarely gain from one another. 



He was the son of Francis Collier Goode and Sarah "Woodruff Crane. 

 The Goode family trace their ancestry in this country to John Goode, of 

 Whitby, who settled in Virginia prior to 1661.^ 



While still settled in Virginia, many members of the Goode family 

 went to the South and West to do pioneer work in building up villages 

 and towns on what was then the outskirt of civilization. 



Doctor Goode' s father, Francis Collier Goode, was born in Waynes- 

 ville, Ohio, and was a merchant in Ohio and Indiana. In 1857 ^^ retired 

 from business, removing to Amenia, New York ; subsequently to Mid- 

 dletown, Connecticut, and later to Arlington, Florida, and occasionally 

 spent winters in the Bermudas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, 

 and Washington City. 



' Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 21, 1897. 

 ^ The history of this family has been carefully traced by Doctor Goode in Virginia 

 Cousins: A Study of the Ancestry and Posterity of John Goode, of Whitby, a Vir- 

 ginia Colonist of the Seventeenth Century, with notes upon related families, a key 

 to southern genealogy and a history of the English surname Gode, Goad, Goode, or 

 .Good from 1148 to 1887, by G. Brown Goode, with a preface by R. A. Brock, Secre- 

 tary of the Virginia and Southern Historical Societies. Richmond, Virginia, J. W. 

 Randolph & English, MDCCCLXXXVII. 



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