OBITUARY NOTICES. 
391 
ically the “ poor man’s doctor,” for his unpaid service was 
given without stint to the poorest and humblest of his neigh¬ 
bors. This tender generosity of mind was amply inherited 
by his distinguished son. 
Dr. Godding’s mother was Mary Whitney, of an English 
family of that name which settled in Waterford, Massachu¬ 
setts, in 1635. She was a woman of remarkable character, 
strong in her beliefs, an admirable mistress of her household, 
devoted to her good husband and her children, and so force¬ 
ful that a minister once said of her, that “ half a dozen men 
with her firm convictions and moral courage would revo¬ 
lutionize a town.” 
It was under the training and example of such parents 
that young Godding grew up as a boy. He was educated at 
the district school, and later at a private academy. In his 
sixteenth year he was sent to Brown University, at Provi¬ 
dence, Rhode Island. He had not been there many months 
before he was convinced that he needed a more thorough 
education to prepare him for a collegiate course. He went 
therefore to an academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where 
he passed two years in diligent study. In the year 1850 he 
entered the freshman class at Dartmouth College, where he 
graduated as Master of Arts in 1854, being then 23 years of 
age. After graduating he began the study of medicine in 
his father’s office. Later he was sent to New York, and 
passed a year in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. 
Twelve months after his return he received the degree of 
Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Castleton, 
Vermont. Being now fully equipped for his professional 
career, he was associated with his father in the practice of 
medicine at Winchendon, but eighteen months later, in June, 
1859, he accepted the position of assistant physician in the 
State Hospital for the Insane at Concord, New Hampshire. 
It was in this way that he entered upon the study and care 
of the insane, which was to be his life’s work and source of 
distinction. Marrying in 1860, he took his wife to the Con¬ 
cord Hospital and remained there two years longer, when 
56—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 13. 
