852In the 1860's, the late Captain William Frederick Goodwin, of Concord, NH, who died in 1872, began preparing a genealogy of the descendants od Daniel Goodwin, who settled in Kittery, Maine, about 1652. The ancestry of Daniel Goodwin, the Immigrant, is in doubt. Captain Goodwin states that Daniel's father and grandfather were both Daniel Goodwin, the former marrying Dorothy Barker and the latter being of Great Oakley, Sussex Co., England. Unfortunately for this statement, Henry F. Waters, the well-known genealogist, shows in his Introduction to "The Goodwins of Hartford, Conn." that Daniel Goodwin, who married Dorothy Barker, was a son of John Goodwin and not of Daniel Goodwin of Great Oakley, and Mr. Waters' "Gleanings" disclose the fact that Daniel Goodwin, of Great Oakley, had neither a son nor a grandson named Daniel.
I, myself am inclined to the opinion that Daniel Goodwin of Kittery, Maine, was a brother of Richard Goodwin, of Gloucester, Mass., and that they were sons of Bridget Goodwin, who afterwards married Henry Travers, and later still, Richard Window, and that her Goodwin husband was one of the Torrington, England, Goodwin family. Briefly, my reasons are these: Tradition says Daniel came to Kittery, Me., from Massachusetts, leaving brothers behind him near Plymouth. Richard Goodwin, of Gloucester, about the same age as Daniel, had, among other children, a Daniel and a Richard, Jr. This Richard Jr. settled in Newbury, Mass., and also had a Richard and a Daniel, of 1711. This latter child is not given by Savage in his Genealogical Dictionary, but Captain Goodwin's record states positively that this Daniel of 1711 was a son of Richard, of Newbury. I have found the descendants of this Daniel of 1711, who are now living in Nova Scotia, and they say that the ancestors of Daniel of 1711 came from Plymouth, England, near where the Torrington branch of the Goodwin family had resided for generations. This seems to fix the family of Richard, of Gloucester, as being from near Plymouth, England, and as Daniel, of Kittery, had a son Daniel and grandsons Richard and Daniel, and as tradition says he left brothers near Plymouth, I am inclined to think it was England and not Massachusetts, and that this tradition, taken with the constant repitition of the names of Richard and Daniel in both fmilies, indicates strongly that the first Daniel and Richad were brothers from Plymouth, England |