Goddard, William (1825 - 1907)
Role: Chancellor, TrusteeDates: 1888 - 1907, 1857 - 1907
Portrait Location: University Hall 312
Artist: Diranian, Sarkis (1854-1918)
Portrait Date: 1904
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 37 3/8
Framed Dimensions: 53 1/2
Brown Portrait Number: 83
Brown Historical Property Number: 594
William Goddard was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, on Christmas Day in 1825 to William Giles Goddard (BP 071), professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Brown; and Charlotte Rhoda Ives. Goddard graduated from Brown in 1846 and sailed off to Europe, ultimately participating in the European Revolutions of 1848 by carrying official dispatches from Paris to Rome, where his cousin, Nicholas Brown III, served as the American consul to Rome. After returning home, Goddard spent four terms as an elected town official and was named a trustee, and later as the chancellor, of Brown University. He served as Major in the First Rhode Island Volunteers Regiment of the Civil War from June to August of 1861, when the regiment mustered out of service. In 1862 he served as Major and volunteer aide on the staff of Major-General Ambrose Burnside, and was present during the Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Fredricksburg. On March 13, 1865 he was promoted by brevet to Colonel of the United States Volunteers. When he returned to Rhode Island he re-entered his family's businesses, working for both his family's merchant house of Brown & Ives and for their cotton manufactury. From 1875 to 1900, Goddard served as President for the Providence Institution for Savings. He died in 1907 and was buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence.Sarkis Diranian, a native of Constantinople, painted the Chancellor Goddard portrait now hanging in the Corporation Room of University Hall (see BP 83. At about the same time Diranian made a copy of this portrait, and also a companion portrait of Goddard's wife Mary Edith Jenckes Goddard(BP 205), both of which were included with the furnishings of the Goddard-Iselin House when the buildings and its contents were donated to Brown by Hope Goddard Iselin, daughter of Chancellor Goddard. The Goddard family house is now the University's Maddock Alumni Center.