Chauncey Allen Goodrich was an American clergyman, educator and lexicographer.
Background
He was the son-in-law of Noah Webster and edited his Dictionary after his father-in-law"s death. Goodrich was the son of Elizur and Anne Willard (Allen) Goodrich. His father was a lawyer and member of the United States House of Representatives.
He was also the grandson of the Reverend Elizur Goodrich.
Education
Chauncey Allen Goodrich graduated from Yale in 1810, served as tutor there in 1812-1814, and afterward studied theology.
Career
In 1820 he was chosen president of Williams College, but declined the office. He was professor of rhetoric and oratory in Yale from 1817 until 1839 when he was transferred to the chair of pastoral theology in that institution, which chair he held till his death. Doctor Goodrich exerted a wide influence, and co-operated with many learned societies.
As a teacher he inspired his pupils to the highest effort.
He was a liberal benefactor of the Yale Divinity School. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by Brown University in 1835.
Doctor Goodrich made numerous contributions to periodical literature, and in 1829 established the Christian Quarterly Spectator, with which he was connected nearly ten years, being its sole editor after 1830. Soon after the publication of the American Dictionary, by his father-in-law, Noah Webster (1828), Doctor Goodrich was entrusted by its author with power to superintend an abridgment of the work, which he did, conforming the orthography more nearly to the common standard.
This edition, in the preparation of which he was assisted by Benjamin Silliman, Denison Olmsted, and others, was issued in 1847, and the “Universal” edition of the same work appeared in 1856.
In 1859 the supplement was issued, to which comprehensive additions were made. At the time of his death Doctor Goodrich was engaged on a radical revision of the dictionary, but he died before the work received its final form, and it was published under the supervision of Noah Porter (1864). He was also engaged in preparing a new edition of the Bible, with English text, as one of the American Bible society"s “committee on versions.” Doctor Goodrich was also the author of Select British Eloquence (1852).
A commemorative discourse by President Theodore Doctorate. Woolsey has been published as a pamphlet (New Haven, 1860).
Goodrich Street, a principal thoroughfare linking Prospect Street and Dixwell Avenue along the division between northern New Haven and southern Hamden in Connecticut, is named for him.