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Daniel Raynes Goodwin

Daniel Raynes Goodwin, ca. 1853. Photo credit: Trinity College Archives

Daniel Raynes Goodwin was president of Trinity College from 1853 to 1860.

Born in North Berwick, Maine, in 1811, Goodwin graduated from Bowdoin College in 1832, where he became a tutor and later professor of modern languages. He was ordained deacon in 1847 and became an Episcopal priest in 1848.

Highly esteemed as a linguist, Goodwin started at Trinity in 1853, both as its president (the first who had no prior experience with the College) and as the Hobart Professor (first of Modern Languages and Literature, then as professor of Ethics and Evidences of Christianity). In his German class, he apparently assigned the entirety of Goethe's Faust. He also taught half of the History courses while President. During his time in Hartford, he helped to establish the Society for the Increase of the Ministry. Sometime between 1854 and 1856, he chided undergraduate Maitland Armstrong (class of 1857) for immorality because of Armstrong's attempt to paint a copy of “Venus Rising from the Sea” from a lithograph.

Just four years into his presidency, on February 5, 1857, Goodwin tendered his resignation to the Board of Trustees. Yet, they insisted he stay on, in part because of a fundraising drive. Even after he presented the Board with his resignation letter a second time in May 1860, the Trustees still were strangely hesitant to let him go. But in June of that year, after Trinity's Baccalaureate ceremony, Goodwin quit Trinity College for good. He was quickly named Provost and Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, a post he occupied for eight years. In 1868, Goodwin delivered a speech at Trinity's Commencement Dinner which was interrupted by hisses after he referenced the political philosophy of Abraham Lincoln. Goodwin died in Philadelphia in 1890.

(Goodwin-Woodward Hall was not named after Daniel Raynes Goodwin.)

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Succeeded By

Sources

Wikipedia: Daniel Raynes Goodwin

The History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 64, 66, 101, 120, 122-125, 150.


goodwin_daniel_raynes.txt · Last modified: 2023/10/26 15:11 by bant07