Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Theodore Atkinson Goffe, buried 1860 in Bedford, New Hampshire

This tombstone was photographed at the Old Burial Ground in Bedford, New Hampshire


T. A. GOFFE ESQ.
DIED
Nov. 5, 1860
AEt. 91 yrs. 4 ms. 



ANNA G.
WIFE OF
THEODORE A. GOFFE ESQ.
DIED
Sept. 16, 1859
AEt. 84 yrs

All the Goffe family

Theodore Atkinson Goffe was born in Groton, Massachusetts on 25 June 1769, son of Major John Goffe and Jemima Holden.  He was the grandson of Colonel John Goffe (1701 – 1781) who build the historic Goffe’s Mill in 1744, located on Bowman Brook behind the Whole Foods market in Bedford.  Theodore A. Goffe was the great grandson of “Squire John Goffe (1679 – 1748) who removed from Boston to Londonderry, New Hampshire. 

Theodore A. Goffe married Anne Griggs, who was born 19 September 1775 and died 16 September 1859.   Theodore died on 5 November 1860 in Bedford, New Hampshire on his father’s farm.   He is most noted for rebuilding the Goffe mill after a fire damaged it in 1834.  His improvements included an iron turbine to replace the wooden millwheel.

He was the namesake of Colonel Theodore Atkinson (1697 - 1779), Harvard graduate who was appointed secretary of the province of New Hampshire.  The town of Atkinson, New Hampshire, founded in 1767 was named for him. Atkinson’s portrait was painted by Joseph Blackburn in 1760, and it now hangs in the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts.


The Goffe Family Tree at the NH Searchroots website

More about the Goffe family can be found in the book The History of Bedford: Being Statistics Compiled on the Occasion of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, 1850 

A previous blog post about Goffe’s Mill in Bedford, New Hampshire:


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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Tombstone Tuesday ~ Theodore Atkinson Goffe, buried 1860 in Bedford, New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 9, 2017, ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/05/tombstone-tuesday-theodore-atkinson.html: accessed [access date]). 

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