78 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

Davis, Col. Caleb Grainger, Benjamin Heron, Alexander Dun-
ean, Walter DuBois, Cornelius Harnett, Obediah Holt, Robert
Johnson, Col. James Moore, Archibald Maclaine, Archibald
McDuffie, Alexander Martin, Mrs. Anne Nissfield, William
Purviance, John Robeson, Robert Schaw, Patrick Stewart,
James Stewart, and William Watkins. Nearly all of these
names are familiar to us, and it is apparent that the poet was
appreciated during his life in Wilmington and numbered among
his friends men of the first consequence in our community,
doubtless having congenial associations with Harnett, Maclaine,
Moore, and others of like distinction.

The rare old volume, yellowed by age and procured only after
years of search, says: “Mr. Thomas Godfrey, the Author of
the following Poems, was born in Philadelphia, in the year
1736. His Father, who was of the same name, was a Glazier
by trade, and likewise a Citizen of Philadelphia—a person
whose great natural capacity for Mathematics has occasioned
his name to be known in the learned world, being (as has been
heretofore shown by undeniable evidences) the original and real
inventor of the very useful and famous Sea-Quadrant, which
has been called Hadley’s. He died when his son was very

young and left him to the care of his Relations, by whom he
was placed to an English school, and there received ‘a common

education in his mother tongue’; and without any other advan-
tage than that, a natural genius, and an attentive perusal of the
works of our English Poets, he soon exhibited to the world the
strongest proofs of poetical capacity.”

Besides his talent for poetry, he is said to have possessed a
fine ear for music and a strong inclination towards painting,
desiring to have lessons in the latter; but his relatives had
other plans, and his biographer, continuing, says: ‘He was
put to a watch-maker in this city, but still the muses and
graces, poetry and painting stole his attention. He devoted
therefore all his private hours to the cultivation of his parts,
and towards the expiration of his time he composed those per-
formances that were published with so much favorable notice.”

At length he quitted the business of watch-making and got
himself recommended for a lieutenant’s commission in the
Pennsylvania forces, raised in the year 1758, for the expedi-
tion against Fort DuQuesne, in which station he continued
until the campaign was over and the provincial troops dis-

banded.

Permanent Settlement 79

The succeeding spring he had an offer made him of settling
as a factor in North Carolina, and, being unemployed, he ac-
cepted the proposal and presently embarked for Wilmington,
where he lived more than three years. In Wilmington he com-
pleted the dramatic poem the Prince of Parthia, as appears by
a letter dated November 17, 1759. “By the last vessel from
this place,” says Godfrey in this letter, “I sent you the copy of
a Tragedy I finished here, and desired your interest in bringing
it on the stage. I have not yet heard of the vessel’s arrival, and
believe, if she is safe, it will be too late for the Company now at
Philadelphia.” He was but twenty-two years of age when this
drama was completed.

On the death of his employer, Godfrey left North Carolina
and returned to Philadelphia; but finding no advantageous
opening there he determined to make another voyage abroad,
and procuring some small commissions went as a supercargo to
the island of New Providence, where he was for some months.
From New Providence, led as it were by some sad fatality, he
sailed once more to Wilmington, North Carolina, “where, a few
weeks after his arrival,” says his biographer, “he was unex-
pectedly summoned to pay the debt of nature, and death put a
stop to his earthly wanderings by hurrying him off this shadowy
state into boundless eternity. He happened one very hot day
to take a ride into the country, and not being accustomed to this
exercise and of a corpulent habit of body, it is imagined that
the heat overcame him, for the night following he was seized
with a violent vomiting and malignant fever, which continued
seven or eight days, and at 10 o’clock a. m., on the third of
August, 1763, put a period to his life in the twenty-seventh year
of his age.

“Thus hastily was snatched off in the prime of manhood this
promising genius, beloved and lamented by all who knew him.
His sweet, amiable disposition, his integrity of heart, his en-
gaging modesty and diffidence of manners, his fervent and dis-
interested love for his friends endeared him to all those who
shared his acquaintance and have stamped the image of him in
indelible characters on the hearts of his more intimate friends.”
He was interred in the burial ground attached to St. James’s
Church in Wilmington and a tombstone marks the spot.

McRee, referring to him in his Imperfect Sketch of the His-
tory of the Town of Wilmington, published in the Wilmington
Chronicle of September 16, 1846, says: “He wrote several

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