Richard Godfrey

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Feb 12 2017, 2:43:05 UTC

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GEDCOM Note

Godfrey, Richard. 1st Lieutenant, Capt. Richard Sears's 1st (1st Chatham) co., 2d Barnstable Co. regt. of Mass. militia; list of officers chosen in said regiment, as returned by Joseph Doane; ordered in Council April 20, 1776, that said officers be commissioned; reported commissioned April 20, 1776; also, 1st Licutenant, Capt. Benjamin Godfrey's (1st) co. (co. of East District in Chatham), Col. Joseph Doane's (2d Barnstable Co.) regt. of Mass. militia; list of officers chosen in said company, as returned to be commissioned, dated Chatham, June 10, 1776; Joseph Doane, Jr., reported chosen 1st Lieutenant of above company in room of said Godfrey, who declined appointment.</line><line /><line>Richard Godfrey was born ca. 1724.He died before 6 May 1760. He married at Chatham 10 Jan 1750/51, Azubah Collins (MD, 7:140), daughter of Solomon and Eunice (Atkins) Collins, born at Chatham 10 June 1733 (MD, 4:200) She married secondly, Joseph Dexter.</line><line /><line>"Richard Godfree" is listed on the Chatham Rate Bill of 1755. Described as a mariner, he died before 6 May 1760, when his widow was appointed to administer the estate (Barnstable Co. Probate, 10:58) On 7 July 1760, Azubah Godfree presented the inventory, signed by her brother-in-law Moses Godfrey, Samuel Collings and James Covel (ibed., 12:94). The estate was represented as insolvent,the real estate having been sold for 23:17:2, and the expenses being listed as an identical amount. Azubah had already remarried, for on that same day the Court accepted "the Account of Joseph Dexter and Azubah Dexter as the said Azubah is the sole Admin on the Estate of Richard Godfrey, late of Chatham" (ibid.,12:24). Her new husband, son of Benjamin and Hannah Dexter, was born 27 Feb 1731(William A. Warden and Robert L. Dexter, Dexter Families, 1905, p. 45). Joseph and Azubah Dexter went to Liverpool, N.S., with the Cape Cod Migration of 1760-62, taking her two sons by Richard Godfrey with them. There Azubah bore five Dexter children, and Joseph Dexter was jailed in November of 1777 on a charge of high treason for assisting American sailors during the Revolution. Azubah and her children, including a "babe at the breast", took passage for Boston. The boat was captured by an American Privateer and she and her children, minus most of their valuables, were put ashore at Newbury-port "destitute and without friends". Making his escape, Joseph Dexter rejoined the family in Massachusetts and was awarded 60 lawful money for the loss of two boats which he had loaned to American prisoners for their escape (Massachusetts Archives, 219:249; Edmund Durel Poole, Annals of Yarmouth and Barrington (N.S.)in the Revolutionary War, newspaper clippings, pub. Yarmouth, 1899). Joseph and Azubah returned to Chatham where she died before 10 Jan 1788, when Joseph Dexter married Martha (Bearse) Gould (Family of Zaccheus Gould....,p.106).