Great Elizur’s Ghost!

When David West Goodrich checked off a list of voters at a polling station this week, he was working to help the mayor win reelection — and defeat a historical record his own family has held for nearly two centuries.

Goodrich, who’s 61, lives in Westville. He is a sixth-generation descendant of Elizur Goodrich, who served as New Haven’s mayor from Sept. 1, 1803, until June 4, 1822.

Elizur Goodrich, a Yale professor and lawyer-turned politician, holds the record for the city’s longest-serving mayor.

For now.

That record was put at risk Tuesday, when Mayor John DeStefano won election to a 10th two-year term, which begins on Jan. 1. If DeStefano makes it to Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012, he will have beaten the record set by Goodrich, who resigned on the 277th day of his 19th year in office.

“I’m honored to have an ancestor” who contributed to so much to history and civic life, said David Goodrich, a freelance archaeologist and typesetter, in an interview in his McKinley Avenue kitchen Thursday. His family has honored the tradition by passing down family names through generations. David bears the name of Mayor Goodrich’s father and grandfather. He named one of his sons after the mayor — David Elizur Goodrich. (David Eli, as he’s called, is currently in the U.S. Marine Corps. He’s pictured above in the photo held by his dad.)

David West Goodrich and his wife Judy know the DeStefanos; their kids grew up playing soccer together and attended the West Hills School. Judy Goodrich teaches at Troup School. The Goodriches got word this year that DeStefano had announced he was taking aim at their family record by running again.

David West Goodrich sat down at 5:45 a.m. Tuesday at the Ward 25 polling station at the Edgewood School, ​“terribly aware” of the record. He set aside any family rivalry and served as a volunteer voting-list checker for the Democratic Party. That means as the official checkers crossed off the names of people who came to vote, he audited the process by checking them off on his own list — and passing it off to Democratic runners working with Mayor DeStefano’s campaign.

Goodrich said he voted for the mayor, even though his vote worked to defeat his family’s claim to fame. ​“The chances of John DeStefano being beaten were slim,” he said. ​“It was a foregone conclusion that the record was going to go.”

2 Centuries, 2 Mayors

In a visit to his tomb at the Grove Street Cemetery, the former mayor remained mum on this week’s news. Some clues to his experience spoke through the pages of history from: the Connecticut State Library online records, several history books, and memories of his descendants.

John DeStefano may not know it, but he had some similarities with his bygone predecessor — and perhaps a lesson to learn.

The similarities didn’t take shape until later in life.

Elizur Goodrich was born on March 24, 1761, in Durham, Conn. into an elite family closely connected to Yale.

“Elizur Goodrich was more typical of the patrician mayors,” wrote Robert Dahl in his landmark 1961 book about New Haven politics, Who Governs? ​“He could trace his ancestry to Dr. Thomas Goodrich, who had been Bishop of Ely in 1534; his forbears settled in Wethersfield in 1643.”

His father, the Rev. Elizur Goodrich, ​“had graduated from Yale in 1752, was a Congregational minister, a fellow of the Yale corporation, and at one time a strong candidate for the presidency of the University.”

DeStefano was born on May 11, 1955, in New Haven, the son of a cop and a hairdresser. He got a public education at the University of Connecticut.

Battle Wound

While DeStefano may have dodged some proverbial bullets in his tenure, he can’t compare to what Goodrich went through.

At 18, the age when DeStefano was a freshman in college during the last stages of the Vietnam War, Goodrich received a near-mortal wound defending his country.

Goodrich had started Yale at the age of 14 in 1775, according to The history of Connecticut: from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, Volume 2 by Gideon Hiram Hollister.

During Goodrich’s senior year at Yale, his life was ​“brought into extreme danger” by the invasion of the British into New Haven. When the British troops landed on July 5, 1779, Goodrich joined about 100 men under the command of James Hillhouse. They set out ​“to annoy and retard the march of the enemy.”

“Toward evening, when the town was taken and given up to ravage and plunder, [Goodrich] was stabbed near the heart by a British soldier, as he lay on his bed in a state of extreme exhaustion, and barely escaped with his life.”

Goodrich recovered and graduated from Yale that fall. He went on to be a lawyer, judge, state representative and Congressman.

Mayor As Booby Prize

Goodrich fell into the mayor’s job in a curious manner — as a ​“consolation prize” for getting tossed out of a ​“plum” political job, in the words of David West Goodrich, who’s his great-great-great-great-great-great grandson.

DeStefano had to make a case twice to voters before landing the job; he was first elected in 1993 four years after an unsuccessful run against John Daniels. Goodrich had it much easier: He got elected by a town meeting once, then stayed in the job indefinitely — without facing checks from voters — until he resigned. 

After making his way to Congress, Goodrich scored a political bonus in February, 1801, when President John Adams appointed his Federalist Party ally to be tax collector of the port of New Haven. The job was lucrative. Goodrich resigned his seat in Congress to take it.

The plush post didn’t last for long, however. President Thomas Jefferson took over a month later, at the helm of the opposing Republican Party. Jefferson moved to toss out Goodrich.

Six months into Goodrich’s tenure at the port, Jefferson ​“dismissed the Federalist collector and replaced him with a feeble, seventy-seven-year-old man, already overburdened as mayor of the city and judge of a state court,” wrote Rollin G. Osterweis in his book Three Centuries of New Haven: The Tercentenary History.

A group of New Haven merchants protested the act of political retribution, but Jefferson did not budge.

After Goodrich’s removal, ​“Federalists cherished him as a martyr.” They delivered him a job as the first law professor at Yale. When feeble tax collector and New Haven Mayor Samuel Bishop died, they gave Goodrich the mayor’s seat.

While voters evaluate DeStefano’s performance at the polls every two years, Goodrich got into the mayor’s job under the wire, at a time when there were no real checks to a mayor’s continued tenure.

For the first 42 years after the city was incorporated in 1784, mayors, once elected at a town meeting, held office for life or ​“during good behavior,” according to Osterweis. No more running for office. That meant mayors weren’t subject to changing political winds. Federalist Goodrich hung onto the office ​“despite the decisive swing to the Republican party in 1818.”

Tough Times

Like DeStefano, Goodrich ruled during a time of economic hardship.

In the early Goodrich years, the city had a ​“thriving seaport.” Boats carried grain, butter, vegetables, cattle and lumber to British and French West Indies, and returned carrying sugar and molasses, according to Osterweis.

Trade was doomed, however, by a change in national policy and another war.

In an act of ​“Peaceable Coercion,” President Jefferson determined no sailing vessel should leave U.S. soil and go to a foreign port. After Congress passed the law to that effect in 1808, 78 New Haven vessels were embargoed, New Haven lost two thirds of its $150,000 annual revenue from port duties. The city’s robust port became ​“ghostlike.”

Then came the War of 1812, when economic activity ​“languished” and coastal shipping was curtailed under a British blockade. Goodrich oversaw the fortification of the port against enemy raids, which never ended up taking place.

A Plea To The Suburbs

As he faces today’s recession, DeStefano has found himself appealing to the suburbs for relief, arguing that the city bears too much of the burden of the public infrastructure and social services. He and his colleagues have spent years lobbying the state for more distribution of tax dollars toward cities.

Goodrich found himself making a similar plea in 1821, on the heels of a devastating fire.

“On the Night of the 26th of October, a fire broke out at Union-Warf, and in a few hours, a valuable part of our City was reduced to ashes,” Goodrich wrote in a Jan. 29, 1821 letter to the Town of Simsbury. The fire destroyed 26 stores and other buildings, and left citizens stripped of their livelihood, he wrote. The letter appealed to the suburbanites for donations.

“While we regret the necessity of this appeal, we cherish the hope, that it will receive the encouragement of the charitable and benevolent,” he wrote. ​“The losses are too extensive to be repaired by the liberality of those of our citizens, who have escaped the conflagration.”

He signed the letter ​“your humble servant,” and penned his signature with a great swooping E. (Check out the original document here.)

Life After City Hall

In his later life, Goodrich proved something DeStefano has not yet discovered — that there is live beyond the mayoralty.

Goodrich became mayor at age 42 and resigned his job, for unknown reasons, at age 61. DeStefano took office at age 38; he has known no career outside city government outside of four years running the tennis center in Westville.

There’s little written about what Goodrich did after he left the mayor’s seat, except to enjoy reading good books.

“His reading was extensive and minute,” according to The Goodrich Family in America, a family genealogy first published in 1889.

Goodrich ​“was distinguished for exact scholarship, the clearness and strength of his judgment, and the ease and accuracy with which he transacted business.”

“His cordial manner, extensive information, and genial humor, combined with unusual conversational powers, made his presence in society particularly agreeable.”

He stood out by staying sharp and continuing his scholarly interest all the way to his death bed, according to the book.

“What is unusual, he maintained his acquaintance with the ancient classics to the last, being accustomed to read the writings of Cicero, Livy, Sallust, Virgil, and Horace till his eighty-ninth year, with all the ease and interest of his early days.”

“Glad He Stayed”

Goodrich may now be found resting at 54 Cypress Ave., a leafy path through the Grove Street Cemetery.

He’s buried there under an obelisk along with his wife and daughter, and a half-dozen other family members. One of his sons ended up marrying Julia Webster, daughter of dictionary author Noah Webster, who has his own plot at Grove Street.

Goodrich’s monument reaches about 12 feet high, now echoed by the pointy peaks of the Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall building, a modern addition to the campus he once knew.

David West Goodrich encountered these family members after he moved to New Haven from the West Coast in 1975 to become a graduate student at Yale. He and his wife Judy married in the same church in Durham where Elizur Goodrich, father of the long-gone mayor, had preached.

When John DeStefano ran for governor, the Goodriches saw a glimmer of hope: If DeStefano were successful, ​“that would leave the record intact.”

DeStefano lost his gubernatorial race against Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2006 with only 35 percent of the vote. 

Goodrich said the family is OK with the outcome: ​“We think the mayor’s good for the city, and we’re glad he stayed.”

He was asked if his ancestor would run for mayor if he were alive today.

“It’s a challenging time to be a mayor in the United States,” Goodrich reflected, ​“but [Elizur Goodrich] was civic-minded, so he probably would.”

“I don’t think the current mayor is going to get stabbed by the British,” he added. ​“The circumstances are very different now.”

New Haven historian Andy Horowitz contributed research assistance.