Goddard, George Henry

George Henry Goddard (May 17, 1817 - December 27, 1906) was a British-American artist and civil engineer active in California in the mid to late 19th century. Goddard was born in Bristol, England. He took a degree in civil engineering from Oxford. Lured by the promise of the California Gold Rush, he moved to the United States in 1850, arriving on the Diana, settling in Sacramento. Failing to strike it rich in the Gold Fields, he turned to his civil engineering background, securing lucrative contracts with various private and municipal concerns, including the City of San Francisco and the booming railroad industry. During this period, he produced at least 10 important views focusing on Columbia, Sonora, and Tuolumne - most were published in 1852-53 in lettersheet format but were not financially successful. He produced the surveys for Britton and Rey's 1857 Map of the State of California. He settled in San Francisco in 1862, or possibly earlier, where he issued two important large-format bird's-eye views, considered the best images of San Francisco in the 19th century: Birds Eye View of the City of San Francisco (1868) and Bird's Eye View of San Francisco and Surrounding Country (1868). Around the same time, railway speculation made him extremely wealthy, and he constructed an impressive mansion at Golden Gate and Van Ness, which he filled with 'maps, minerals, paintings and other objects of historical interest'. The collection was so large and impressive that Stanford University, to whom it was bequeathed, planned a new museum to house it. Unfortunately, before this could happen, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire destroyed both the mansion and the collection. Goddard died in Berkeley shortly after.