John F. Godfrey
John F. Godfrey | |
|---|---|
 Godfrey in 1863 | |
| 20th Los Angeles City Attorney | |
| In office 1876โ1880 | |
| Preceded by | Aurelius W. Hutton |
| Succeeded by | Henry T. Hazard |
John Franklin Godfrey[1] (1839โ1885) was a sailor, a soldier and officer in the U.S. Civil War, a city attorney of Los Angeles, California, and an attorney in private practice who, among other activities, represented people arrested for operating businesses on Sundays.
Personal
Godfrey was born in 1839 in
He settled in Los Angeles in 1874, purchased a house on Adams Street in the southwestern part of the city and began cultivating oranges. Godfrey married twice, his first wife dying in Los Angeles, and two years later he married again.[2][3]
Godfrey was credited with saving the life of Henry Hunt, who faced a
Col. Godfrey, seeing that the man could only be saved from lawless violence by a ruse, addressed the crowd and made a pretense of endorsing the proposed lynching. But he added that ... there was a way in which the crowd could give a better proof of its sympathy with the murdered man's family. who had been left in destitute circumstances. This was to make a contribution of money to the widow. ... But many in the crowd, though anxious to take a hand in the hanging, did not feel sympathetic enough to give anything, and began to disperse the minute the hat started on its rounds.[5]
He died suddenly on June 29, 1885, leaving a wife and four or five children. A memorial service attracted nearly every lawyer in the city, and burial took place in the family plot.[2][3][6]
Vocation
Sailing and sheepherding
Instead of attending college, Godfrey became a
Military
At the outbreak of the
After the war, Godfrey enlisted as a
Civilian
In 1866 Godfrey left Montana, worked in laboring jobs in
One of his clients was the Total Wreck Mining Company, which was seeking a patent. He traveled to Washington, D.C., in a successful urging of this claim, and returned with J.M. Requa of New York, the company president.[9]
In December 1876 Godfrey was elected Los Angeles city attorney on the People's
Godfrey and Stephen M. White represented a group of defendants who in 1882 were prosecuted for having violated the Sunday closing laws that had been in effect in Los Angeles for the preceding nineteen years. Answering a prosecution against saloonkeeper Jacob Phillipi, who had "knowingly and willfully" kept his business open on Sunday, Godfrey argued that the law was being enforced only against "one class" of business, that of saloons, and he compared the prosecution to that of the burning of witches in Salem, Massachusetts. The jury was unable to return a verdict, seven for conviction and five for acquittal, and it was dismissed.[11][12]
References and notes
- ^ His middle name is attested by [1] this Los Angeles Public Library record
- ^ a b c "Col. John F. Godfrey," Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1885, page 1
- ^ a b c d e f g h "John F. Godfrey: Brief Biographical Sketch of His Career," Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1885, page 6
- ^ "Hoary Headed Henry Hunt," Los Angeles Herald, August 5, 1894
- ^ a b "Anecdote of Col. Godfrey," Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1885, page 1
- ^ "Rest in Peace," Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1885, page 4
- ^ The Civil War Letters of Capt. John Franklin Godfrey, page 14
- ^ The Civil War Letters of Capt. John Franklin Godfrey,
- ^ "Godfrey's Success," Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1882, page 1
- ^ "Greenbackers' Mass Meeting," Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1882, page 1
- ^ "Police Pickings," Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1882, page 3
- ^ "The Sunday Law," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1882, page 2
External links