Born in Portland on December 29, 1825, Charles William Goddard was educated at private schools in Portland and at Bowdoin College.
Graduating with the class of 1844 he continued his education at Harvard Law School and was admitted to the Cumberland Bar in 1846.
He practiced law in Portland as a partner of James Merrill, Esquire before moving to Lewiston Falls in 1850.
In 1866 Goddard returned to Portland and associated himself with Thomas H. Haskell, a future Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.
In politics, Goddard was yet another example of a Whig turned Republican. He was elected to the State Senate in 1857 and reelected in 1858 serving as President of the Senate in 1859.
In 1861 Goddard was appointed by President Lincoln to be Consul-General at Constantinople, a position that he continued in until 1864.
Following his return to the United States, he was appointed by Governor Chamberlain to be one of five commissioners to devise a plan for the equalization of the municipal war debt, which amounted to about twelve million dollars, and its assumption by the State.
In 1881 by Legislative Resolve, Judge Goddard (he had by this time been appointed to the Superior Court) was appointed sole Commissioner to revise the public laws of the State of Maine.
Goddard’s legal career included being appointed the first County Attorney for Androscoggin County in 1854.
A classic example of the well-educated and well-connected patrician, public servant of the nineteenth century, Goddard showed that such connections were not accidental when he chose for his second wife the daughter of ex-Governor Anson P. Morrill in 1857, the same year her uncle, Lot M. Morrill, was elected Governor.