Henry Godfrey
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Henry Godfrey (1824 – 1882) was a squatter in Port Phillip District.
Godfrey was born in Madras, India the son of Colonel John Race Godfrey, and his wife Jane Octavia, née Woodhouse. Godfrey arrived in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, as a young man in the Duke of Roxburgh in 1843 in company with Francis Nixon, the first Bishop of Tasmania.
An amateur on the violoncello, Godfrey accompanied the singing of hymns of the voyage out, much to the delight of Mrs Nixon. He was also an accomplished amateur sketcher and his sketchbook, now in the State Library of Victoria, contains hundreds of sketches from the voyage and the colonies, as well as some from England. The collection forms a significant pictorial record of the early colonial period of Port Phillip.
Godfrey established himself on the Gobur Station on the Goulburn River (Victoria), but returned to England where he died in London in 1882, but his brother, Frederick Race Godfrey, remained in the colony where he became prominent for his public service on various committees.
Godfrey was married in 1853 in St Clements Truro, Cornwall, to Mary Polwhele and together they had 5 children:
- Henry Polwhele GODFREY b: 17 MAY 1854 in Exeter
- Clarence Polwhele GODFREY b: 14 SEP 1855 in Exeter
- Ernest William GODFREY b: 28 DEC 1856 in Melbourne
- Bertram GODFREY b: 1860 in Boort Station Victoria
- Charles Montague GODFREY b: 29 APR 1865 in Cheltenham Gloucestershire
