Congregational clergyman, author, was born in Ridgefield, Conn., the fourth of the ten children of the Rev. Samuel and Elizabeth (Ely) Goodrich and a grandson of the Rev. Elizur Goodrich. The Goodriches, a family of ministers, were of English origin and had been settled in Hartford County for generations. As Charles showed a predilication for the ministry, he received conscientious instruction from his father and was sent, despite the strain on the family resources, to his father's college, Yale. Upon his gradutation in 1812 he read theology under the Rev. Andrew Yates in East Hartford and after preaching for some months at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was settled July 15, 1816, as a colleague of the Rev. Samuel Austin in the First Congregational Church of Worcester, Mass. He was ordained Oct. 9, 1816, his father delivering the sermon. On June 24, 1818, he married Sarah, daughter of the Rev. Benoni Upson, by whom he had seven children. A protest against Goodrich, begun by a busybody outside the congregation, grew forte and accelerando into the most violent quarrel in the church history in Worcester. The objection to him seems to have had both a doctrinal and a political basis. Although a staunch conservative by all ordinary standards, Goodrich was not an extreme Calvinist of the Hopkinsian stamp, and has was inclined also to credit Thomas Jefferson with a moderate amount of virtue. These aberrations almost wrought his undoing. Though an ecclesiastical council cleared him of all charges brought against him, the long, arduous conflict wore down his never robust health; he asked for his dismissal and received it Nov. 4, 1820. He returned to his native county and made his home in Berlin for the next twenty-eight years. Thereafter, until his death, he lived in Hartford. Though he preached and even engaged in politics - he was a state senator in 1838 -- his chief occupation was the writing of children's books and informational works of various kinds. For such tasks he had some of the aptitude of his brother, Samuel Griswold Goodrich, for whom he did some work. He was, in fact, a moon to Peter Parley's sun. The most popular of all his numerous books was "The History of the United States of America" (1822) which, constantly revised and brought down to date, went through more than 150 editions. "A Child's History of the United States" (improved from the 21st ed., 1846) was another favorite. His "Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence" (1829; 8th ed., 1840) was translated into German as "Lebensschreibungen sammtlicher Unterzeichner der Unabhanggigkeits-Erklarung" (Sumneytaun [sic], Pa., 1842) by Enos Benner, who also published a revised edition in 1858. Other characteristic volumes are "Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical" (2 vols., 1822); "Pictorial and Descriptive View of All Religions" (1829); "Outlines of modern geography on a New Plain" (1827); "Stories on the history of Connecticut" (1829); "The Universal Traveller" (1837); and "The Family Tourist" (1848). No bibliographer has compiled a list of all his books and their numerous editions (Dictionary of American biography).