Clarissa Goddard 

Clarissa Goddard (1756-1840) lived at Broughton House with the William Steele family for much of the 1770s and ’80s.  She was the daughter of Samuel Goddard of Banbury, Oxfordshire, and joined the Broughton church on 1 April 1781.  She had a brother, also named Samuel.  She was a relation of Martha Goddard Steele (1734-91), the second wife of William Steele III (1715-85) of Broughton, Hampshire. Martha Steele was formerly a Goddard from Bristol who lived with her sister, the wife of the Baptist minister at Pershore, John Ash, who, with Caleb Evans, were close friends of William Steele III and his sister, the famed hymn writer Anne Steele (1717-78). Clarissa is mentioned in Mary Steele’s poem, ‘To Theodosia, an Epistle from Yeovil, 1773’. Clarissa Goddard was dismissed to the Baptist church at Coventry on Christmas day, 1803, and died there in 1840, at the age of 84. For more on her, see John Broome, A Bruised Reed: The Life and Times of Anne Steele. (Harpenden: Gospel Standard Trust Publications, 2007), 223; Broughton Baptist Church Book, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.