William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin was born in Richmond, Virginia only four years after the end of the American Civil War. His father, John Francis Goodwin, was the son of an Episcopal priest and a Confederate captain who was with General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House at the war's end. Partly disabled by a war wound, John Goodwin became a machinist in Virginia's capitol to raise money to restore the family's devastated farm along the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.