Chauncey Allen Goodrich graduated from Yale in 1810, served as tutor there in 1812–1814, and afterward studied theology.

Dr. Goodrich made numerous contributions to periodical literature, and in 1829 established the Christian Quarterly Spectator, with which he was connected nearly ten years, being its sole editor after 1830.

Hachenberg, and in 1830, at the request of President Timothy Dwight, he prepared a textbook, Greek and Latin Lessons (1832), which was extensively used in New England.

Soon after the publication of the American Dictionary, by his father-in-law, Noah Webster (1828), Dr. Goodrich was entrusted by its author with power to superintend an abridgment of the work, which he did, conforming the orthography more nearly to the common standard.

At the time of his death Dr. Goodrich was engaged on a radical revision of the dictionary, but he died before the work received its final form, and it was published under the supervision of Noah Porter (1864).