[2][3] He settled in Los Angeles in 1874, purchased a house on Adams Street in the southwestern part of the city and began cultivating oranges.

[2][3] Godfrey was credited with saving the life of Henry Hunt, who faced a lynch mob in Los Angeles after he was put into jail and accused of murdering George W. Gillis, a popular deputy sheriff.

[4][5] Col. Godfrey, seeing that the man could only be saved from lawless violence by a ruse, addressed the crowd and made a pretense of endorsing the proposed lynching.

In August 1862, Godfrey received an order from General Butler in New Orleans detaching him from the battery and giving him permission to raise a company of cavalry in the city.

It was written that Godfrey, pursued by Indians and in search of help for besieged companions, once "walked 150 miles in three days and three nights, never halting for a moment's rest or sleep" and subsisting "on a chunk of raw bacon.

"[3] In 1866 Godfrey left Montana, worked in laboring jobs in Austin, Nevada; Marysville, California, and San Francisco, then went back to Maine to read law in his father's office in Bangor and become a lawyer.

[10] Godfrey and Stephen M. White represented a group of defendants who in 1882 were prosecuted for having violated the Sunday closing laws that had been in effect in Los Angeles for the preceding nineteen years.