John Hedges Goff was born at Jackson, Kentucky, on February 21, 1899. After spending his youth on his grandfather's farm in Winchester County, Kentucky, and for a time in Mississippi, John Goff moved to Georgia while still in his teens. After graduating from Oglethorpe University in 1919, he attended the University of Paris, University of Strasbourg (France), and Centro de Cursos Historicos (Madrid, Spain). In 1929, he received his Ph.D from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Washington, D. C. Upon graduation, Dr. Goff taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Mississippi State College, Starkville; Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; Armstrong College, Berkeley, California; Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; and Emory University, Atlanta. He was Acting Dean of the School of Business Administration at the latter institution upon his retirement in 1959.

In 1936-39, and again in 1942-44, Dr. Goff went on leave from Auburn University to serve as Director of the Transportation and Industrial Economics Division of the Tennessee Valley Authority. He served as consulting economist for the T.V.A. in Alabama and for the Bonneville Power Company, Portland, Oregon. During Wor1d War II, Dr. Goff was Chief Economist and Director of Research for the U.S. Transportation Board of Investigation and Research, Washington, D.C., under President Roosevelt.

In addition to many articles on place names and local history of the Southeast, Dr. Goff was author, coauthor, or director of several published reports on transportation and industrial economics. Dr. Goff was especially interested in the economic history of the early Southeast and wrote many papers in that field, His testimony played an influential part in the appraisal of Creek Nation lands in southern Georgia and southeastern Alabama in the suit which resulted in the U.S. Government paying over $3,500,000 to the Creeks for territory they claimed had been underestimated in value at the time of the treaties.

Dr. Goff was associated with both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Indian Claims Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Goff was a founder member of the American Society of Traffic and Transportation, member of the Interstate Commerce Commission Practitioners Association, and the Atlanta World Trade Council. He was chairman of both the Council and Atlanta Chapter, I.C.C. and a member of the Southern Economic Association, the American Economic Association, and the Georgia Historical Society. He was also a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity, Beta Gamma Sigma Fraternity, Omicron Delta Kappa Leadership Fraternity, and the Phi Kappa Phi Business Scholarship Fraternity.

For most of his adult life, Dr. Goff was interested in historical and place name studies of the Southeast, with an emphasis on those of Georgia. What started as a hobby became an avocation as time went on until, in 1959, he retired from teaching to devote full time to his historical interests. Dr. Goff researched for over thirty years in Georgia's original land records, plats of survey, and maps, on file today at the Georgia Archives. In addition, he supplemented his basic research at other institutions in various states surrounding Georgia, Washington, D. C., Chicago, and London.

About 1950, Dr. Goff received a grant from the Research Committee, Emory University, Atlanta, to trace a number of historic trails and highways across the South. The result of this grant was a series of excellent articles on the early road system and Indian trails of the Southeast and the addition of much pertinent data to his basic collection. In September 1961, Dr. Goff received a grant to go to London in order to search out and have reproduced early maps of the Southeast for Emory University. He spent the entire fall and part of the winter in that city in his research and returned to Atlanta with a fine collection of maps heretofore unavailable in this area.