C.C. Godden was born in Victoria and studied under Nathaniel Jones at Perry Hall, Bendigo and then at Moore College, Sydney. He was ordained in 1900 and worked as curate at St Michael's Surry Hills. He then travelled to Norfolk Island for training at the Melanesian Mission, before going to Omba/Ambae, Vanuatu as a missionary in 1901. He married Eva Dearin while on leave in Sydney in 1905 and they returned to Vanuatu in 1906. He was murdered by a local man, Alamemea, who had been pressed into working on the Queensland cane fields and bore a grudge against white man for the treatment he had received in prison for attempted murder. His daughter Ruth was born in 1907. Godden is remembered as a martyr.