Service in the Colonial Wars

On April 16, 1725, Goffe was with Captain John Lovewell on his third and final expedition against the Abenaki during Dummer's War. He was left with a small garrison at a fort built at Ossipee before Lovewell's Fight near the Abenaki village of Pequewket (within what is now Fryeburg, Maine).

In 1734, Goffe and his family moved to Derryfield, New Hampshire, now named Manchester. In 1744, during King George's War, he became a captain of scouts (snowshoe men) and led a company protecting the frontier of New Hampshire from Indian attack. In 1744, he built a saw mill and a grist mill in Bedford, New Hampshire.

At the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, Goffe rejoined the New Hampshire Militia and served in Joseph Blanchard's Regiment. He saw action at the battles of Lake George, Fort William Henry, Carillon, Ticonderoga and Montreal, during which time he rose to the rank of colonel and became the commander of the New Hampshire Provincial Regiment. In 1760, while en route to Crown Point, the regiment completed work begun in the fall of 1759 by Major Hawks on the Crown Point Military Road, from Fort at Number 4 in what is now Charlestown, New Hampshire, to the northernmost Black River Pond (Lake Amherst). After the war, Goffe became the commander of the Ninth New Hampshire Militia Regiment.

American Revolution

Though too old (74) at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War to take command of troops in the field, Goffe was an avid revolutionary, serving in the provincial legislature and becoming the first probate judge for Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. He lived long enough to see the creation of the United States, before dying in 1786. He is buried at the old graveyard in Bedford, New Hampshire.