Probably does not help you, but since you are talking about BSD make, groff 1.22.2_3 builds fine on FreeBSD. (3 is the FreeBSD port revision for this groff version).
http://portsmon.freebsd.org/portoverview.py?category=textproc&portname=groff The port was last updated on 26-AUG-2015. http://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/textproc/groff/ I can post the build log if it helps. (There should be some available online already, from FreeBSD package cluster, but perhaps they leave only broken build logs). Anton
