The Widow's Store

A widow sells her only cow, a boy becomes a teamster, and a handcart captain's descendants meet the Goodmans in the Arizona desert.

W

illiam Nicholas Goodman died on March 8, 1885, in an adobe house he had built with his sons. He was forty-three. His widow, Margaret Ann Taylor Goodman, was forty-three as well. She had nine children, a newborn daughter named Theresa, chills and fever, and five dollars.

^{[S7]S7 — Archived WebsiteKindredPast: The Goodman Family of St. David, Arizona (Archived)}

She sold the family's only cow to pay the funeral expenses. With what was left she bought a few bars of soap and small articles and began selling them from her front room. She added inventory piece by piece, eventually purchased Mr. Beebe's store, and ran a mercantile business for thirty years. She became the second postmaster of St. David and held the position for twenty years. She boarded schoolteachers, served refreshments on dance nights, and drove to Fairbank, Tombstone, and Benson for store supplies by horse and buggy.

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The store opened in 1885 in Old St. David, near the present site of the Rammed Earth Roundhouse. In 1897, Margaret Ann moved both the store and the post office to the Marcus townsite after artesian water was struck there. The new St. David absorbed the old one. She planted a palm tree next to her artesian well, a species that would normally die in the cold mornings of the high desert; the well's warmth kept it alive. That palm tree, planted around 1902, is still standing today. It marks the spot across Highway 80 from the Mormon Battalion Monument.

^{[StDH]StDH — Archived WebsiteSt. David Heritage Society: Historic Driving Tour, Stop 7 (Archived)}

Profile: Margaret Ann Taylor Goodman

Margaret Ann never remarried. She led the Relief Society for twenty-six years, was known for going "among the sick, taking care of them day and night," and entertained apostles and church workers at her adobe home. She knew Brigham Young personally and danced in the same set with him at quadrilles.

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The teamster's generation

While Margaret Ann held the homestead together, her eldest son was already on the road. George Edward Goodman had driven a four-horse team on the family's journey to Arizona at the age of twelve. After his father's death, he attended school in the adobe schoolhouse in St. David. Two years later, on May 3, 1887, an earthquake estimated at 7.25 to 8.1 magnitude struck from an epicenter in Sonora, less than a hundred miles south. The west wall of the schoolhouse collapsed. The children were at recess. No one was injured, but George's formal education effectively ended. He was sixteen, and he went to work.

^{[GED]GED — Genealogy DatabaseGEDCOM Master File: William Erastus Platt}

George Edward's twenties read like a map of southern Arizona's extractive economy in the 1890s: hay camps hauling loads to Tombstone, railroad work at San Simon and Tempe, lumber runs from the Mt. Graham and Chiricahua Mountains, freight driving into Bisbee and Old Mexico. He handled four-horse teams across country that was, by any measure, still raw.

^{[GED]GED — Genealogy DatabaseGEDCOM Master File: William Erastus Platt}

Profile: George Edward Goodman

On February 13, 1893, George married Roxanna Othelia Reed, daughter of Heber C. Reed. Eight children were born, six in St. David and two in Safford after the family relocated. Their eldest, George Nicholas, was born on September 5, 1895. He would become Mesa's five-term mayor and pharmacist. The teamster's son became the civic leader.

Profile: Roxanna Othelia Reed Goodman

^{[GOF]GOF — DocumentGenerations of Faith (family history book)}

George Edward eventually settled in Safford in 1906, working twenty-seven years at a lumber company. He served as President of the Goodman Family Organization from 1936 until his death in 1952. At his deathbed, his grandson Clifford James Goodman Sr., M.D., an intern at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, helped care for him. Three generations in one hospital room: the teamster who had driven freight into Bisbee, and the young doctor just beginning the medical dynasty that would define the next chapter of the family story.

^{[GED]GED — Genealogy DatabaseGEDCOM Master File: William Erastus Platt}

The Geronimo question

The handcart captain

The Ellsworth family arrived in Arizona by a different route, but their pioneer bona fides were at least as deep. Before the ostrich feathers and the cotton gins that would make the Ellsworth name synonymous with the East Valley, the family's founding figure had walked 1,300 miles pushing a handcart.

^{[S2]S2 — Archived WebsiteWikipedia: Falcon Field (Arizona) (Archived)}

Edmund Lovell Ellsworth was born on July 1, 1819, in Paris, Oneida County, New York. His father Jonathan died the year Edmund was born, and his mother Sarah Gallea was dispossessed of all the family property by Jonathan's brother, who claimed a verbal will. Sarah eventually converted to the LDS faith, and Edmund was baptized in 1841.

^{[GED]GED — Genealogy DatabaseGEDCOM Master File: William Erastus Platt}

In 1856, at the age of thirty-seven, Edmund captained the first handcart company of 280 pioneers, 56 handcarts, and 3 wagons from Iowa City, Iowa, to the Salt Lake Valley, departing June 9 and arriving September 26. Brigham Young himself led a welcoming committee with the Nauvoo Brass Band to greet them. The connection to Young was personal: Edmund had married Elizabeth Young, Brigham's eldest daughter, in Nauvoo on July 10, 1842. He was also an Alderman on the Salt Lake City Council, a Major of the 2nd Battalion of Infantry in the Nauvoo Legion, a missionary to England, a musician in brass bands, and an actor at the Salt Lake Theatre. He had four wives, forty-two children, and an estimated 1,500 descendants in the following generation.

^{[GED]GED — Genealogy DatabaseGEDCOM Master File: William Erastus Platt}

Edmund died on December 29, 1893, in Show Low, Arizona. His son Louis settled in the Gila Valley and Queen Creek area near Mesa. Louis's grandson Earl fathered Earlene Ellsworth, who in 1940 married Dr. Clifford James Goodman Sr., uniting the Ellsworth and Goodman lines and setting up the marriage that would produce the next generation's doctors.

^{[S2]S2 — Archived WebsiteWikipedia: Falcon Field (Arizona) (Archived)}

Profile: The Ellsworth Family

The store after Margaret