William Nicholas Goodman

The first Goodman in Arizona

Everything that follows in this family history (the pharmacy counter in Mesa, the five mayoral terms, the hospital in Chandler, the OB/GYN practice, the marriage in Hamburg) traces back to a carpenter from Bristol with bad lungs and nine children.

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

An orphan in Bristol

William was born on September 9, 1841, in Bristol, England, the son of Thomas Goodman and Maria Symonds Goodman. His mother died in 1854, when he was twelve. His father died three years later. By fifteen, William and his three siblings were orphans in mid-Victorian England, a country that offered working-class children without parents very little in the way of prospects.

^{[GED]GED — Genealogy DatabaseGEDCOM Master File: William Erastus Platt [S7]S7 — Archived WebsiteKindredPast: The Goodman Family of St. David, Arizona (Archived)}

But he had converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1851, at the age of nine, and the church offered something England did not: a way out.

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

Forty-two days at sea (1862)

On May 14, 1862, William and his younger brother Nathaniel boarded the William Tapscott in Liverpool. The voyage took forty-two days. They arrived in New York on June 25, traveled by rail and steamboat to Florence, Nebraska, then joined a wagon company for the overland journey to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in October 1862.

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

Marriage and twenty years in Utah

On February 27, 1864, William married Margaret Ann Taylor, whom he had known in England. Together they would have eleven children, nine of whom survived infancy. Margaret's family was established in the Mormon community, and the marriage connected William to a network of families who would later settle Arizona together.

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

Year	Event
1841	Born in Bristol, England
1851	Converted to LDS faith (age 9)
1854	Mother Maria dies
1857	Father Thomas dies; orphaned at 15
1862	Emigrates to America with brother Nathaniel
1864	Marries Margarett Ann Taylor
1877	First Arizona settlers leave Utah for St. David
1882	Goodman family moves to Arizona (Mesa, then St. David)
1885	Dies March 8 in St. David, age 43

The last journey (1882)

After two decades in Utah, William's lungs were failing. He needed warmer, drier air, the same need that would later drive thousands of tuberculosis patients to Arizona. In the fall of 1882, he loaded his wife and children into a wagon and headed south.

They stopped first in Mesa, then continued to St. David in the San Pedro River Valley. The pull was family: Margarett's sister Maria had already settled there with her husband Joseph McRae. St. David had been founded in 1877 by Mormon settlers under Philemon Merrill. By 1882 it was a tight-knit farming community where families helped each other survive through seasons of flood and drought.

Adobe and mesquite

Near the St. David cemetery, William and his sons built a homestead. They molded adobe bricks by hand, cut mesquite for fuel and fencing, dug irrigation ditches, and planted wheat and barley in desert soil. The work was relentless: sun, dust, a river that flooded unpredictably, and lungs that were not getting better.

Death at forty-three

William Nicholas Goodman died on March 8, 1885, three years after arriving in Arizona. He was forty-three. He was buried in the Saint David Cemetery in Cochise County. "He took a paralytic stroke on February 10, and died on March 8, leaving his wife and nine children."

His death could have ended the Goodman story in Arizona. It did not. Margaret Ann sold their only cow to pay for the funeral, bought soap and small goods with what she had left, and ran a store from her front room for thirty years. The children stayed, married into other local families, and established their own farms. William's son George Edward Goodman married Roxsana Othelia Reed. They had eight children. The eldest was George Nicholas Goodman, the future five-term mayor of Mesa and founder of Apache Drug.

The line of descent

William Nicholas Goodman (1841-1885) → George Edward Goodman (1870-1952), son → George Nicholas Goodman (1895-1959), Mesa mayor → Dr. Clifford James Goodman Sr. (1921-1962), Chandler physician → Dr. Clifford James Goodman Jr. (1943-2022), MomDoc founder