Caldwell County MO Archives History .....GOODMAN FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY  
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 8, 2008, 4:16 pm

THE GOODMAN FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY IN 1840
	Narrator:  Bert (A.C.) Goodman

     The Goodman family is one of the very earliest in our collection.  Their  
story is told by the youngest son Bert, a retired business man of Hamilton.
     William Goodman (father of narrator) was born in Vermillion county W.Va. 
1822, and died 1902 in Hamilton Mo.  As a child, he went in a covered wagon 
with his parents to Ills. where he grew to young manhood.  Then he alone of 
his family moved to Caldwell county, where he (now aged 18) lived with an 
uncle till 1850.
     In 1850, he met a young widow Mrs. Cordelia Clark and married her.  She 
died 1900.  She had one Clark child, Mrs. Parthenia Stevenson, wife of Charlie 
Stevenson & well known business man of Hamilton who in the 70s was a clerk in 
the Wm. Goodman grocery and saloon.  William Goodman and wife had seven 
children who grew to maturity.  Mrs. Josephine Collins wife of Jas. Collins 
butcher (both dead), Mollie (dead) long a milliner here, Samuel, A.C. (the 
narrator), Richard (dead), Maud Hosmer (dead), and John.
     For a long time after the marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Goodman lived on a farm 
east of Kingston, then they moved to Kingston where he built the first hotel.  
They stayed there till 1862 when Mr. Goodman moved to Hamilton and built the 
Hamilton House (see the narrative on this hotel).  He then leased this hotel 
and built the Western House which was on north Main and was destroyed by the 
fire of 1882.  It was rebuilt by them as the Goodman block, yet standing, the 
Whitman building which houses the Liquor Store being part of it.
     In all, the Goodman family were in the hotel business 21 years and made 
good hosts.  The girls helped run it.  Little by little, the girls all married 
except Mollie.  She ran a millinery store in the building and afterwards, she 
and Bert ran a restaurant.  Mr. Goodman always said that he lost $10000 the 
day that the Western House burned, because they carried so little insurance.
     Besides the hotels, he ran the first agricultural implements store, had 
an early dry goods store and owned his farm.
     His wife Mrs. Cordelia Goodman died 1900, aged almost 73.  She also comes 
of a very early family in the county.  She moved with her parents (Billy 
Jones) from Clark county Ky. to Caldwell county 1839.  In 1847, she married 
Mr. Clark who died within a year.
     Mrs. Goodman was a fine member of the Christian church, joining at 
Kingston 1854.  She was a charter member at Hamilton in the sixties.  Of those 
charter members there were four left at her death, James M. Whitt, William 
McCoy, Mrs. Enos Dudley, and Mrs. Claypool.  Her son recalls that she sent her 
youngsters to the Sunday school of the Christian church, which was held at 
that time in the upstairs of the Wm. McCoy grocery, called McCoy's Hall.  This 
old building stood on the present site of the Hawk Motor company.
     Interview  1933.


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