W. J. GOODMAN, M.D., Tyler, Smith County, TX ***************************************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Submitted by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net 11 Jun 2001 ***************************************************************** Biographical Souvenir of the State of Texas Containing Biographical Sketches of the Representive Public, And Many Early Settled Families Chicago: F. A. Battey & Company, 1889, Vol I, p 330 W. J. GOODMAN, M. D., is now retired from practice, and is one of the capitalists of the State of Texas. His father, Dr. Samuel A. Goodman, was born and reared in Tennessee and practiced medicine in Union county, South Carolina, for thirty-five years. He came to Texas in December, 1857, and settled in Smith county, but abandoned the practice and invested his money and went to farming. He is now living in Tyler, aged eighty-four years, and has been a prominent man of Smith county ever since his residence there, and a successful one. He married Parmelia C., daughter of Nathaniel Jefferies of Union county, South Carolina, a respectable and well-to-do planter. Mrs. Goodman died in Tyler in 1879 in her sixty-fourth year. There were three children born to Samuel A. and Parmelia C. Goodman. These were William J., the subject of this sketch; Samuel A., Jr., now a farmer of Smith county, and their daughter, Sarah R. P. Goodman, who died when fourteen years old. W. J. Goodman was born in Union county South Carolina, and lived there to the age of twenty. He was educated at the South Carolina College, Columbia, South Carolina, and graduated at the Charleston Medical College and subsequently attended the Bellevue Hospital of New York and the College of Physcians and Surgeons. In 1857, he came to Texas and practiced medicine in Smith county for thirty years, having retired recently. In 1861 the doctor entered as a private the Thirteenth Texas infantry and was soon appointed assistant surgeon of the regiment; promoted to the position of surgeon, which position he held during the war. The doctor married, soon after the war a daughter of Colonel R. K. Gaston, an old Texas, a well-known and honored citizen of Smith County. Dr. Goodman has been a successful financier as well as a physician. He is one of the heaviest tax-papers in Smith county and has large landed interests in the western towns and counties, and is one of the most public spirited men of Tyler. He was one of the promoters of the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas Railroad (Cotton Belt system) and was the first vice-president, and assisted in building the first mile of this road.