Goodale Family Records
Chester Goodale of Egremont
By his son, S.B. Goodale 1884
While the impressions are vivid, and the remembrances clear, I propose to write out some of the main incidents of my Father’s life; a life which stands out somewhat pre-eminently in the family line, and deserves more than a passing record. At the same time, I propose to record a few collected facts regarding the family genealogy. These reminiscences and events will be interesting in after years to those who have personally known my Father, and I am sure will be instructive to our children and to those who come after them, and who may not have been the direct recipients of his counsel and noble generosity.
Thomas Carlyle, writing of his own Father, a poor stonemason, who held no high place in “letters of state," says of him, “I consider him worthy to be ranked among the remarkable men of his time.” I call all men remarkable who become true workmen in the vineyard of the Highest. It matters not what their work or how circumscribed their field of labor, the spirit that dwells in the worker alone is significant.
Measured by such standards, I need not hesitate to class my Father’s among the lives of remarkable men. It was ever fragrant with good deeds, and rich with the fruits of generous effort. His character and success have impressed the family line. Through him the Goodale Tree has waxed strong in growth and in honor. Upon the place in which he spent more than three score and ten years of his long and active life, he has left lasting impressions of his thrift and enterprise. He was closely identified with its growth and prosperity for at least two ordinary generations. I see there beneficent traces of his labor and public spirit. I look with interest upon the houses he has built. They are the befitting reminders of his strong arm and successful enterprise. I look with honest pride upon the public improvements and institutions which he largely assisted in establishing and zealously maintaining for many years. They are the best monuments of his worth as a citizen.
Chester Goodale of Egremont, was born in the town of West Stockbridge, Berkshire Country, Mass., April 24th, 1791, just two years after the first inauguration of George Washington as President of the United States and in the year of the completion of the first census. The enumeration of inhabitants then was about 3,099,000. It is now over 39,000,000, a ten-fold increase in the life of one man. That was an early day in the history of Western Massachusetts. Berkshire County was, so to speak, a frontier settlement and in many places sparsely populated. The town of Egremont had existed in name only thirty years. It was incorporated in 1760, being the fourth incorporated town in the County. Our Grandfathers were pioneers.
My Father came from a good Puritan New England stock, with Scotch antecedents. While I, of course, make for him the usual claim of a “poor but honest parentage”, I unhesitatingly add to it that of a cultured one also. His Father, Chester Goodale of West Stockbridge, was for many years a school teacher, and I have been informed by those who knew him that he was a gentleman and a man of excellent attainments as a scholar. In consequence of reverses in business when a merchant at Becket, he became during the last years of his life despondent and intemperate and thereby an improvident husband and father. He was born September 15th, 1762, at Pomfret, Connecticut, a place known in history as the home of General Israel Putnam. Before attaining his majority he enlisted and served for one or more years in the Revolutionary War.
The Goodales of that day were without doubt, all arrogant rebels, for History makes mention also of one Major Goodale of Pomfret, as serving upon General Putnam’s staff. Pomfret was the home of our Goodale progenitors for three or four generations. Ebenezer, the father, and Ebenezer the grandfather and Thomas, the great grandfather of Chester of West Stockbridge, resided there and were the fathers of large families. Ebenezer, the father married Phebe Holt, February 13, 1765, and had five sons and five daughters, of whom Chester was the eldest son.
Ebenezer, the grandfather, married Experience Lyon, October 21st., 1728, and had four sons and five daughters, of whom Ebenezer the 2nd. was the oldest. Thomas married at Woodstock near Pomfret, and had nine sons and two daughters, of whom Ebenezer the first was the third son and one of the original twenty-three settlers of the town of Pomfret, Connecticut, who first signed the agreement to sustain the preaching of the gospel in that town, May 3rd., 1713. Zachariah, the father of Thomas, was the fourth son of Robert, of Salem, Mass. He married near Salem, moved first to Woodstock, Conn. and a few months later settled permanently at Pomfret. Robert, of Salem, I believe to be the progenitor of all the Goodales, and nearly all of the Goodells, and some of the Goodalls in this country. He sailed from Ipswich, England, the last of April, 1634, in the ship “Elizabeth”, Captain Williams Andrews, bound for New England, with his wife Catherine, aged twenty-nine, and three children, Mary, Abraham and Isaac. It is recorded that before embarkation at Ipswich he told the required oath of allegiance. He landed and settled at Salem, where he purchased five hundred and forty-three acres of land of the towns of Salem and Danvers. Longfellow makes mention of him in his “New England Tragedy”. Here were born Jacob and Zachariah. The family genealogical line of descent from Robert of Salem to Chester of Egremont, with years and place of birth runs as follows:
1603 Robert of England and Salem m. Catherine
1639 Zachariah of Salem m. Elizabeth Beauchamp
1676 Thomas of Salem m. Sarah Horwill
1703 Ebenezer of Pomfret m. Experience Lyon
1729 Ebenezer (2nd) of Pomfret m. Phebe Holt
1762 Chester of Pomfet m. Ascenath Cook
1791 Chester (2nd) of West Stockbridge m.. Sophia Busnell
The Goodales are of undoubted Scottish origin. The name in Scotland was sometimes strongly spelled Goodalle. That the name is significant of family occupation or habits, may be inferred from the Coat of Arms of the Scotch families. At all events they seemed to be exceedingly fond of their cups.
The Goodale or Goodalle Coat of Arms and Crest, is described and represented as follows:
Gu, three cups or in the middle fosse point as many ears of barley two in saltire and one in pale of the last.
(There is a siver two handled cup above the red shield which has red plumes in either side. Three gold cups and three gold crossed stems of barley are in the center of the shield. The motto ribbon below the crest is yellow, edged in red. Motto: Good God, increase. Letters are black with a red G for Goodale below the motto.)
Its significant and unique motto prayer, “Good God, increase,” has, we think, been reasonably answered. The family, (not the cups), has increased largely in numbers, character and influence. Robert’s descendants in this country, are scattered throughout almost every State in the Union. Among them may be found many occupying honored positions in the professions and in letters. The Church or religious element laudably predominates. The old Scotch Puritan leaven has done its good work. It is said that over seventy-five Ministers and Missionaries, and an almost infinite number of deacons are numbered among his descendants, and not one pauper or criminal.
The Goodale or House if Invinness plaid is a web of tartan two feet and only three inches wide commencing at the edge of the cloth. (It is predominantly purple and rust red with light blue and green cross lines, and a few yellow narrow cross bars.)
The will of Robert Goodell (or Goodale) of Salem, Mass. was proved June 26th 1683. The original will is not on file, but a copy of the will and of the inventory and estate. The following is a correct copy of the said inventory or appraisal:
We whose names are underwritten, being desired by the widow Margaret Goodell wife of the late Robert Goodell to apprise ye estate of the deceased Robert Goodell, prized as followeth:
The house upland orchard & meddow 71:00:00
2 cowes 5:15 wearing aperrell
bedding and other lumber 3:1 08:16:00
79:16:00
Salem the 10th day of March 1683
Nathaniel Putnam.
Job Swinvrton.
The will of Zacheriah Goodell son of Robert was proved June 26th 1727.
Chester Goodale, of West Stockbridge, married Ascenath Cook, August 2, 1789. [Note - This author Samuel Goodale uses the spelling Ascenath throughout this history, however a Xerox copy from the National Archives of her own signature on two separate papers shows the spelling the be Asenath. A.M.M., 1978. Her death is recorded Vol. p. 8 as Asenath 6/80]. She was the daughter of Isaac Cook, one of the early settlers of Richmond, Berkshire Co. Mass. She was a woman of the fairest descent, and of her worth as a christian wife, mother and grandmother, too much cannot be said. To her husband she was a faithful, patient, and uncomplaining help-mate, working unweariedly by his side, doing all that woman could do to strengthen and sustain his sometimes feeble fortunes, and to encourage him renewed effort. To her children, she was the best of mothers. With pious heroism and example she cheered them on to good deeds in the darker days of their early life. Upon her grandchildren she has left a life-long impress. They remember her, as it were a spiritual Mother, a practical Godmother.
Grandmother’s room in my Father’s house is a sunny, hallowed spot in their memories. I believe the happiest hours of my childhood years were spent there. To this day as I enter the room she so long occupied it always recalls her saintly presence. She was cheerful in her infirmities, industrious in her weakness, and ever hopeful and happy in her childlike trust in God’s promises as revealed to her every day in his Holy Word. She was indeed a true “Mother in Israel.” Never a burden, but ever a dispenser of sunshine and blessings on my Father’s household.
To his children as opportunity offered, she was a faithful teacher and a generous friend. Who of us do not remember her entertaining stories and those little, but frequent gifts from her meagre stores, and with what unselfish self-sacrifice, she distributed from time to time, among her friends with her little pension monies. She survived her husband some twenty-three years, and died at the advanced age of eighty-seven years. Shall not her epitaph be written “A worthy mother of a worthy son.”
Chester was the eldest born of a family of two sons and three daughters, and older than his brother by nearly twenty-three years. His sister Laura, afterwards the wife of Stephen Hadley, was born March 12th., 1793. Ascent, who died aged five years, was born May 26, 1795.
Phoebe, afterwards the wife of Alfred Bell, was born July 15., 1804, and Samuel, now the Rev. Samuel Goodale, D.D., an Episcopal Clergyman of Nebraska, and one of the founders of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity at Union College in 1832, was born December 20, 1814.
My Father’s early life was one of activity and self reliance. The circumstances of his parents necessarily made it such. Here, as always, “the boy was father to the man.” The gifts and treasure of his boyhood were few indeed. In those days toys and books were not the chief amusements of boys, but “chores” were. His first penny, presented to him by his Uncle Luther at Becket, and known as his “Josephus copper,” was something to be saved, not spent. Prudently laid up, it became in after years when entering into business a visible factor of his stock in trade; in other words a tool of his trade. It still exists, a cherished souvenir in the family archives.
The event of his boyhood was a visit made to his uncles and kindred in Connecticut. He walked the entire distance with his Father, and always recalled with pleasure his remembrance of the trip and his entertainment at his Uncles willard and Walter, at Windsor, near Wapping.
His educational opportunities were quite limited. Six weeks in winter was his school year, and then he said he was obliged to run all the way to and from school, in order to accomplish his prescribed duties. When time failed, diligence and capacity did not. He captured there at least a commendable knowledge of Arithmetic, Geography and a good handwriting, the essential qualifications for a business man, and indicative of what he might have done under more cherishing circumstances.
At the age of fourteen he was indentured and apprenticed to David Chapin, of Richmond, to learn the trade of tanner and shoemaker. For seven long years he faithfully served his master and successfully mastered the trade. On the 24th. day of April, 1812, he attained his legal majority and at the same time accomplished his indenture. This was just at the outbreak of the second war with England. In a draft at Richmond to recruit the army of the Republic, he fortunately lost the opportunity to serve his country as a soldier, and at once commenced looking about for some bare footed community whom he might serve as a shoemaker. He did not look long or go far, although now a journeyman, he was not a tramp. The man who really wants work and knows how to work, seldom fails to find it near at hand. Having negotiated a required loan of $50.00 from one Ebenezer Morris, a man then and for many years in the employ of his Uncle Isaac Cook, of Richmond, for the purchase of the needed “kit” and with only a few shilling in his pocket he left Richmond for Egremont. He found transportation for his kit and clothes upon a chance wagon, while he accomplished the distance on foot. To a small building just in the rear of the unpretentious establishment known as the “Frances Hare Tavern” then kept by Levi Hare, son of the first proprietor and then occupying the present site of the Mount Everett House, he nailed his first sign and in it benched his new kit, and commenced business on his own account.
A few months later his Father, Mother and sister were invited to join him and the family commenced housekeeping in a small house then standing a little east of the present parsonage. To it he at once removed his shop, and with his mother as housekeeper, he divided the honors of the kitchen. I have often heard my Grandmother speak of the joint occupancy of that kitchen. She said that Chester each morning would good naturally draw a chalk mark across the floor, saying, “that side is your kitchen, this side is my shop.” Of that household he was the ruling spirit and support. Manfully he toiled and cheerfully bore his early burdens. He at once planned for an early extension of business. On the 21st. day of July, 1812, only eighty days after his arrival in the town, he purchased from Wilber Curtis and Levi Hare, for the sum of $150.00 an unfenced and unoccupied triangular lot of land lying between three roads and in the course of two or three years proceeded to locate a tannery and erect a shop, mill and dwelling house in which he has resided continually for over sixty years.
In the Spring of 1813, he bought from the Greene River all the Buttonwood or Sycamore trees now on said lot and grown to such immense proportions, and planted them out with is own hands. At the time of the purchase of this almost discarded brook-side lot, his financial rating among his richer neighbors was not high. An opposite neighbor, whose residence was just west, was asked one day if she was not sorry that her brother had sold this building lot as it might cut off her own prospect to the east and the brook. “Oh, no!,” she exclaimed, “Chester Goodale will never have money enough to build a house so high but that I can look over the top of it.”
While building his house he sustained a very trying and almost fatal loss in the burning of all of his lumber while being kiln dried. He said that this was the only time when his business kept him awake at night. At the time his resources were drawn upon to the utmost to complete his house, and this unexpected loss seemed at the time irreparable; but “the brave never despair.” Manfully he planned and labored and finished his house the same year, 1820.
A successful business seemed assured from the beginning, and it rapidly increased under his enterprising management. To his early and life-long friend and neighbor, Wilbur Curtis, Esq., he says he was at this time largely indebted for the rapid development of his business. He himself, gave him a liberal credit at home and a generous business introduction to funds in New York.
His business established and his home secured, he sought, found, wooed, and won that excellent woman, who for more than fifty years shared and sustained the honors and trials of his home. On the 21st. day of April, 1821, since years from the date of his settlement at Egremont, he married Sophia Bushnell, the daughter of Samuel Bushnell, of Sheffield, and granddaughter of Johnathon Hubbard, the first pastor of the first church in Sheffield - she was born January 29th, 1800.
To his new home he brought a most worthy and befitting bride. A farmer’s daughter, skilled in all the domestic arts requisite to the accomplished housewife of her day - a day when distaffs were not parlor ornaments. She was well qualified to become the life companion of his whose fortune was yet to be made. And it is not difficult to say how largely his future success was due to her and her efficient and economical management of his large and increasing household.
It must be a home not only for his children, but for journeymen, apprentices, and workingmen. Its cares and labors were many and burdensome from the beginning; but they were cheerfully assumed and faithfully borne for many years, by this noble, industrious and self sacrificing wife and mother.
The elder born children distinctly remember the old family cellar kitchen so called in their early days, and its varied industries and uses. It’s high windows, far beyond the reach of any aspiring child. It’s large open fireplace, with swinging crane and andirons, where all the family cooking must be accomplished an where the fire was sacredly, or rather, economically preserved every night. The great oven close by, heated once each week for the family baking, the long narrow buttery adjoining - the spinning wheel with its almost daily hum and its companion reel, and even the weaving loom were to them familiar objects of interest and vividly impressed their early years.
To be the motive power as well as ruling spirit of such a household required not only physical strength, but patient endurance and skill. My Mother lived to see the well assured establishment of their family fortune and to enjoy in her declining years many of the compensating privileges and family comforts which acquired competence brings.
She was ever a devoted wife, a faithful mother and a kind and sympathizing neighbor and friend. She lived to see a large family of sons and daughters grow up about her and attain to man and womanhood, to see them go out from the paternal roof to homes of their own, and there to visit them and their children, and from time to time to welcome them back to the old homestead.
Eight children, five daughters and three sons, multiplied the family joys and cares. The home record runs as follows: Lucretia Bushnell, Charles Chester, Caroline Sophia, Samuel Bushnell, Jane, Elizabeth, Henry Sterling, and Martha Benjamin.
Mother’s last years were strangely clouded by suffering and misfortune. A few years before her death the natural infirmities of her age were increased by accidental falls from chairs and upon the stairs. From dislocations and bruises thus received she was not infrequently a patient sufferer, and on the 24th. of November, 1869, she was one of the unfortunate victims of an unusual and fatal railroad accident. In company with her husband, on that day she took passage on the morning express train for New York on the Harlem R.R. at Hillsdale. At the time a very severe easterly gale and rain storm prevailed. While the train was passing along an exposed embankment at the base of the range of mountains on the east, a little north of Boston Corners Station, the passenger cars were lifted from the rail by the extraordinary force of the wind and hurled down the embankment. My Father escaped with light bruises, but my Mother was found when removed from the wrecked car, severely injured. She was carried back as speedily as possible to the home she left in the morning, in the pleasant anticipation of spending the following Thanksgiving day with her son in New York. From this severe shock and injuries then received, she never recovered. She lingered a patient suffering invalid for some eighteen months, and on the third day of June, 1871, in the seventy-first year of her age, with her husband and children gathered at her bedside, she peacefully entered into her rest. To her children, her memory will be ever blessed.
It has always seemed to me that my Father displayed an unusual and commendable degree of enterprise in the early years of his business career, considering his limited means and opportunities. He has been called a “lucky man.” This was a frequent appellation given to him in his most active and prosperous days by less prosperous neighbors, who remarked his uniform success. He, himself, never accepted this judgement as fairly truthful. He believed that “the gods help those who help themselves,” and that fortune can be always conquered by requisite enterprise, industry and good judgement. As he possessed these practical qualifications in an eminent degree, and was a man of unimpeachable integrity of character, we may safely conclude that his business success was honestly and fairly won.
Within ten years from his settlement at Egremont, he had established and was maintaining quite an extended business in “tanning and curing” and in the manufacturing of boots and shoes, employing a large number of journeymen and apprentices. He was one of the first in the trade to commence the manufacture of stock boots and shoes. These he first exchanged with neighboring merchants for business and family supplies; and later on he transported them to Canada, bringing back Canadian ponies, which he then sent to Hartford for shipment to the West Indies. Then years later we find him quite extensively engaged in quarrying and manufacturing of marble for building and other purposes, shipping it to most of the eastern cities; New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston, and furnishing the marble for such public buildings as the Girard College, at Philadelphia, and the Custom House in Boston. At all times we find him a thriving and successful farmer, and actively interested and engaged in all the public spirited enterprises in the village and town. He was a popular and efficient town officer, and several times represented his town at the General Legislature at Boston. He was one of the incorporators of the Mahaiwa Bank at Great Barrington and served as a Director of same for many years, from the date of its incorporation. We think he has erected and assisted in erecting more buildings in the town than any other citizen. There are now standing in the village of South Egremont, not less than nine dwellings, including the Hotel, which he built, or substantially so, besides mills and other buildings. His enterprise has been exceeded only by his unselfish liberality. He has given of his means largely and freely to others during his long and busy life, and though today he boasts no great worldly possessions to leave behind him as the fruit of his labor, he is still content. Continuously, during his lifetime many friends and kindred benefited by and shared in his prosperity.
“His are the fruits of kindly deeds,” and no man may receive or perhaps, deserve thanks for that which he must leave behind him. That which we give we have, that which we spend and keep is lost. Blighting avarice or eroding care never impaired my Father’s health or lessened his years. He attained a ripe old age in the full possession of a healthy and vigorous constitution, and a happy and contented mind. He has personally verified the claim “that the survival of the fittest is also the survival of the happiest.” Longevity is no bad criterion of happiness. Between “the hurry and the end of life” he found many years of tranquil enjoyment and repose. He put on, as it were, his old age happily. As his activities subsided, he seemed to seek that rest which is due and appointed to advanced life, and we looked forward to a serene and happy close in extreme old age, but strangely enough, his last years like Mother’s have been darkened by the shadow of a great calamity. In the eighty-ninth year of his age, he was the unfortunate victim of the most fiendish and brutal assault ever inflicted upon so old a man.
On the 25th day of September, 1879, at seven o’clock in the morning, while engaged in feeding his horse at the large barn, a few rods from his house, he was most murderously assaulted by one, and possibly two men, who, having first robbed the house and slept in the barn for two previous nights, had planned this dreadful crime. The assault was made with a heavy hickory sledge-hammer handle, which had lain in the barn seasoning for more than twenty years, and was as hard as iron. With this merciless weapon, he was repeatedly struck upon the face, head, arms and hands. Without doubt the first blow rendered him insensible, and we may well wonder why each and every blow did not fracture is skull. When discovered by his grandson, Chester G. Dalzell, a few moments later, who came to call him to his breakfast, he was upon the stable floor near his horse, insensible and covered with blood. He was at once carried by kind neighbors to the house and medical aid summoned. His wounds were pronounced necessarily fatal. The physicians claimed that such wounds could not be healed upon so aged a man. They were very severe. A blow upon the face had broken down his nose, crushed out the sight of one eye and fatally injured the other. Two blows upon the forehead, and one upon the back on the head had left long and cruel gashes to the skull. His arms and hands were fearfully cut, bruised and blackened; and two fingers so badly broken and crushed that one of them dropped from the hand a few days later. He continued in an unconscious and very critical condition for several weeks, but thanks to the faithful attendance of his physician, Dr. Collins, to the unwearied and kind nursing of friends and neighbors, and much more than all to the great vigor and strength of his unimpaired constitution, he survived the shock. His wounds healed, his consciousness returned and in two months after the murderous assault, he was able to take his accustomed place at the family table upon Thanksgiving day.
The heartless wretch, Frederick B. Webster, who committed this extraordinary crime, is now an inmate of the Massachusetts State Prison. For two months he avoided capture by Sheriff and deputies, although a reward was offered both by town and family for his arrest and conviction. He was at last found in the town of Canaan, Conn., concealed under the floor in the barn of a brother-in-law, named Grey. He was tried at Pittsfield for this and other crimes, found guilty and sentenced to thirty-one years hard labor in the State Prison. Since his imprisonment he has made full confession also implicating a brother-in-law, named Norman Noteware, and claiming that by him the murderous blows were inflicted without his approval and contrary to the original plans.
At this time eight years had passed since we laid our mother away in the quiet village cemetery. She had accomplished her three score and ten years and we accounted her as having attained a ripe old age. But happily our Father elder born by nine years still lingered among us, a remarkable example of bodily and metal vigor. Now the oldest man in town, much strength yet remained to him notwithstanding the increase of disabling infirmities by reason of his recent great calamity. But it was not reasonable to expect that he would attain his centennial birthday. Deepening shadows were upon his pathway. Dark clouds obscured life’s joys. To his nearly sightless eyes, the beautiful of earth no longer came. His stricken ear but feebly responded to the pleasant greetings of friends or the sweet prattle of childhood. Like one alone he was groping toward the “Silent Land.” All the companions of his youth and early manhood had reached it long ago, they were awaiting him there. He could not long delay. For him also the inevitable summons must soon come.
Three more peaceful years in the dear old homestead, cheerfully bearing his increased burden of infirmities, and with welcoming hand and kind words rejoicing the hearts of his loving children, and the messenger came. He died Jan. 31st., 1884, aged 92 years, 9 months and 7 days.
His days on earth were many, but we may account them as well spent and faithful in good works. May his descendants long cherish his memory and emulate his virtues.
Samuel Bushnell Goodale, New York, February 1884
Notations by Walter Deming Goodale Jr, 1978
Transcribed and posted 9/20/2016 by Jeff Dalzell