Page:One of a thousand.djvu/268

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!54 goodnow. GOl HiKlCH. Princeton ; then went into partnership with him ; then engaged in the manufac- ture of shoes for himself. In 1847 he sold out his Princeton business and left the town. In the period of prospecting which followed, he had charge lor a year of the store connected with the large cutlery es- tablishment of Lamson, Goodnow & Co., at Shelburne Falls. Hut neither this nor a manufacturing prospect in central New Vork offered him the chance he sought. In the end he came back to Worcester, there bought out a small shoe dealer, and with a capital of about $7,000 began a retail and jobbing business. At the end of four years he sold the retail branch and opened the first exclusive jobbing house of any kind then in Worcester. For the first year the business amounted to $130,000 ; in the tenth year it was about $400,000.

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EDWARD A. GOODNOW. In the midst of a prosperous business the civil war broke out. Being wholly in sympathy with the cause of the Union, Mr. (ioodnow patriotically gave the govern- ment his hearty and efficient support. He assisted many of his clerks to enlist for the war ; headed a subscription for Gov. Andrew's colored regiment with $500 ; subscribed liberally for . govern- ment bonds, and showed his confidence in its stability by his forwardness in estab- lishing the first bank in Worcester under the national banking law. Of this bank he became the president after retiring from the shoe business at the close of the war, and this office he still holds. Of his honorably accumulated wealth he has been a faithful steward. Churches, missionary societies, schools and colleges in many and widely separated places have largely shared in his gifts. Much the larger part of his giving has been for edu- cational uses. Scholarships for needy and worthy girls have been founded by him at Mt. Holyoke, Northfield, Wellesley, Wel- lington, South Africa, Iowa College, and Hampton, Virginia. To Iowa College he gave $15,500 for the erection of a library and observatory, and a cottage for girls ; to Huguenot Seminary in South Africa, $15,000 for a building and its furnishing ; to Washburn College, Kansas, $5,000 for a John brown professorship ; to the Young Women's Christian Association of Worces- ter $5,000 ; and to his native town about $40,000 to found and endow a free library and grammar school, and to aid in erecting a new town hall. These are but parts of his public benefactions. The whole amount would probably exceed $200,000. Mr. Goodnow has never been an office holder, nor an office seeker. One exception occurred in [867, when Governor Andrew appointed him a trustee of the Westborough Reform School. This office, through a re- appointment by Governor Bullock, he held se en years. Mr. Goodnow was married in early life to Harriet, daughter of Dr. Henry Bagg, of Priuceton, and subsequently, upon her decease, to her sister, Mary Augusta. After the death of the latter he was married to Catherine Bowman, eldest daughter of Seth Caldwell, of llarre. He was the father of but one child, who died many years ago. GOODRICH, Charles Artemas, son of Artemas and Lydia (Ramsdell) Goodrich, was born in Lunenburg, Wor- cester county, November 5, 1824. He was educated in the common schools until the age of fifteen, when he entered the Lunenburg Academy, under the tuition of the Hon. John R. Rollins. When seven- teen years of age he began teaching school, to which occupation he gave his attention for ninety-two terms in the common and high schools. In 1850 he bought a farm in his native place, which he has since been conducting in connection with land surveying, civil engineering, conveyancing, etc.