Refocusing on the Goal

While it may be tempting to lose ourselves in the myriad questions about the Goodman family of Tennessee and Illinois—and, eventually, their descendants in Malheur County, Oregon—we need to keep our eyes focused on our goal. In the case of the photographs I found of Annie Goodman Tucker and her family, that means building a viable tree to see where she fits in the family constellation, and then, hopefully, see if there are any descendants out there who would be interested in receiving the Goodman and Tucker pictures I found in that antique shop in northern California.

Granted, the Goodman story has been somewhat confusing. It appears that Annie's mother, Sarah Baldwin Breeden Goodman, was once again widowed while living in Nashville, Tennessee. With three—or, if Dollie was indeed another child and not just a nickname for Alice or Emma, four—daughters, widow Sarah's primary interest was likely in marrying them off, or at least insuring that they were not left destitute at her own passing.

In the case of oldest daughter Annie, that meant marriage in 1884. For daughter Alice, eight years younger than Annie, hers was another marriage, this time in 1886. Yet, for the daughter in between Annie and Alice, it was a different scenario: work in Nashville as a single young woman, then marriage in 1893. And Dollie? All we know about Dollie was that she was in a photograph taken with Annie in Oregon. Who knows what became of her after that—or whether she was actually another Goodman daughter, or merely one of Annie's other sisters with a sweet nickname.

The challenge was figuring out just why a widow in Nashville would decide to drag her two daughters all the way to Jersey County, Illinois, to be married. What was the connection? We discovered the unexpected clue—at least as it was recorded in the marriage record—that Alice Goodman was not born in Tennessee, as one would expect from her parents' residence, but that she was born in Alton, Illinois. There was also that confusing switch of names for the Goodman father, from Henry in the census records to Andrew in Alice's marriage record—and even in a later Nashville city directory for widow Sarah. Could Sarah have actually traveled to Illinois to marry again, herself? I have seen that exact scenario before, in other families.

The connection to Illinois, from our current perspective, is fleeting for the Goodman daughters. Alice, once married to John Harris in Jersey County, lived there with their sole son Earl in 1900, but by 1910 had moved—I suspect along with several others from Jersey County, including Alice's sister Annie—to Malheur County, Oregon. As reader Per pointed out last Friday, another ten years and Alice's husband and son had returned to Illinois without her—the 1920 census indicated that John Harris was widowed—where they remained, according to both the 1930 and 1940 enumerations.

The story for oldest sister Annie Goodman and her husband Samuel Tucker was much the same. Living in Nashville, she married in Illinois in 1884, then by 1900, was living in Oregon. Judging from that 1900 census, their move was both earlier and more gradual than Annie's sister Alice: they remained in Illinois until after the 1887 birth of their daughter Eva, then stayed in Nebraska for the birth of five additional children. The Tuckers left for Oregon after the summer of 1899. However, like her younger sister Alice, Annie died relatively young, by the end of 1925.

There was, however, another Goodman connection in the story. Whether it was a Goodman who was related to Henry Goodman, Sarah's second husband (at least, as far as I can tell), I have yet to demonstrate—though the roots for both Goodmans reach back to Virginia.

You may have already spotted that other Goodman connection in our discussion of the wedding of Annie and Samuel Tucker. There, in the marriage record, was the maiden name of Samuel's mother: Martha Goodman. And no, that wasn't a mistaken entry, for if her married name had been inserted in error, it would have been Tucker, not Goodman.

What was interesting about that other Goodman line—the one of Samuel Tucker's mother, Martha Goodman—was that her mother's name was Fuller.

Fuller? I've seen that name before! In fact, I believe I have a picture from that family mentioning the Fuller surname. And since refocusing on our goal means getting back to connecting these abandoned family photos with descendants of these families, let's see what we can find about the Fuller connection to this extended family.