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Chapter 3: Youth and Experience - Dane Starbuck, The Goodriches: An American Family [2001]

Edition used:

The Goodriches: An American Family (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Chapter 3

Youth and Experience

Life [in the 1870s] was hard but it was wholesome. There was plenty of work to do and the problem of how to keep the child busy didn’t exist in those days.

james p. goodrich, “Autobiography”

In the summer of 1880, between his junior and senior years at Winchester High School, James Goodrich worked to develop the Fountain Park Cemetery, located on the south edge of Winchester. The forty-acre site had recently been purchased and donated to the town by Asahel Stone, a former Civil War general. Stone had achieved recognition by serving as quartermaster general for Indiana during the war. His responsibilities included securing supplies, provisions, and medical attention for Hoosier soldiers in the field. He became a legend in his own right, building one of the largest mansions in east-central Indiana, at the south end of Meridian Street in Winchester. General Stone also served in Indiana’s General Assembly (1848–49, 1871–73) and was the third president of the Randolph County Bank.1

For all his hard manual labor in the cemetery, James Goodrich earned only slightly more than a dollar a day for ten hours of labor.2 Yet the future Indiana governor was able to save enough that summer not only to meet his own personal expenses but also to make small loans to “less industrious companions.”3 One such companion was James E. Watson, a classmate of Jim Goodrich’s from the time they were small children. Jim Goodrich was pleased to have the work and decided to ask James Watson if he would be interested in a job as well. Goodrich recorded the incident in his autobiography:

Jim Watson never had any money and at my suggestion he agreed to work at the cemetery and I got Uncle Billy to give him a job. He worked until noon the first day—didn’t show up at 1 o’clock. I went to see what the trouble was. Watson lived then at the old home place two blocks north of the cemetery [on South Main Street next to the Winchester Nazarene Church]. I found him lying under a cherry tree, face sunburned, hands blistered, and thoroughly disgusted with physical work. He told me he would not go back to that “damn place” for all the money in the world.4

James Goodrich and James Watson attended the local Winchester schools together and graduated from Winchester High School in 1881. Their studies were rigorous and included geometry, trigonometry, higher algebra, Stoddard’s Mental Arithmetic, literature, history, and Virgil. Among the other seven graduating classmates were James Goodrich’s older brother Percy; John Commons, who later obtained a doctorate in economics and served as head of the economics department at the University of Wisconsin; and Cora J. Frist, whom James Goodrich would marry seven years later.5 The school had no library at the time and no visible means of raising funds to establish one. Therefore, in 1880, the students relied on their ingenuity and decided to establish a lecture series in order to raise money for a library. Joseph Farrand Tuttle, president of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, delivered the first lecture. The second presenter was Indiana’s beloved poet James Whitcomb Riley. Riley returned to lecture in 1881, although neither time did the class raise enough money to pay the total amount of his fees.6

James Watson and James Goodrich remained lifelong friends, although their friendship was often marred by political rivalry and jealousy. For example, in his memoirs, written in 1936, Watson does not mention James Goodrich even once.7 Watson later served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate for nearly thirty years. In addition to being the United States Senate majority leader from 1929 to 1933, Watson held the position of majority whip under the well-known Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon from 1904 to 1908. Moreover, in 1908, eight years before James Goodrich would win the office himself, Watson was the Republican candidate for governor of Indiana.

Cora Frist, an attractive and bright young woman, had moved to Winchester in 1879 from Lynn, Indiana, a small town ten miles south of Winchester. Cora was born in Middleborough, in Wayne County, Indiana, in 1861. She was more than two years older than James Goodrich. Her parents were Jonas Frist, a native of Preble County, Ohio, and the former Amy Stidham, who had been reared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cora had a younger sister by the name of Toda (“Todie”). Her father had operated a tile company in Lynn before moving to Winchester. Cora would be courted by both James Goodrich and James Watson.8

In 1881, after graduating from Winchester High School, James Goodrich, James Watson, and Cora Frist took the Indiana state teacher’s licensing examination. At the time, neither a college degree nor course work was required in order to teach in Indiana. All three passed the examination and subsequently began teaching in Randolph County schools. James Watson, however, quit teaching after only a week to attend Asbury College in Greencastle, Indiana, which, within a year, was to be renamed DePauw University. Ironically, James Goodrich was asked by the local school superintendent to replace Watson. He took the position and began teaching twelve students in a one-room schoolhouse five miles southwest of Winchester. At the time, more than one hundred one-room schoolhouses dotted the Randolph County countryside.9

James Goodrich had planned to teach for only one year. From childhood, Goodrich had dreamed of a naval career. He had long been fascinated by the prospects of a life at sea, largely because of the stories of relatives, especially those of an uncle, Will Gilpatrick. Gilpatrick had become a rear admiral in the United States Navy shortly after the Civil War.10 In the autumn of 1881, James Goodrich received an appointment to the United States Naval Academy from Congressman Thomas M. Browne of Winchester. Browne had represented the Sixth Congressional District since 1876; he had served as a brigadier general in the Civil War and was the Republican gubernatorial candidate in the election of 1872. He was also a first cousin to James Watson’s mother.11

In 1881, James Goodrich had passed the written examination and was waiting for formal admission to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Sadly, the young man was forced to give up his dream. Just four weeks after he began teaching, a tree limb fell on him while he was shaking free hickory nuts. James was knocked temporarily unconscious, and his right hip was badly broken, which made it impossible for him to pass the Naval Academy’s rigorous physical examination.12

Goodrich farmed and taught another year at a schoolhouse of sixty students three miles east of Winchester. Then, in September 1883, after two years of teaching, James Goodrich followed his good friend James Watson to DePauw University. Because of his advanced studies in high school, Goodrich was admitted as a conditional sophomore. At DePauw, he joined the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity and became the friend of another brilliant student and orator by the name of Albert Beveridge. Beveridge, like James Watson, would become a prominent United States senator from Indiana and a gubernatorial candidate.13 Goodrich noted an intense rivalry and jealousy between Watson and Beveridge that would last the rest of their lives. “Beveridge was tireless in his work,” Goodrich recalled, while “Watson was lazy but his great natural ability and amazing memory carried him through.”14

Goodrich and Watson left DePauw in 1885 before either obtained a degree. James Goodrich was forced to quit after only two years because he had exhausted his finances, and James Watson was expelled just days before he was scheduled to graduate, because he had written and published an obscene pamphlet about the male students of the sophomore class.15

Unsure of his future, Goodrich decided to pursue farming. He sought his fortune in the Red River Valley in a territory that was simply known as “Dakota.” It would not be until four years later that the territory became divided into the separate states of North Dakota and South Dakota. During the latter part of the summer of 1885, he and his uncle, John “Ches” Macy, worked on a farm about twenty miles southwest of Big Stone Lake in what is now South Dakota. The two men lived in a sod house and stayed long enough to harvest a wheat crop and plant five hundred acres of spring wheat. In the fall of 1885, Goodrich attempted to buy a wheat ranch from a Swedish farmer by the name of Johnny Gustason, but the deal fell through when they could not agree upon a price. Upon the advice of Ches Macy, James returned to Indiana and took up the study of law.16

Expelled from DePauw in May, James Watson had already returned to Winchester by this time. Goodrich joined him, and the two became students together again, this time studying law under the former Randolph circuit court judge John J. Cheney and Enos Watson, James Watson’s father. For fifteen months, James Watson and James Goodrich recited each morning from such great common-law writers as Blackstone, Chitty, and Kent, and then served their apprenticeships in the afternoons. They were admitted to Indiana’s bar on November 2, 1886.17

The two future politicians practiced law for the next seven years (1887–94) in offices above the old Randolph County Bank at the northeast corner of Washington and Meridian streets in Winchester. Watson first practiced with his father, while James Goodrich became a partner with his uncle Ches Macy and Ed Jaqua in the firm of Macy, Jaqua and Goodrich. Goodrich learned the rudiments of lawyering by drafting deeds, mortgages, and contracts, and by representing clients before the justice of the peace.18 In 1892, the small firm merged with that of Enos and James Watson and became known as Watson, Macy and Goodrich. In November 1892, Enos Watson became ill and was forced to retire. He passed away in January 1893. James Watson took his father’s position in the firm and practiced with Macy and Goodrich until the end of 1893.19

Through all these changes, John Winchester “Ches” Macy remained the constant figure in James Goodrich’s life. Macy was extremely important to the Goodrich family, and his ties extended back to James Goodrich’s father and mother. Macy’s wife, the former Sarah Edger, and James Goodrich’s mother, Elizabeth Edger, were sisters. At the age of nineteen, Macy had joined the Eighty-fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and he fought and was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia. When he returned to Winchester after the Civil War, he first worked under James Goodrich’s father, John B. Goodrich, in the county clerk’s office. He later was elected clerk himself before being elected senator to the Indiana State Assembly for one term (1885–89). At one time or another, Macy held the positions of Randolph County Republican chairman, Republican chairman of the Eighth Congressional District, and Randolph Circuit Court judge (1902–8).20 He became the chief mentor and surrogate father to James Goodrich. The relationship between the two families continued into the next generation. Macy was the father of John Macy, Jr., who became Pierre Goodrich’s first law partner.

By 1885, James Goodrich had had Cora Frist on his mind for several years but had failed to act. The two had many mutual interests, including books, music, and art. Finally, after a whirlwind courtship, James proposed. Still, it would be three years before they would marry. As he wrote to Pierre in his autobiography: “I became engaged to your mother when I was twenty-one years old, and I am sure that the wish to consummate that engagement had much to do with my desire to get into something whereby I could earn an income sufficient to justify our marriage.” The couple married on March 15, 1888, in Cora’s hometown of Lynn. The other four Goodrich brothers would also take brides: Percy married Susan Engle, John married Charlotte Martin, Edward married Elizabeth Neff, and William Wallace married Charlotte Moore. The marriage of James and Cora would last until James Goodrich’s death more than fifty-two years later.21

[1. ]See entry on A. Stone in Ebenezer Tucker, History of Randolph County, Indiana (Chicago: A. L. Kingman, 1882), pp. 324–25.

[2. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” pp. 20–21.

[3. ]Ibid., p. 22.

[4. ]Ibid., p. 21.

[5. ]Ibid., p. 23.

[6. ]Percy E. Goodrich, “James Whitcomb Riley,” Down in Indiana 57 (October 9, 1948).

[7. ]James E. Watson, As I Knew Them (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1936).

[8. ]According to the records, Cora was born on June 26, 1861. This would make her more than two and a half years older than Goodrich. It is puzzling that she would have graduated in his class. James’s brother Percy was three years older than James, however, and James wrote in his autobiography that Percy also graduated in the Winchester High School class of 1881. Pierre’s middle name, Frist, was his mother’s maiden name.

[9. ]See “Schools in Randolph County 1900–1926,” in Randolph County History: 1818–1990, p. 334.

[10. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” p. 23. James Goodrich also discussed his plans to enter the Naval Academy in an extensive article about the future governor in Earl Mushlitz’s “Issues of the Indiana Campaign as James P. Goodrich Sees Them,” Indianapolis Star, September 1916, magazine section, p. 2, col. 1.

[11. ]For a summary of Thomas Browne’s life, see Randolph County History: 1818–1990, p. 211.

[12. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” p. 23.

[13. ]Ibid., p. 26. Beveridge was also a national leader of the Progressive Party and the author of a number of serious political biographies. Watson was the Republican candidate for governor in 1908, Beveridge was the Progressive candidate for governor in 1912, and James Goodrich was the Republican candidate for governor in 1916. Goodrich was the only one of the three to reach the statehouse, although both Watson and Beveridge had long and distinguished careers in the United States Senate and in national politics in general.

[14. ]Ibid., p. 26.

[15. ]A copy of the bawdy pamphlet that got James Watson expelled from DePauw University is located in the Indiana State Library, James E. Watson Papers, box 2.

[16. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” p. 27.

[17. ]Ibid.

[18. ]James Goodrich claimed in his autobiography that he and James Watson practiced law together from 1887 to 1894, but it appears that they worked in the same office only in 1893, when James Watson’s father, Enos, retired, giving his place in the firm of Macy, Watson and Goodrich to his son. James Watson and Goodrich had, however, practiced in adjacent offices during the previous six years. Because of their proximity, they would have consulted with each other on a regular basis regarding legal and political matters even though they did not work for the same firm. In January 1894, a newly married James Watson moved to Rushville, Indiana, where he practiced law. In November 1894, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives.

[19. ]Leander J. Monks, “James P. Goodrich,” in Courts and Lawyers of Indiana, vol. 3 (Indianapolis: Federal Publishing, 1916), p. 1397. Macy and Goodrich practiced law with John Cheney for five years (1893–98). After that, Cheney retired, and his position in the firm was filled by Alonzo L. Nichols.

[20. ]For a brief sketch of John Winchester Macy’s early life, see Ebenezer Tucker, History of Randolph County, Indiana, p. 319.

[21. ]Mary Waldon, “Only Son Fondly Remembers Baking in Home at Winchester,” Indianapolis Star, September 27, 1964, sec. 7, p. 4, col. 1.