The Return of the Riders 125 year Celebration of the Goddard Family of Verde Valley


By Miriam Lucero with Jane Goddard Jane Goddard, your family has 125 year history in the Verde


Valley area of Arizona. Would you share some highlights of the first 25, 50, and 125 years of the Goddard family?  1890 and stayed with his aunt and uncle, Al and Callie Godard Stra- han. The Strahan’s had settled in 1875 and were among the founding families of Cottonwood. The Strahan’s owned land and numerous - came the jail to Pima Street and donated the land for the Cottonwood Cemetery. My grandfather married Maude Reid a few years later and in 1894 moved the family from Pagosa Springs Colorado. The party of eight who traveled by covered wagon consisted of my grandmother’s mother, Mary Ellen Reid and her three younger brothers. My aunt Nettie was 10 months old when the family arrived in September of 1894. Grandpa Reid, the family patriarch, had died of pneumonia af- - father’s brother, Lew Godard had moved to Colorado, returned to Benton County Arkansas where the family had originated and moved his family with his father, Welcome Godard around 1900, a Methodist minister who had recently lost his wife, Martha. Welcome who was born in 1832, passed away in December 1905 and is buried at the Squaw Peak Cemetery on the Salt Mine Road. Lew Godard farmed the Goodwin-Shay Ranch at Peck’s Lake in 1906 which was later bought by Senator William Clark. My side of the family changed the spelling of the name after my Aunt Alyce told my grandfather it was spelled incorrectly. Jesse Goddard, my father, often teased his cousins Frank and Carl about being too lazy to add the other “d” to the name. Dad  he worked for Dutch Dickinson at the Apache Maid, where he worked  was the President of the Yavapai Cattle Growers Association in the mid 1930’s and devoted his life to preserving the history of Arizona. In 1955 he was responsible for the republication of Pioneer Stories of Ar- 


12 | ARIZONA’S OWN MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER 2019


to ensure other stories from the surviving pioneer families were re- membered. Although my father quit school after 8th grade to become a cowboy, he was respected authority of Arizona history by renowned  is my dream and vision to follow in my father’s footprints to keep the stories of Arizona’s past alive.


Would you share with our readers what your father taught you on the cowboy way of life? How does the new generation of Goddard continue the history? - boying before I was born. He taught me the old cowboy ethics of keep- ing your word, honoring your elders, doing what you can to help oth- ers and to love animals and nature. One of the greatest compliments he could say about a person was “he was a hard-worker” and “he pulled no punches” referring to the importance of complete honesty. Jesse Goddard gave me my sense of moral conviction, sense of humor and spiritual viewpoint. My sons, Jeremy, David, and Nathaniel, all born ten years apart share in this tradition. Dad said in the October 14,


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