By Sally Jackson and Karen Murphy
Few Arizonans know that John Noble Goodwin, the first Governor of the Arizona Territory, was descended from the esteemed Reverend Robert Jordan of Maine. Likewise, few are aware of the connections to criminality in Goodwin’s family tree.
Born Oct. 18, 1824, in South Berwick, Maine, Goodwin grew up in his birthplace. His ancestral roots reached deep into Maine, as he was a descendent of the local Reverend Robert Jordan (1610– 1679). According to Family Records of the Rev. Robert Jordan and His Descendants in America, Jordan was a wise man who interceded on behalf of a woman accused of witchcraft and “delivered the innocent.” As a highly educated councilor, justice, lawyer, commissioner and Anglican minister, he was an influential figure in religion, the courts and politics.
Goodwin’s pursuits and values appear to have some similarity to his ancestor’s. Graduating from Berwick Academy and then Dartmouth, he pursued law and governance as a state attorney and was a successful prosecutor during Maine’s infamous Temperance Controversy of 1851, when Maine passed its strict prohibition law. Goodwin was an early member of the Republican Party and was elected to the Maine State Senate in 1854 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1860.
On Feb. 24, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Arizona Organic Act, dividing the New Mexico Territory into two territories along the current boundary between New Mexico and Arizona. Ten months later, on Dec. 29, 1863, President Lincoln’s party of appointed delegates stopped their wagon train at Navajo Springs, (within Arizona, forty miles northeast of Holbrook, near the border with New Mexico). After their arduous trek across the country from the nation’s capital, they quickly unloaded and set the stage to complete their mission to establish America’s new Arizona Territory.
Goodwin stepped forward, raised his right hand and swore to uphold the oath of office as Territorial Governor. The men cheered as Richard McCormick, the new Territorial Secretary, hoisted the Stars and Stripes for the ceremonial inauguration of the “government whereby security of life and property will be maintained throughout its limits and its varied resources be rapidly and successfully developed.”
One year before this event, 1,360.6 miles away in Illinois, John Goodwin’s distant cousin, Richard Latham “Dick” Broadwell was born. Broadwell did the opposite of securing “life and property”— he grew up to be a member of the infamous Dalton gang spending his life engaged in train robberies and gun fights and dying in Kansas while attempting to rob two banks simultaneously.
John Goodwin left his governor’s post in the Arizona Territory to become the territory’s elected delegate to the 39th Congress in September 1865. He didn’t seek re-election, moved back east to focus on his business interests and served as vice president of the Tiger Mill and Mining Company of New York City. Goodwin died April 29, 1887, and is buried in Augusta, Maine.
After Goodwin, more descendants of Rev. Robert Jordan came to Arizona from Maine in the 1870s, settling in the Verde Valley area as homesteaders, farmers, bee keepers, carpenters, teachers and miners. In the early 1920s, one of these descendants, William “Will” or “WA” Jordan, became a leader like Rev. Robert Jordan or John Goodwin by leading a group of fellow Verde Valley farmers in a successful air pollution lawsuit against a major copper mining company, one of the first cases of its kind.
Goodwin and his infamous younger cousin, Richard “Dick” Broadwell, will join their forefather Rev. Robert Jordan in the short one-act “A Tale of Two Cousins -- A Wild West Parable,” presented by Basin Lake Theatre Project as the final fundraiser of the Summer Series at the Sharlot Hall Museum on Aug. 20. Tickets are $25; join us on the red brick patio in front of the Transportation Building.
“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1 The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.