When Sarah Goodall died, her funeral card read: Sarah A. Scates, wife of John Goodall. Born in Virginia August 1, 1825. Died in Marion, April 26, 1897. Aged seventy one Years, eight months, twenty five days. Funeral at the Christian Church, Tuesday, April Twenty-Seventh at One o’clock. Interment at New Cemetery (Old Rose Hill Cemetery).
Not many words for a woman who had traveled twice in ten years from Virginia to Williamson County, Illinois, both times as a new bride. Sarah was born at Glade Springs, Smyth County, Virginia, the daughter of Zebulon B. Scates and Eliza Brownlow, the firstborn of a large family. Her father and grandfather were ministers of the gospel of the Methodist faith. She received a liberal education at the seminary at Abingdon, Virginia, making her home with her uncle, Joseph Brownlow.
Sarah met Dr. James Patten Thorn at a camp meeting near Glade Springs, Virginia They married 27 Jan 1846 and came by horseback to Marion the same year. Sarah rode a tall clay bank horse 18 hands high. Marion and Williamson County were only 7 years old, Williamson having been created in 1839 from the bottom of Franklin County. Thomas Scates, a black man, came with the Thorn family. He was a blacksmith and worked at the old Stockton blacksmith shop, located on present day North Market Street. He was a large, crippled man who made the news in October of 1877. He had been arrested while drunk and lodged in the jail. The prisoners slept on beds of straw and at 9 p.m. a fire broke out. Thomas Scates was badly burned and died the next morning at John Goodall’s.
At some time the Thorn family boarded at the tavern of Captain John M. Cunningham in Marion, then on the site of the First National Bank building (now the Bank of Marion on the Square). Mary Cunningham, who later married John A. Logan, would help Mrs. Thorn fasten her dress in the back.
Four children were born to James and Sarah Thorn: Virginia, Naomi Letitia, Hiram M. and Zebulon B. When the census taker came around in 1850, he found Sarah Thorn and children, Virginia, Hiram and Naomi, living in a hotel. The head of the household is Rachel S. Stewart, aged 60. James H. Stewart is 22 years old and his occupation is given as hotel keeper.
There was good reason for Sarah and her three children to be living in a hotel. Her husband had gone to California. In 1849, a man had returned to Marion with a gold nugget weighing I ¼ ounces which he sold to a merchant at Marion for $18 or $19, a goodly sum in those days. On April 26, 1850, Dr. Thorn left for the Golden State with G.W. Chesley McCoy, Harvey L. Hayes, James & Thomas P. Louden, Henry Purdy and William Lipsey. They took a covered wagon and three yoke of cattle, buying another when they stopped at Independence, Missouri. They were four months on the road, landing in Coloma, Eldorado County on August 27, 1850.
While the doctor was away, three of the Thorn children died. Naomi and Hiram, died of scarlet fever on the same day, September 7, 1851. Another child, Zebulon B., had died January 30, 1851. It is not known when the doctor returned from California, but he died September 15, 1852 in Marion at the age of 37 years and 2 months. He was buried beside his children on the family farm. Before his death, he called in the sheriff of Williamson County, John Goodall, and told him he was going to die and his wife and child were going back to Virginia to her relatives. He asked Mr. Goodall to help Sarah sell the land and to see that she was not cheated.
Before Dr. Thorn called in John Goodall, Sarah had only seen him once when he came riding through on the road where the Thorns lived in a log cabin. He came in and Dr. Thorn invited him to dinner, much to the embarrassment of his wife who was cooking by an open fireplace.
Sarah did go back to Virginia, but did not sell the land. Four years later, John Goodall traveled to Virginia and courted the late doctor’s wife. When Sarah saw him get off the stage, she thought he was the tallest man she had ever seen with his high silk hat and frock tail coat. They were married June 2, 1856 at Seven Mile Ford, Rich Valley, near Chilhowie, Virginia and the new family, consisting of John & Sarah Goodall and Virginia Thorn left for the Illinois country the same day. On June 16, 1856, in Williamson County, Illinois, John Goodall was appointed guardian for Virginia Thorn.
Sometime, the date is not known, Dr. Zebulon B. Scates came from Virginia to visit his daughter and family. He thought she lived in a God-forsaken country and wanted to take his daughter back with him, but she refused. While visiting her, he went to Johnson County and brought back locust trees, which he planted on the Thorn land. Some of the trees were still standing in 1936 in the south part of Marion. Also, her brother, Zeb Scates, of Virginia, visited his sister in 1878, the visit being noticed in the Egyptian Press on January 24. There is a Z.B. Scates, a widower aged 43 years, in the John Goodall household in 1880.
John and Sarah Goodall lived in Marion over forty years before her death April 26, 1897. She had been stricken with paralysis three years before and from that time had been unable to leave her room except when aided. One day before her death, she suffered a second stroke. She was survived by three children.
Some researchers have given Williamson County as the place of marriage for John Goodall and Sarah Thorn, even though the record could not be found at the courthouse. Sarah’s obituary plainly states they married in Virginia. Notes made by Nannie Gray Parks tell the romantic story of Sarah and Virginia returning to her father’s and John stepping off the stage in his high silk hat, his purpose being to court the Widow Thorn.
John Goodall was born May 16, 1824, in Wilson County, Tennessee, the firstborn of fourteen children of Joab Goodall and Nancy Palmer. His family came to Williamson County, then Franklin, when he was four years old. His father, Joab, died on October 13, 1845 and being the eldest, the care of the family fell upon him. He taught his first school near his old home at the age of 16 and afterwards went to Lebanon, Tennessee where he received a liberal education for that day.
John Goodall served as sheriff in 1850-52 and was in the mercantile business for 40 years. He contracted a chill which developed into an acute case of pneumonia which caused his death on November 9, 1897, less than seven months after the death of his wife, and was laid to rest in Rose Hill Cemetery. He was postmaster at Marion at the time of his death.
When Thorn Place was laid out, the remains of Dr. Thorn and his three children were moved to Rose Hill Cemetery by Joab Goodall. Sarah’s daughter, Virginia Thorne, married Samuel W. Dunaway on April 8, 1863.
The children of John and Sarah Goodall are:
Joab Goodall, born March 4, 1858, died April 8, 1930, married Mamie Cobb of Kentucky.
John Palmer Goodall, born January 27, 1860, died July 5, 1884. His death notice in the Marion Monitor paper read, “…..in his early years he was a bright, intelligent, handsome youth. As time went on, a disease took its dreadful hold upon him and dethroned his mind, in which state he remained until a short time before he died. It was a peculiar phase of his illness that he never lost sight of his religion and in his last hours, when sanity returned to him, he demonstrated clearly that his faith was still strong.”
Adella (Goodall) Brownlow, born February 6, 1862, married April 8, 1886 to Dr. Henry Clay Mitchell, son of Samuel Mitchell and Martha A. Harrison.
Turner Goodall, born January 4, 1864, died October 12, 1864.
Samuel H. Goodall, born February 7, 1866, married May 28, 1893, to Lizzie C. Cripps, daughter of T.N. Cripps and M.L. Denning.
James R. Goodall, died April 14, 1889 at the home of Dr. H.C. Mitchell in Carbondale. He was 19 years, 5 months and 27 days old.
Sources:
The Nannie Gray Parks files at Williamson County Historical Society
Events in Egypt 7 volumes of newspaper excerpts by Helen Sutt Lind
Historical Souvenir of Williamson County, Illinois by John F. Wilcox
Williamson County Marriage Records by Joyce Smith and Gay Hoffard
Off the Beaten Path, Some Williamson County Cemeteries by Charla Murphy and Helen Sutt Lind
Sam’s Notes: It appears clear that the Thorn (Thorne) family used to occupy a log cabin on that section of Marion once called Thorne Place. Originally, the streets of S. Virginia, East Thorn and likely others appear to have been collectively called Thorne Place and were addressed that way, but the street names got changed around 1922 to the names we recognize today.
The previously mentioned Stockton family, as I understand it, were primarily bell makers and occupied a location on N. Market Street where Stockton Street intersects it on the west side.