JUDGE CHARLES C. GOODWIN

(1864-1866)

C. C. Goodwin was born in the Genesee Valley, New York State, a few miles from Rochester. He received and academic education, and became a wonderfully proficient mathematician-had most of the English classics at his tongue's end when a boy, but could never surmount the barriers which lay between him and the dead languages.

In 1852 he came to California and studied law under his brother, Jesse Goodwin, in Marysville, where ha afterwards became teacher in an academy. He practiced law and taught school until 1861, when he came to Nevada and built a quarts mill a few miles below Dayton, putting a small fortune into its construction. When the mill was nearly completed the owner announced a "warming," and was making preparations to celebrate the event after the manner of the sage-brush, when a freshet swept it away, with his fortune, a wreck. At the same time six of his men were drowned, one of them leaving an orphan boy to the cruel charity of the world. Mr. Goodwin adopted the boy, who now holds the position of Lieutenant in the Regular Army. His kind care and providence for the future of that child speaks of a generous, loyal nature, true and unflinching in its instincts, louder and with a more certain sound than would a volume of eulogy.

Selling the dismantled machinery of the mill he paid off such of his men as were left, and with a few hundred dollars in his pockets put up an arastra at Dayton. This venture was a failure, and the subject of this sketch left Dayton a long way behind. He says that when he failed he owed less than $1,000, but since then he thinks that he has paid out at least $1,000,000 on old promissory notes and due bills. Since that time he has never put his head financially above water that one of those compounded interest-bearing notes or due bills did not come from secluded spot to greet him, as the ghost of Banquo to Macbeth. His bad luck seemed to follow him like a shadow. He started a ranch in Washoe County, and a lawsuit twenty miles away cut off the water supply with an injunction, and he left the ranch a howling wilderness. Shortly afterward he was elected District Judge of Washoe County, and edited a paper at Reno. He next located a mine in Eureka, and just as his friends were expecting to see him blossome into a millionaire, the mine gave out and left him in the lurch again. Another mine opened in Nye County treated him with the same lack of devotion to his interests. He then returned to the newspaper business, where he really belonged, and for six years ran the ENTERPRISE, for a while as editor-in-chief and a portion of the time in connection with Congressman Rollin M. Daggett. The Judge edited the paper with a vigor that made its influence felt in Nevada, and it was recognized as a journal controlled by a man of brains and culture. While he was editor the ENTERPRISE had nothing but gall and wormwood for the unreconstructed Bourbons. In 1880 he left that paper to accept a position as editor-in-chief of the Salt Lake TRIBUNE, where he still remains.

In private life Goodwin is a conversationalist such as one seldom meets, and his fund of quaint humor, ready repartee and good stories, seems inexhaustible. His home is always open to his friends, and hir purse at the mercy of every old tramp, dead-beat and imposter who calls upon him for assistance, as he could no more resist an appeal for charity than he could change the attributes of his nature.

Harry R. Mighels, in the Carson APPEAL of November 12, 1878, pays the following, in our judgement, just tribute to Judge Goodwin's editorial labor and talents:---

In the history of Nevada journalism no such brilliant and effective assaults were ever made by any newspaper upon the enemy's line as Goodwin has been making. His splendid services should be most generously remembered; and he has, while making an enviable reputation for himself, placed the ENTERPRISE in the front rank of live and powerful political newspapers. The people of the State have a right to be proud of their leading daily print, as his brethren of the pen-and-scissors have a right to glory in the achievements of their overworked but unflinching and faithful brother. The APPEAL gives him all hail!