This is a Sunday Rewind, featuring previously published posts from the Archives blog. This post was originally published December 13, 2019, by Melissa Dalton here.
Robin recently gave me a stack on newspaper articles on the various powder mills of Greene County, and it occurred to me that we really haven’t had a blog post on Goes Station and the powder companies. There have been mentions of the area and companies in other blogs and Facebook posts, but little regarding the actual history. This week, we aim to tackle some of the early history of Goes.
If you have lived in Greene County for many years, or your family has roots here, you’ve probably heard the old urban legend that Goes Station was named for the many explosions at the powder mills, with residents exclaiming with each explosion, “There she goes!” But, do you know the real reason it is called Goes Station? It actually is named for a family that owned much of the land in the area, Samuel Goe and his heirs.
Goes Station is located between Xenia and Yellow Springs along US-68 (Fig 1). As you probably know, James Galloway Sr. was one of the original settlers in the region. The Galloway family settled in lands near what is now Goes Station, and around 1797, built the most well-known structure in Greene County, the Galloway log house. The land was sold to Robert Armstrong in the early 1800s, and in 1814, Armstrong sold the land to Samuel Goe (Fig 2).
Fig 1. Greene County GIS Map of approximate location of Goes Station (GC GIS Map)
Fig 2. Transfer of property from Robert Armstrong to Samuel Goe, 1814 (Greene County Archives)
Samuel Goe was born in 1767 in Ireland, but came to the United States prior to 1788. He married Alice Van Horn in 1788 in Pennsylvania. Samuel and Alice had six children: Isaac, John, Thomas, James, Sarah, and Jane. Samuel moved to Greene County in 1811 (Fig 3). Within a few years of moving to the area, he purchased the 307 acres from Armstrong.
Fig 3. Brief history of Samuel Goe (Greene County Chapter, Ohio Genealogical Society)
After Samuel’s death in 1815, the property was transferred to his heirs (Fig 4), but after this, the transfers and ownership of the property gets a bit complicated. However, it appears that James and John Goe acquired most of the property, as well as some of the surrounding lands. A few years later, James Goe transferred some of the property to his brother, Thomas Goe.
Fig 4. Property of Samuel Goe heirs,1826 (Greene County Archives)
However, it appears that by 1838, John Goe owned several tracts of land in the area, including acquisitions from Thomas Goe and Henry Jacoby (Fig 5). These tracts are probably the most well-known as they were some of the first to became part of the powder mills.
Fig 5. Transfer of property to John Goe from Henry Jacoby & Thomas Goe, 1838 (Greene County Archives)
The succession of ownership of the lands in Goes Station, and how the various Goe landowners are related, gets very interesting. We are still digging into the genealogy of the family, and determining ownership, so we’ll continue this story in future blog posts! This process been a good a reminder that property research requires time and patience, and a great attention to detail, as it is easy to lose track of property in the records.
Until Next Time!
Sources:
Ancestry.com
Greene County Archives
Newspapers.com
Overton, J. (Ed.) (1995). Revolutionary War Veterans of Greene County, Ohio. Xenia, OH: Greene County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society
Simmons, G. (2007). King’s black powder mills. Bellbrook, OH: G and B Simmons Publisher.
Out of the Clocktower 