The image above is another photo postcard from the “purged files at the Annie Wittenmyer Home” recently donated to the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center.
The card is addressed to “Charlut Goff” and bears the greeting “Mery Xmas to you from Alice and June.” It is not postmarked.
The identity of the recipient was easily ascertained: Miss Charlotta Goff, says the local and state newspapers, was the state agent of the Iowa Soldiers Orphans’ Home from August 1909 until about 1927. Her responsibility was to “place the state’s wards at the Davenport orphanage in good homes.” [1] By 1917, Goff had “placed 500 or more children in Iowa homes.” [2]
Charlotta Goff was born in Chilton, Wisconsin, in 1869. Her concern for children’s welfare began with her first job as a teacher. She then moved to philanthropic work, serving as the General Secretary of the State Association of Charities and Corrections in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1902 she took a position in Washington, D.C. as assistant secretary in the national organization. She returned to the Midwest, finding similar work in Chicago, Sioux City, and Iowa City. She traveled often, giving talks at conferences of charitable organizations and to gain further social work experience. In 1905-06 Goff spent a year at the Woman’s Union Settlement in East London, and at some point before coming to Davenport, she had been “…in the southern states studying the conditions of children in the cotton belt.” [3]
When she was not traveling around the state seeking suitable foster homes for the children of the Orphans’ Home, Charlotta Goff could be found lecturing on child welfare topics to various Davenport groups, including the Woman’s Club, the Davenport Catholic Women’s League (she was a member of St. Paul’s Catholic Church), the Christ Child Society of Davenport, the Round Table Club of Business Women, the West End Mothers’ Club, and the Scott County Council of Parents’ and Teachers’ Clubs. She frequently represented the state of Iowa at national social work conferences, at which she also often delivered addresses.
In December 1930, at the age of 61, Goff married Francis McIntyre in Palm Springs, California. She remained a resident of Thermal, California, until her death in November 1945.
The identities of Alice and June, the girls who gave Charlotta Goff the Christmas greetings and presumably the subjects of the postcard image, were somewhat more difficult to determine.
It seems likely that they were the Alice and Jane Laura Fiddler listed in the 1910 US Census for Davenport as “inmates” of the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home. They would have been there at the same time as Charlotta Goff.
If we accept that the girls’ ages in 1910 were actually about 3 and 2, not 13 and 12, more possibilities as to their identities open up. Alice and June/Jane may have been separately placed with relatives in Hardin Township, Hardin County, Iowa sometime during the following decade, perhaps by Charlotta Goff. The 1920 US Census lists a 12-year old Alice D. Fiddler as a “cousin” in the household of John and Eva (Fiddler) Hofmann and the 1925 Iowa state census lists a 16-year-old June Fiddler as an “orphan” in the household of Humphrey and Minnie Fiddler.
The photograph could therefore have been taken and the card given to Charlotta Goff (in person, at the Home) when the girls were between 5 and 10, some time in the 19-teens.
Could the Alice Fiddler in the Hofmann household in 1920 be the same as the one (born in Kansas City, Missouri) who married Allen Corrigan on September 2, 1923 in Lake Mills, Iowa? If so, the marriage record gives Alice’s parents’ names as Frank “Fidlar” and Inez Alma.
And could the June Fiddler in the Humphrey Fiddler household in January 1925 be the same as the one (also born in Missouri) who married Harold St. John on May 25, 1925 in Eldora, Hardin County? The marriage record gives June’s parents’ names as Frank Perry Fiddler and Inez Grable. (That this was June’s father’s name is confirmed by the fact that she named a child born in February 1927 “Frank Perry St. John”).
There was a female child born to Frank and Inez Fiddler on April 14, 1907 in Kansas City, Missouri. On November 8, 1906, a marriage license had been issued to Frank Perry Fiddler and Inez M. Grable in Kansas City, Missouri.
The chance discovery of a newspaper article about a claim to land in Kearny County, Kansas helps connect Alice and June Fiddler to Frank P. and two other Fiddler family members.
We learn that the minor child Juanita Elizabeth Terril was formerly named Frances Marion Fiddler, and was related to an Alice Dorothy and a Laura June Fiddler, also minors in 1918. Could she also be a daughter of Frank Perry Fiddler and Inez Grable? She appears in the 1920 US Census for Des Moines as the “adopted daughter” of Floyd and Elizabeth Terrill. She is an infant in their household in the 1910 US Census.
Does the girl in the upper left corner of this newspaper photo resemble Alice and June in the photo postcard?
If all of these assumptions are correct, something must have happened to Frank and Inez Fiddler before 1910. Frank seems to have disappeared to the western part of the country. His mother, Mrs. Jacob Young (Laura Dale Strong) Fiddler, was looking for him in 1913:
An Inez Fiddler was listed as a clerk in the Oklahoma City directory for 1910; in September of that same year, an Inez M. Grable married Harry J. Alma in Canadian County, Oklahoma. “Inez Alma” is Alice Fiddler’s mother’s name as given on her 1923 marriage record.
We are left to wonder why both parents left three young girls to the care of others, if we’ve in fact made the right connections here. Let us know if they make sense to you, and if you agree that the subjects of the photo postcard given to Charlotta Goff could be Alice Dorothy and Laura June Fiddler!
Please let us know, too, if you have more information about any of these families or Charlotta Goff McIntyre!
(posted by Katie)
Sources: [1] Des Moines Register, July 20, 1909; [2] Davenport Democrat and Leader, April 22 1917; [3] Davenport Democrat and Leader, October 14, 1917
