GEORGE E. GOODHEAD. No men have a greater opportunity to wield a broad and permanent influence over the minds and lives of their fellow citizens, nor a grander opportunity to exercise an educative power in the community than the newspaper men of our country towns and small cities. The preacher of the press is more sure of an audience than the preacher of the pulpit and if his efforts are in the right line he has an opportunity to do great good and to acquire a genuine ascendancy over the minds of his hearers. Among the newspaper men of Southern Illinois, who are doing genuine good work in the line of publishing a first-class newspaper, we are pleased to mention the name which appears at the head of this paragraph.
Our subject was born May 5, 1856, in the then very sparsely settled Northwest, where his father was a trader among the Sioux and Pottawattomie Indians. His father, Joseph Goodhead, now deceased, was a native of Vienna, Austria, where from the age of six years he was educated in a Jesuit monastery, being designed by his parents for the priesthood, which, when he had arrived at the age of maturity he renounced. He married Elizabeth Auerswald, a native of Prague, Bohemia, who is now a resident of Westport, a suburb of Kansas City.
When George E. Goodhead was eighteen years of age he turned his attention in the direction of newspaper work, and having removed with his parents to Griggsville, Ill., he started a paper there, which he called the Commercial Advertiser, but the young man had hardly attained sufficient age and experience to make a success of so dubious a project as starting a new paper, and the life of his paper was brief. He devoted himself to other lines of business for some time after this and waited for more age and experience before again putting forth an independent venture. In 1880, having made his home in Perry, Ill., he established in June the weekly Transcript, which he carried on for over three years with good success, but a great disaster befell him, as his establishment was, November 19, 1883, destroyed by fire. He sustained a total loss of the whole business to the amount of $1,600, with no insurance. He had thirty-five cents in his pocket and with this capital commenced his business anew. Thanks to a good commercial standing, he had a new outfit on the road within ten days and at once resumed publication. In June, 1886, he removed to Franklin, Ill., but remained there only until the beginning of 1890, when he transferred his business to Palmyra, where he is now publishing the weekly Transcript, enjoying a lucrative newspaper and job patronage.
He was united April 25, 1884, to Miss Mame A. LaRue at Perry. Three children have crowned this union: G. Emmet, now seven years old; a baby who died in infancy; and Retta, who has now reached the charming age of four years.