This personal sketch of C.H.S. Goodman, the judge who presided over the trial of Frank James in Gallatin in 1883, is reprinted from the 1882 History of Gentry County as follows.
Charles H.S. Goodman was born at Zanesville, Ohio on May 24, 1843. His parents emigrated to Lawrence County, IL, in the spring of 1853. His chances for obtaining an education were limited, he having received only about six months of schooling, half of which time he attended the common schools in the neighborhood of his home, and the remainder in the Presbyterian Academy at Friendville, IL, making altogether about six months at school. He remained in Lawrence County, IL, until the spring of 1861 when he entered the Union Army, enlisting in the 11th Regiment, Missouri Infantry. He continued in the army three years and one month, where he discharged his duties as a faithful soldier.
When mustered out of the service he was commissary sergeant. After severing his connections, as a soldier, with the army, he still continued with it for the space of 18 months laboring as a commissary clerk in Missouri, Colorado and New Mexico. Continuing in the army, he served for 12 months longer in the ordnance department at Mobile, AL. He came to Albany, Gentry County, MO, in 1867, and soon thereafter began the study of law in the office of Judge George E. Lewis. In the fall of 1868, he began practice forming a partnership with Judge Lewis, with whom he continued from September 1868 to September 1871. He practiced then alone until September, 1879, when he formed a law partnership with Hon. Joseph L. McClullough, which still exists (at the time of this writing). For three months in 1868 he took charge of the editorial department of the Albany Ledger, and again from Jul 1870 to July 1873. He was prosecuting attorney from January 1, 1873, to January 1, 1877.
He married Aurelia Williams in January, 1870, and was the father of two: Charles Kenneth (who died in infancy) and Gertrude. Mrs. Goodman died in February, 1873; Judge Goodman later married Allie Culp. Then in 1894, he married Josephine Vandivert of Bethany who survived him at the time of his death. As a well-known Mason, Judge Goodman’s body was escorted to Grand View Cemetery from the Presbyterian Church with burial under the auspices of the fraternity.
His obituary was published in the May 10, 1917, edition of the Albany Ledger. Mr. Goodman is emphatically a self-made man, and deserves credit for what he has achieved through his own individual efforts.
NOTE: A photo of Judge Goodman hangs in the halls of the Gentry County Courthouse at Albany, MO. The courthouse in Albany burned in 1883 and thus many records which may have related to Judge Goodman were destroyed.
These 12 men were the primary legal players in the 1883 trial of Frank James, held in an opera house on the west side of the town square in Gallatin, MO.
