Hat Creek, A Day in the Life - Goddard Family History

Opening remarks by JoAnn Wade:

Welcome to a Day in the Life at Hat Creek. We invited you here to not only commemorate the 150th anniversary of the soldier's arrival to this very spot, which initiated all of the local happenings and history down through the years, but also to begin the celebration of America’s 250 years as a nation. Earlier this year the county commissioners appointed a committee to lead Niobrara county’s celebration of America’s history. The committee consists of Leslie Stewart, Sanda Johnson, Sheila Boldon, Richard Ladwig, Debbie Sturman, Morgan Nolan, Gary Bayne and myself (JoAnn Wade). Throughout the next year, we have many different experiences planned to showcase our Niobrara County History.

Welcome to the 150th anniversary celebration of the Hat Creek Stage Station!

The Goddard Family Family (video)

Dan Goddard Shares Stories of Hat Creek (video)

How an English world traveler became a founding father of Niobrara County and five generations of ranchers, or, the story of my great-great-great Grandad Daniel Everett “D.E.” Goddard Sr.

My Great-great-great Grandad D.E. Goddard was born and raised in Wallington, Surrey, England. Born to his father D.E. and mother Elizabeth on June 28, 1860, the oldest of 8, he did well in school attending through University Level. Following his school days, D. E. traveled to Fiji Island and worked in a custom house for 2 and a half years before making the decision to immigrate to the U.S. in 1878. For eight years he lived and worked in Osborne County, Kansas. There he met and married Matilda Spain. In 1886 he, Matilda and their three children including his oldest, D. E. Jr. and two daughters Elizabeth and Edith, moved to the small hamlet of Lusk, WY in Niobrara County. At the time, Lusk was a small multi-family town of only 35 people but D. E. saw its potential and knew that he could help to transform this burgeoning town on the edge of the prairie.

During his time in Kansas D. E. had become an attorney and after moving to Wyoming he continued to work as a barrister and was also the postmaster of Lusk, a position he held for the next 19 years.

D. E. and Matilda built their family as the town of Lusk rose up. He was known for his vast ranch holdings and his civic involvement. D. E. served as town clerk and was appointed as a US and Court Commissioner in 1905 serving as a judge. He and Matilda built a “show case” home on the corner of 3rd and Main where today’s YesWay sits. It was a large structure with impressive grounds. D. E. was a member of the Catholic Church, his wife’s religion, but never quite felt at home in that church since he had come from a staunch Church of England background. This led D. E. to help found, build and then pastor St. George’s Episcopal Church. D. E. was also a founding and active member of the Lions, Odd Fellows and Knights of Columbus.

After 24 years of marriage, he lost Matilda in 1905. In 1910 he married Florence Webster and had two more children, Robert and Florence W. Florence was a match for her husband in both intelligence and ambition. While D. E. is credited with being a major builder of Niobrara County, Florence was fundamental in the improvement of cultural and educational offerings in Lusk. She was extremely active in women’s clubs and is credited with being instrumental in bringing a Carnegie Library to the community.

D. E. Sr. was considered so instrumental in the growth and progress of the community that upon his death, October 2, 1934 a resolution of condolences was proclaimed by the town government.

It was estimated that, quote, “His greatest work toward building for future and local expansion came in assisting newcomers filing for homesteads. It is estimated that more than 80% of the land filed and proved up was transacted before him.”
One of those homesteads was the ranch filed on, proved up and operated by his son, D.E. Goddard Jr. The oldest of his children, Jr was only three when Senior moved their family from Kansas to Wyoming. While Senior’s cattle days may have been behind him, Junior’s were just beginning.

In 1886 Lusk was still a tiny frontier town but by then D. E. Jr. was 21 and he knew ranching would be his life. In 1907 he filed on his homestead and in 1909 he married Blanche Green, a schoolteacher from Houston, Texas who was teaching at the Bonsell school south of Dan’s homestead.

After returning from their honeymoon, Dan and Blanche went about building a new home and family.
First, a new house. Dan had been living in a log cabin tucked into a hillside. Following his marriage, Dan built his bride a new house, one which still stands as a family home today. They also started a family, John was born in 1911. Tragedy struck the young couple following the birth of their second son Bert in 1912. Bert was only a little over a week old when Blanche unexpectedly hemorrhaged at home while her husband had gone to town to get supplies. The entire community mourned with Dan and his two small children. Dan continued to work and live on the ranch with support from his family and friends. He proved up his claim in 1912 and expanded the ranch to include the Bonsell homestead where he had met Blanche. This homestead house still stands on the current day Goddard ranch.

Mary “Effie” Sheridan entered their lives in 1919 bringing a step-brother, Allen, Dan’s senior by 14-years along with two sisters. They had moved to Niobrara County in 1912 with his father Joe who subsequently passed away. The Sheridan family brought their own homesteads to the family collaboration. The Sheridan homestead north of the homebase, which is still referred to as “The Homestead Pasture” and Allen and Blanche’s own filings west of the main house. A stove can still be found where Allen originally homesteaded.
Red Durham cattle were the breed of choice for D. E. Jr. and these were the primary source of income for the ranch however, like most homesteaders they also had chickens, horses and raised their own feed crops.

In 1935, just one year after his father and brother Robert died, D. E. Jr. died suddenly while working in Grand Junction, CO. Reports were that he succumbed to a sudden heart attack while shearing sheep at a holding in Fruita, Co.

D. E. Jr’s death left his son John, only 24 at the time as the existing male heir of the Goddard name but he wasn’t alone. Allen and Blanche continued to ranch with John.

With his father’s passing in 1935, John took on the bulk of the cattle ranching on the Goddard ranch. His brother Bert had died of internal injuries after a freak accident when he was playing football and accidentally kicked a sagebrush stump instead of the ball in 1928.

Although older than John, Allen’s passion was horses and John’s was beef cattle, namely, introducing Herefords to the herd. War came calling, and while Allen had served in WWI, John was called into action for WW2. Leaving the ranch in Allen’s hands John served in WWII from March of 1942 to October of 1945 serving as a mechanic in the supply line in Iran for almost four years.

Upon his return to Niobrara County John did what most vets did, tried to forget the war and return to the life he loved. In 1949, on December 23 he married the “girl next door” Evelyn Heth, whose family also ranched in the Hat Creek area.

John and Evelyn continued the tradition of community involvement and civic service. John was a county commissioner for 16 years. He was a member of St. George’s Episcopal Church, Farm Bureau, American Legion, VFW and the Elks Lodge. Evelyn worked at the Hat Creek Post Office and was an active member of the Hat Creek Community Club - her fudge chocolate cakes were practically county-wide famous and continue to be a family favorite when baked by the current matriarch Teri.

John and Evelyn worked hard and raised their two children, Danial A., born May 19, 1952 and Maxine L. born May 4, 1953. Allen continued to live and work on the ranch alongside John and Evelyn. Though he never married, Allen doted on Dan and Maxine, never passing up the opportunity to spoil his favorite grand-niece and nephew. With Blanche’s passing in 1946, half the ranch was left to Allen and half to John and while they didn’t always see eye to eye, they did make most management decisions together.

The ranch continued to move ahead in agriculture, the first tractor was bought “on the black market” and was an OF 12. Later, Allen and John purchased an MD and a H tractor. Draft horses, Allen’s love were on their way out. Allen had spent thirty years breeding draft breeds to thoroughbred studs, working to make his lines leggy and stretched out. An avid elk hunter, Allen wanted horses that could go all day and were tall.

John and Evelyn also raised chickens and had an extensive garden including a large potato patch out west. The whole family and some extended family were expected to help with potato picking!

Time marches on and when Dan was five years old the family said goodbye to the last of the horse teams when they sent Jack and Jenny, a team of mules to auction in Lusk. Eventually Maxine moved out when she married Tom Mitchell and they started a family in Torrington.

Dan however, stayed on after graduating in 1970 from Lusk High School, he went to work for the county. Laid off by the county in the spring of 1971 Dan decided to attend Casper College to take some machinist classes.
At the height of the Vietnam conflict, Dan knew odds were pretty good he would get called up in the draft, but when he met Teri Eatherton of Upton in the spring of 1972 that didn’t stop them from making plans for their future. Dan and Teri married September 30, 1972. Dan had received his draft notice; he was #55 and was the last round from Niobrara County. He was to report to Fort Dix in New Jersey on October 24. Dan and Teri would spend the first seven months of their marriage navigating Dan’s service orders eventually ending up at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, Maryland. They lived there from January until the war ended, and Dan was released in May of 1973.

Dan and Teri, in Dan’s words, “booked it back to Wyoming as fast as transportation could carry them.” There, they settled into a family house in Lusk. The house had last been lived in by Effie, Allen’s mother and needed a lot of cleaning and improvement. Allen had the house remodeled for them while Teri got to work cleaning. The roper stove that had been installed shortly before Effie’s death was slated to be hauled off when Teri got to working on it to clean it up for sale. She realized the stove had hardly been used and with a little elbow grease had it as good as new, so the stove moved back into the house, where it has been used by two more generations.

After returning home Dan worked at Vollmer’s machine shop for five years while Teri worked at Ben Franklin’s. Their daughter Carrie was born as a birthday present for Dan on May 19, 1978 and son David joined the family on December 11, 1982. After working at Vollmer’s Dan went to work for Niobrara County roads department where he stayed on for 8 years. Teri ran an in-home day care at the house in town. During his time at the county Dan continued to work at the family ranch with his father John, taking a leave of absence every spring during calving season. In 1986 John told Dan he could no longer do the work by himself and Dan never returned to the county. He stayed at the ranch most of the time while Teri stayed in town with the kids. In total they lived for 13 years in town.

Allen died in January of 1987 and John followed shortly after in November. That year Dan relocated to the ranch but his family would not follow him until 1989. In 1989 Evelyn moved into town and the next generation fully moved into the family home. David was just turning five and Carrie was in fourth grade. Teri worked at the school district as a para-educator.

As always, the Goddards stayed active in the community, Teri helped start the Homemaker’s Christmas bazaar and the kids were both active in 4-H and school activities. The family was also heavily involved in the Legend of Rawhide production.

Known for their Herefords, in the late 1960’s Dan suggested adding Angus to the line. The birthweights were getting so heavy from the Hereford bulls that they had an extremely high c-section rate. They brought in black angus bulls for the heifers. John often stated, “It took me forty years to clean up the faces on those cattle and my son ruined it in one year.” It was usually said with a smile since their weaning weights increased by 40 pounds in the first year alone after introducing the English cross blood lines. These are the cattle type that are still run today, F1 English Cross with Black Angus and Herefords.

As the family settled into ranch life Teri contributed with her first love, Suffolk sheep. Known for her purebred Suffolk flock, Teri and the kids showed both breeding and market classes at county and state fair. In the lean years the sheep helped the ranch stay afloat through low cattle prices and drought years. While they no longer grew a lot of crops, they continued to harvest dry-land hay and alfalfa. Teri ran the open cab, stick swather on the meadow bottoms sometimes returning to the house so black from grass debris and pollen that all you could see were her eyes and mouth.

They continued to use horses to move cattle and do most of the ranch work and bouncing around the county in a white Ford pickup.

In 2000 the ranch bought the first of their “Japanese thoroughbreds” as Dan put it, or a 4-wheeler. This next step in the evolution of ranching would make it so that fewer people could do the work in half the time, though they continued to keep horses for riding in the rougher pastures. David and Carrie had several ponies and horses that kept them on their toes.

The horse stories from their ranch, like many could fill a book. However, as time passed more and more ranch work was done on a 4-wheeler and horses became less prominent in the day-to-day operations.
In April of 2003 Evelyn passed away and Teri became the official matriarch. David and Carrie were both in college and a new generation was just around the flip of the calendar.

As the ranch moved into the 21st century David and Carrie were helping out in between college classes and on weekends. Carrie attended the University of Wyoming and then transferred to CSU to work on her master’s degree. David attended Eastern Wyoming College majoring in business and welding. After two years David had enough of “city life” and school and moved back home to the family ranch. He settled in working full-time at Walt’s Lathe and Machine and working on the ranch. Carrie eventually married Chad Bannan from Harrison, Nebraska and opened her shop Bloomers with business partner Twila Barnette. The next generation started with the birth of Kort to Carrie and Chad in August 2005.

Teri started her catering business, Hickory Creek Catering and then retired from the school district in 2019. While they joke that Dan never gets off the ranch, he did make time to serve on the Alumni board for a few years as has Carrie. Teri continues to work in the district as a substitute teacher and if there is a call for food you can bet Teri is busy cooking donating her time and efforts to any fundraiser that needs it. Carrie is a charter member of Lusk ROCS an important community business organization.

David made plans to visit a friend who was attending the University for a New Year’s celebration. He joked to his friend that he planned to come down and “sweep his roommate of her feet.” David had never met the roommate, he just liked to tease his friend Matt, but little did he know that would be a prediction to come true.
David met his wife Heather on December 31, 2005. They started seeing each other, making the 2 and a half hour drive from Laramie and Lusk at all times of the day and night to sneak in dates while continuing to both work full time while Heather attended the University of Wyoming. After just a few months of dating, David presented Heather with a pair of muck boots during calving season, determining she didn’t own any footwear appropriate for tromping around in frozen mud and snow while checking cows. That seemed to seal the deal and by July they were engaged and would marry on his grandparents’ anniversary, December 23, 2006. Heather moved to Lusk and worked at Lusk State Bank.

The young couple originally moved into a trailer house on the Scott place, a small lease that the ranch ran their replacement heifers on. After less than a year there they moved in with Dan and Teri and then relocated to the family house in Lusk. A few more moves including back into that house and a few kids later, Sarah-Jo in 2011, Maggie in 2013, Cora in 2015 and David and Heather followed the tradition of David’s family. They broke ground on their house in the fall of 2017 with David determined to do as much of the work himself, just as D. E. had done a century before. By this time the trajectory of the fifth generation was following much of the same as those before, live and work in town until they could carve out their own place on the ranch. David left the machine shop in 2012 and went to work for the state DOT. Following his time there he opened his own machine shop and worked for Richard Waldock. Heather and David spent as much time as possible on the ranch working and raising their kids. In 2019 they welcomed Rebecca to the family and then in 2023 AnnaLee was born. By this time David was driving truck for Reed trucking and working on the ranch. Their homestead house was seven years in the building and wasn’t quite finished though they had a large garden on the ranch and the girls kept their sheep 4-H projects out there with Teri’s flock. Heather originally worked at Lusk State Bank and served on the hospital board. In 2012 she went to work at the hospital in administration and in 2016 quit to stay home with the kids full-time. The family has stayed active in 4-H and the homeschool community.

In June of 2023 the dryer at the house in town broke on laundry day and that was the last straw. The new washer and dryer had already been installed at the house at the ranch, and while they had been staying there for years with an outhouse and packing their water, David has recently plumbed in hot and cold running water, they had a functional bathroom and Heather said, that’s it, we are moving. They loaded as much as they could in the suburban, including the dirty laundry and moved to the ranch. It took another two years (and one more baby) but they eventually fully settled at the ranch moving out of the family home in Lusk. Baby Journey came home on July 23, 2025 and they now live full-time on the original Goddard ranch, next door to the Bonsell homestead house and just down the road from Dan and Teri.

So that’s how six girls became the sixth generation of Niobrara County residents and it all started with a world-traveling Englishman and his Kansas bride.

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