Background
Thomas Goodall was born on September 1, 1823, at Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England. He was the youngest son of George and Tabitha Goodall. Thomas lost his father when he was six months old and his mother before he reached the age of three.
Thomas Goodall was born on September 1, 1823, at Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England. He was the youngest son of George and Tabitha Goodall. Thomas lost his father when he was six months old and his mother before he reached the age of three.
For eleven years, Goodall was an apprentice in a woolen-mill.
At seventeen, Goodall was virtually in charge of the business, buying the wool and other supplies and disposing of the product. The week after he came of age he went into business for himself and prospered moderately.
In 1846, he emigrated to the United States and found employment in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. He settled at Troy, New Hampshire, in 1852 and engaged in the manufacture of satinets and beavers.
One freezing, blustery day, while watching a farmer struggle to fasten a blanket over a horse, he conceived the idea of making a blanket, especially for horses. During the Civil War, he also supplied blankets to the army and navy.
In 1865, he sold his horse-blanket factory, which was still the only establishment of its kind, and returned with his family to England, intending to enjoy a long vacation.
Soon he was engaged in exporting lap robes, then somewhat of a novelty, to the United States and Canada, traveling back and forth across the Atlantic in search for the best markets. Encouraged it is probable by the Wool and Woolens Act of 1867, he came to Sanford, Maine, in October of that year and for $15, 500 bought an old flannel factory and a grist-mill and sawmill, thereby obtaining all the water privileges of the Mousam River.
Two sets of cards and ten looms, manned by fifty operatives, were in motion early the next year, and Sanford entered the first stage of its transformation from a hamlet of thirty dwellings and a grocery into a humming New England mill town.
On October 1, 1881, Goodall's sons organized Goodall Brothers, the first company in the United States to make mohair car and furniture plushes and mohair carriage robes. On April 4, 1885, Goodall & Garnsey and Goodall Brothers were consolidated with the Sanford Mills, and Thomas Goodall retired formally from the business, although he continued to watch its affairs with keen interest.
He lived in a handsome residence in Sanford, had a summer home on the sea-wall at Old Orchard, and passed the winters in Florida. From his retirement he watched his sons organize in succession the Sanford Light & Water Company, the Goodall Worsted Company, the Mousam River Railway, the Sanford National Bank, the Sanford Power Company, the Sanford & Cape Porpoise Railway, and the Maine Alpaca Company.
In 1900, the original enterprise, the Sanford Mills, employed 750 operatives and turned out $1, 000, 000 worth of goods each year, while the annual product of its offshoot, the Goodall Worsted Company, was valued at $1, 500, 000.
Goodall kept his health till early in 1910, when the death of his wife so weakened him that he himself died three months later.
Goodall is known for creating The Sanford Mills factory. That was the first factory in the United States to make carriage robes and kersey blankets. Not the least of his achievements was the training of his three sons, who, in 1874, with Amos Garnsey, Jr. , and Lucius C. Chase of Boston, formed the partnership of Goodall & Garnsey to manufacture plain and fancy blankets.
Sturdy and sound of body, looking like a man of sixty in spite of his seventy-seven years.
Goodall was the sort of man, to whom a “vacation” is usually a brief interval preceding a more profitable enterprise.
On April 29, 1849, Goodall married Ruth, daughter of Jerry Waterhouse, a manufacturer of South Hadley, Massachusets.
