HELEN M. (We have only the first initial when the entire middle name is not known) ELLIS was our direct ancestor. She was the daughter of Robert W. Ellis and Eleanor R. Rankins, both of whom were born in and married in Rome, Maine.

Helen was born in 1855 (in Rome, Maine) and came to Iowa in about 1867 with her family (including parents, several brothers and sisters, and quite a lot of extended family). They settled in Cherokee, Iowa, in approximately 1869.

Helen Ellis may have met STEPHEN GOFF, a widower, via his daughter Melinda, who was just Helen's age. When she was sixteen years old (and he was almost 42) Helen and Stephen were married; she was his second wife.

Stephen's first wife, whom he had married in Michigan, had four or five children (one died at the age of six months); she died in 1870 in her early forties after they had moved to Crawford County, Iowa, not far from Cherokee, leaving four children. Stephen arrived in Cherokee in 1870, a widower with the remaining children by his first wife.

Stephen's brother Ira and family remained in Crawford County (he was an elder at the LDS church in Deloit), but Stephen's mother, and his brother Sylvester, were either already living in Cherokee at that time or they moved there at the same time he did.

After they were married, Stephen and Helen moved into the dirt-floor log cabin he built and had nine of their own children. One of those children was our direct ancestor, Eleanor Josephine Goff, born in 1883.

There is also (quite a bit) more on Stephen Goff, including a picture of the log cabin he built.

Helen Ellis died on January 27, 1931 and was buried on January 29th in Oak Hill Cemetery, next to her husband whom she had outlived by 26 years.

...OUR IOWA FAMILY
...Preface
...Introduction
...Table of Contents
...Links to All Maps
...Questions & Answers