A Woman of Uncommon Generosity–Mary Elizabeth Goff Robinson

By Sharon Lakey, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Until I began to com­pile life­long infor­ma­tion, I didn’t real­ize the full range of gifts Meg was giv­ing to oth­ers through­out her life, with­out the slight­est wish for praise.” Charles A. Robin­son, 2013

Meg shares the joy at the dedication of the stained glass window she commisioned for the Danville Congregational Church, dedicated to mother, Eva Crane Goff, in 1988.
Meg shares the joy at the ded­i­ca­tion of the stained glass win­dow she com­mis­sioned for the Danville Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church, ded­i­cat­ed to moth­er, Eva Crane Goff, in 1988.

On July 2, 2013, a mys­tery came to an end in Danville: our anony­mous donor passed at 88 years of age in Penns­bury Town­ship, Penn­syl­va­nia, and the require­ment of her anonymi­ty was lift­ed. It is with humil­i­ty and plea­sure that I relate some of what I have learned about this remark­able woman, Meg Robin­son. Much of this knowl­edge comes to us through her hus­band, Charles, who has gra­cious­ly answered ques­tions and, as a good his­to­ri­an him­self, pro­vid­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion of the impor­tant events of her life.

What I have gath­ered of her sug­gests a thought­ful, bright and strong woman with a deep regard for his­to­ry. This dance with his­to­ry is reflect­ed even in the name she chose to use. Charles wrote, “You may have noticed that Mary Eliz­a­beth Goff Robin­son was known by dif­fer­ent names at dif­fer­ent times. Her moth­er (and her friends in Danville) always called her ‘Mary Eliz­a­beth,’ at col­lege she was known as ‘M.B.,’ in Prov­i­dence in the 1950s every­one called her ‘Mary Beth,’ but when we moved to Penn­syl­va­nia in 1963 she took the name ‘Meg’ (from her initials).”

Newel D.  Goff, father of Meg stands on the porch of Woodside House in Danville (ca 1917).
Newel D. Goff, father of Meg stands on the porch of Wood­side House in Danville (ca 1917).

Her grand­par­ents, Frank and Mary Crane, lived at Wood­side House in Danville. In 2007, Meg wrote to a friend: “I made a gift to the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety to pur­chase an orig­i­nal, ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry vil­lage house and barn for its headquarters…The Soci­ety bad­ly need­ed a home for its col­lec­tions. As my moth­er [Eva Crane Goff] was born and brought up in Danville where she became organ­ist and accom­pa­nist, it seemed only prop­er to help the DHS.” (Eva was the organ­ist at the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church in Danville as well as accom­pa­nist and music teacher.)

Just how her moth­er and father met was con­jec­ture on Meg’s part. We know this from a book she wrote about her father enti­tled Newell D. Goff, the Life of a Young Entre­pre­neur at the Turn of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. Meg believes her moth­er and father met through friends that had con­nec­tions to the Cranes of Ver­mont. At the time Newell began to show inter­est in Eva, she was study­ing music at the Shenan­doah Col­le­giate Insti­tute in Day­ton, Vir­ginia. Meg writes, “Eva always delight­ed in recall­ing Newell’s courtship. In the spring of 1917, when return­ing from a trip to Flori­da, he wrote ask­ing if he might see her… The school direc­tor was con­sult­ed, and per­mis­sion was grant­ed. Newell arrived from the train by rent­ed horse and bug­gy in time to attend the ‘Senior Piano Recital’ giv­en by Miss ‘Eve­lyn’ Crane…on Sat­ur­day evening, April 28, 1917. Dur­ing her per­for­mance there arose a heavy thun­der­storm, and the lights went out. With con­sid­er­able pres­ence of mind, Eva con­tin­ued play­ing in the dark until the lights were restored. That sum­mer Newell pro­posed to Eva in her home, Wood­side House, in Danville, Vermont.”

Newell Goff was a self-made man. He was born in 1877 and Meg writes, “Born the youngest of eight chil­dren on a bleak, 2,236 foot high moun­tain­top farm in Gilboa Town­ship, Schoharie Coun­ty, New York.” His father even­tu­al­ly moved the fam­i­ly to a “rich, fer­tile, bot­tom­land farm when Newell was four­teen years old.” Though this farm was a good one, young Newell was third in a line of broth­ers, and, because prop­er­ty passed to the eldest, he decid­ed to leave home to make his own fortune.

Again quot­ing from Meg’s book, “Newell recalled to his wife that 1895, his tran­si­tion­al year from home to des­ti­tute pover­ty in the indif­fer­ent clam­orous, indus­tri­al city of Low­ell, was the hard­est.” His first job was sweep­ing floors at the Apple­ton Mill. By 1896, he was list­ed in the Low­ell Direc­to­ry as a machin­ist at the Apple­ton Cor­po­ra­tion. Newell’s spend­ing habits are detailed in a book of “mem­o­ran­dum of dai­ly expens­es.” It is fas­ci­nat­ing what a sim­ple list­ing of expens­es can tell about a life: “April 2, 1896 ‘Lost by betting-$0.50…August 30 1897 pur­chased a vio­lin $8.50… Decem­ber 22 suit of clothes and shoes $10.95…May 28 1898 $48 for a bicy­cle.” These small details keep his­to­ri­ans cap­ti­vat­ed by their subjects.

After a bout with diph­the­ria and at the sug­ges­tion of his doc­tor, Newell took a recu­per­a­tive trip to Flori­da and Cal­i­for­nia. It was after this trip that he decid­ed to make some life changes. With invest­ment funds of his own and funds from his land­lords, Mary and Hen­ry Rus­sell, orig­i­nal­ly from Ver­mont, they formed a loan com­pa­ny. Hat­tie, the Russell’s daugh­ter, became the man­ag­er of the Mer­ri­mack Loan Com­pa­ny in Low­ell, which was a suc­cess­ful ven­ture. From this suc­cess, Newell was able to go into another.

Meg writes, “Newell’s wife, Eva, often said her hus­band made his mon­ey in the auto­mo­bile business.”On his recov­ery trip out west, he had caught a new kind of bug—automobiles. Newell became an investor and sales agent for a vari­ety of cars. By 1917, his finan­cial suc­cess­es allowed him to retire, not quite 40 years old. He left Low­ell, and, after trav­el­ling and look­ing for a place to call home, he bought a five-bed­room house named Engle­wood Cot­tage, a Vic­to­ri­an sum­mer house that “over­looked the waters of Nar­ra­gansett Bay and the Bullock’s Point Light­house.” And, that is when the bach­e­lor sought his life’s part­ner, young Eva Crane. The cou­ple was blessed by the birth of a lit­tle girl, Mary Eliz­a­beth, who was born on Jan­u­ary 3, 1925, the name being a com­bi­na­tion of her mater­nal and pater­nal grandmothers.

Young Mary Eliz­a­beth remem­bered that her father nev­er approved of fairy tales. “He rec­om­mend­ed nature and ani­mal sto­ries for the very young, fol­lowed by bio­graph­i­cal mate­r­i­al for the mid­dle child­hood years, and final­ly, his­to­ries for the adult.” (It is inter­est­ing to note that Meg didn’t take Newell’s read­ing dic­tates to heart. Accord­ing to Charles she “always read wide­ly, both fic­tion and non-fic­tion, includ­ing many biogra­phies of famous women.”) Mary Eliz­a­beth, the child, appears in many pho­tographs we have at the Choate-Sias, relat­ed to time spent either with the Cranes on vaca­tion or at Wood­side House.

She wasn’t to have her father in her life for long. “On June 17, 1933, he died from a sud­den heart attack in front of 67 Angell Street in Prov­i­dence while walk­ing up the hill for exer­cise.” He was 56-years-old; she was only eight. Because he had died intes­tate, his estate was divid­ed “even­ly between his wid­ow and his child, as spec­i­fied by Rhode Island state law.”

Eva and Mary Eliz­a­beth vis­it­ed at the farm in Danville, which was locat­ed next to the McDon­ald (now Beat­tie) farm. McDon­ald sis­ters, Alice (Hafn­er) and Kate (Beat­tie), remem­ber the younger Mary Eliz­a­beth as a pre­co­cious child. Alice shares the sto­ry of the younger Mary Eliz­a­beth, who would run in the front door of the McDon­ald house, out the back­door and hide in their barn. Eva and her grand­moth­er would search to no avail until the child decid­ed to make an appearance.

Meg grad­u­at­ed from Wheaton Col­lege in 1947 with an Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture major. Charles explains, “Mary Beth Goff, as I knew her, and I met at a dance at the Uni­ver­si­ty Club in Prov­i­dence, RI, in the fall of 1951. She was work­ing as a med­ical sec­re­tary to Dr. Her­man C. Pitts, a not­ed sur­geon in Prov­i­dence, and I was a research chemist at Arnold, Hoff­man and Co.” They would mar­ry in 1954. In 1957, their son Thomas was born.

Meg, son Thomas and Glenn Crane in front of the Masonic Hall at Danville Fair 1965
Meg, son Thomas and Glenn Crane in front of the Mason­ic Hall at Danville Fair 1965

A ter­ri­ble grief fol­lowed 23 years lat­er when Thomas died in a swim­ming acci­dent at Nag­gs Head, NC. After his death, Meg wrote a piece enti­tled “Offer­ing to Tom.” Two lines in the writ­ing reflect par­tic­u­lar­ly on his ear­ly death, “You died so that we might for­ev­er have the her­itage of your beau­ty, gen­eros­i­ty and nobil­i­ty unspoiled by the cyn­i­cism and mean­ness of a longer life. Fear not that your life has all been in vain.”

Accord­ing to Charles, Meg “always enjoyed her fre­quent vis­its to her Crane grand­par­ents’ farm…and became very fond of Danville and her friends there. I remem­ber the first time she intro­duced me to Danville, on Memo­r­i­al Day 1954 a few months after we became engaged. It was a beau­ti­ful, unusu­al­ly warm spring day with the flow­er­ing trees in ear­ly bloom. Mary Beth’s uncle, Glenn Crane, was the only one liv­ing at Wood­side House at that time, and we lat­er became very close friends.”

Meg with her Danville friends, Gloria Morse and Janet Wakefield. The miniature schnauser was one of Meg's and Charles' favorite dogs.
Meg with her Danville friends, Glo­ria Morse and Janet Wake­field. The minia­ture schnau­zer was one of Meg’s and Charles’ favorite dogs.

Meg’s Danville friends includ­ed the McDon­ald sis­ters, Janet Wake­field, Glo­ria Morse and, lat­er, Mar­garet Springer. Charles relates, “Her inter­est in Danville was renewed when, about 1984, we began doing research on Wood­side House…and the chair mak­ing shop next door. She learned that her ances­tor, James Crane, oper­at­ed a sawmill in Danville in 1828…that he began acquir­ing land, includ­ing the sawmill, in 1837 and that his son, Charles Crane, added the Ingall’s Home­stead to the Crane farm by pur­chas­ing the adja­cent prop­er­ty in 1861. The Crane fam­i­ly lived on that farm for over 119 years (1837 to 1956).” These well-researched writ­ings can be found in the Danville his­to­ry book, Vil­lage in the Hills and are mod­els of incred­i­ble patience and accu­ra­cy in his­tor­i­cal research. Charles, though not a trained his­to­ri­an “found that doing research on his­tor­i­cal sub­jects was not that dif­fer­ent from doing library research in chem­istry. Both involved use of the library, with which I was famil­iar, and both involved search­ing for data to solve mysteries.”

Meg became an accom­plished edi­tor and writer on top­ics stem­ming from her vol­un­teer activ­i­ties in muse­ums, his­tor­i­cal soci­eties and per­son­al inter­est. Her pub­lished writ­ings, includ­ing both edit­ed and orig­i­nal work, cov­er a peri­od of near­ly 40 years. She gave gen­er­ous­ly to caus­es in which she believed with time, exper­tise and mon­ey. In a let­ter to Meg from Mary Pri­or, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, she wrote, “You are the most mag­nan­i­mous woman I know. Some are able to give gen­er­ous­ly with no restric­tions after their death, but few with such grace while they are still living.”

Our lit­tle town has been the recip­i­ent of Meg’s inter­est and gen­eros­i­ty. She has left us with the Crane fam­i­ly his­to­ry as well as fam­i­ly Danville arti­facts; she has left us with a house to hold and engage in our his­tor­i­cal past; she has left us with fund­ing to pro­vide an employ­ee to help guide our research. The rest is up to us.

Charles sends us Meg’s oft-quot­ed unknown source: “His­to­ry is an indis­pens­able resource of soci­ety and its impor­tance is one of our shared human­ist values.”

Fred LaValley Esq., Meg and Charlie Robinson met Thursday, April 5, 2001 at JP Morgan in Philadelphia to make estate plans. Of all the estate plannings he has participated in, Fred says, "this was the most rewarding."
Fred LaVal­ley Esq., Meg and Char­lie Robin­son met Thurs­day, April 5, 2001 at JP Mor­gan in Philadel­phia to for­mu­late an estate plan. Of all the clients he has worked with Fred says, “this was the most rewarding.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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