Spring 1997

The Goff House Today

by

Olga McCallum

Click here for an article about the history of William Goff.

The outer brick walls of Goff's house are three feet thick around the cellar where the kitchen is located. The walls at the second-floor level are two feet thick, and at the topmost part of the house the walls are one foot thick. All of the floors were in place before room partitions were built. On the third level is a ballroom measuring fourteen feet by twenty eight feet. This room provided space for recreation and local meetings. There are two fireplaces on the second floor. Each of the doors on the first level has a cross at the top center which was thought to give the occupants heavenly protection.

Mr. Goff divided his land between some of his children and grandchildren. At a later time, Wm. O. Garrison owned the place.

In 1945 attorney Virgil Gledhill and his wife Martha purchased the house. One day Mrs. Gledhill explored an attic space and discovered wheat grains which possibly remained from the time, in 1816, when William Goff had brought back wheat for the neighborhood and stored it in his house.

The original road through the "narrows" ran close to the house by the creek, but in the 1940s the main roadway was built on the other side of Goff's creek.

Presently Victoria Anderson, the Gledhill's niece, resides in the house.

The Steuben County Bicentennial Commission voted to purchase, with money earned from the sale of books published by the committee, five cast-metal signs to identify historic buildings in the county. The sites chosen were William Goff's House; the Hurlbut House in Arkport; the Narcissa Prentiss House in Prattsburgh; the Church of The Redeemer in Addison; and the Masonic Temple in Wayland. Two of the houses have previously been featured in The Crooked Lake Review: the Narcissa Prentiss house in issue #4, July, 1988; and the Church of The Redeemer in an article by Ernestine E. King in issue #83, February, 1995.

The new historical marker sign at Goff's House reads "Wm. Goff here in 1812 erected saw, grist, carding and fulling mills and a distillery. With brick from his own kiln this house was built in 1830."

Click here for an article about the history of William Goff.

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