Jay L. Goddard

JAY L. GODDARD, manager of the order department of the Bettendorf Company, has been continuously identified with that great Davenport industry, located in the Town of Bettendorf, for over a quarter of a century.

Mr. Goddard was born on a farm in Clinton County, and his people on both sides were of Territorial Iowa Stock. He is a son of James Monroe and Sarah E. (Moore) Goddard. His father, now living at Davenport, was born in the same locality in 1849. The founder of the family was the great-grandfather, Eli Goddard, who in 1836 drove a wagon drawn by ox teams across the country from New York State, passing through Chicago, which had not yet incorporated as a city, and on to the new lands lying west of the Mississippi and which had just been opened to settlement following the Blackhawk Indian war. Eli Goddard became a man of much prominence in Clinton County in the early days. He was active in connection with the founding of schools, churches, and was elected a member of the Iowa Territorial Assembly, riding horseback from his farm to Iowa City, then the capital. Mr. Goddard's grandfather was George Goddard, who was a child when the family came to Iowa. Sarah Moore Goddard, mother of J. L. Goddard, was born in Indiana and was two years of age when her father, Jacob Moore, drove across the country in 1844 and settled on a farm near Bennett in Cedar County, Iowa.

Jay L. Goddard grew up on the home farm, attended public schools and at the age of fifteen became a student in the Duncan Business College at Davenport. His first work with the Bettendorf Company was as bookkeeper. For seven years he was with the Penn Oil & Supply Company and then returned to the Bettendorf Company and for twenty-five years has had the management of the order department. He is a member of the Bettendorf Loyalty Club, made up of employees of the company who have been in the service longer than fifteen years.

Mr. Goddard has in many ways contributed to the building up of Bettendorf as a model industrial town, with good schools and other facilities. He is vice president of the Kiwanis Club, is a member of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce, and the Bettendorf Social Club and Davenport Country Club. He is affiliated with Trinity Lodge No. 208, A. F. and A. M., Zarephath Consistory of the Scottish Rite Masons, Kaaba Temple of the Mystic Shrine and Mohassan Grotto No. 22.

Mr. Goddard married, in 1907, Dorothy Stelk, of Moline, Illinois. They have one son, Warren, now attending a military academy in Illinois.