Photo of the Week
August 9, 2020



Well the mystery is solved as to who that most attractive lady in last week's photo is.  Josephine "Effie" Rodman Goethals is the mystery women.  Effie apparently was at the side of Colonel Goethals quite a bit in the canal construction years.  I managed to find this not so good photo that came from a newspaper article and apparently is one of the only in the public arena.  This photo was also used on Genealogy, Find a Grave and Obit for Effie.  I am sure there are family photos which are not public in the Goethals family home in Martha's Vineyard.  When Goethals married Effie, she introduced him to Martha's Vineyard in 1889.  He fell in love with the place and purchased property on Crocker Terrace.  Thereafter, until his death in 1928, he made the Town of Tisbury his legal residence and never voted anywhere else.  Tisbury is a town located on Martha's Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts.

Below is a Ernest Halen photo of Colonel and Mrs. Effie Goethals pose in front of the gasoline powered motor car that Goethals used to travel up and down the rail line, visiting various parts of the canal project.   He called it the Yellow Peril as it was painted Yellow.  I posted this same photo back in 2008 and at that time I didn't know that the women was his wife.  The man with the Skimmer Hat to the left of the motor car is Sam Grier who was the motorman that drove Goethals around.
I don't know the others, but might have been just visitors. Photo courtesy of researchgate.net with caption reading: "Colonel and Mrs. Effie Goethals pose in front of the gasoline powered motor car"

Postscript: The man standing by Goethals without a hat is Lindley Miller Garrison was an American lawyer from New Jersey who served as Secretary of War under U.S. President Woodrow Wilson between 1913 and 1916. 
Identified by CZ Images contributor Bob Dillion.

According to an article in The Dukes County Intelligencer that my friend Fred Sill (RIP) sent to me and written by grandson Thomas Goethals, Col. Goethals was a letter writer.  He wrote letters to classmates, friends, and dignitaries offering them free transportation to and from the Canal Zone on the Panama Railroad Company's steamship line (of which he was president).  These others in the photos could be some of these friends.  According to this same article Goethals saved letters sent by his friends and are now archived in the Library of Congress, a gift from his widow Effie and his two sons after his death in 1928.

These stories of great men and women go on forever. 


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