ALBERT GOOD. – One of Union county’s intelligent and enterprising agriculturists and stockmen is named at the head of this sketch and we are constrained to grant him representation in this volume of his county’s history since he is one of the leading men of today and because he has achieved a very flattering success here, and because his personal characteristics of ability and integrity demand a place for him among those so represented having achieved his splendid success by dint of hard effort and wise management.
In Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, on September 25, 1844, the subject of this sketch was born to Jacob and Elizabeth (Courtwright) Good, where he also received a good common-school education and assisted his father on the farm until he was twenty-one years of age. It was in February, 1865, that he turned toward the west, coming by rail to St. Joseph, Missouri, and thence by team of oxen across the plains to Salmon Falls, Idaho, where he engaged with Briggs and Clark to operate a ferry. In March of the following year he came to Lagrande and for three years was engaged in various work, and then bought a team and freighted and logged until 1872, when he came into the valley and bought a farm partly cultivated and devoted his attention to tilling that. In 1884 he purchased another quarter, where he now resides, one and one-half miles north and one and one-fourth miles east from Lagrande. In 1886 he purchased another quarter and now he devotes his attention to general farming, to raising stock and to producing sugar beets, raising as many as eight hundred tons of beets annually, being one of the largest beet raisers of the section. He has an elegant residence of modern design and supplied with all of the improvements, besides commodious barns and outbuildings that cost more than three thousand dollars. He owns also other property and is one of the leading property owners of the county.
In 1871 the marriage of Mr. Good and Miss Cordelia, daughter of Frank and Jane (Wantling) Koontz, of Baker county, was solemnized and they have become the parents of the following children: Elizabeth J., wife of Albert Pratt, living in Huntington.; Emma A., wife of Edward Carpenter, living in Lagrande; Nora M., married to Franklin Carpenter, in Lagrande, Minnie E., wife of Robert Safford, living near Pilot Rick, Oregon; Jessie M., and Grover R., living with their parents. Mrs. Good’s father was an old pioneer of Baker county and met his death in a painful manner. He was crossing the mountains to his saw mill on Burnt river when his snow show broke and he was left helpless in the snow, and when found was nearly dead, but survived a few weeks. Mr. Good is a Democrat in politics and always active in this field, he is also one of the influential men of the county and highly esteemed by all.