William Tyler Goodhue arrived in Beloit in 1837, at age 14, the son of Squire Charles Frederick Henry Goodhue of Sherbrooke, Lower Canada. Squire Goodhue, who had served as a member of the Canadian Parliament, had decided to relocate his entire family to the West, first settling in the Belvidere and Rockford area.

At the suggestion of his brother, Charles Goodhue, who had already established himself in Rockford, Squire Goodhue came to Turtle Village, where he had heard Caleb Blodgett had land to sell. Caleb Blodgett willingly sold a portion of his three looks to Squire Goodhue, the title to the land taken in the name of his son, George Goodhue. The Goodhue family proceeded to construct the third house built in Beloit as their residence and as a store.

William Tyler Goodhue went to work as a clerk in that store, the Goodhue family built a sawmill and a grist mill in the approximate site of what is now the intersection of Shirland and State Street in Beloit, and the family enterprise went into the lumbering business, logging trees in northern Wisconsin and shipping lumber as far south as St. Louis. With the death of Squire Goodhue in 1855, William became the financial manager of the family enterprises, but the financial panic of 1857 destroyed what, to then, had been built by them.

Undaunted, William ventured into the grain and flour-milling business and soon recouped the family finances. Because Beloit at that time was a stronghold of temperance, he chose to build a distillery, complete with a cooperage for barrel-making, on Coon Creek in Newark County. Soon ox-carts were delivering Goodhue liquor to places as far away as Milwaukee. A fire destroyed the mill and the site later became the home of the Howe-Beckman Mill, restored now as the Beckman Mill.

Mr. Goodhue was acknowledged as a leader in persuading the railroads to come to Beloit and sold the land for the stations of both railroads that eventually arrived to serve Beloit. He built a three-story business building, called Goodhue’s Brick Block, which was destroyed by fire in 1880. Beloit became a city in 1856, with William Tyler Goodhue elected as our first mayor. At the first city council meeting held on May 13, 1856, John Hackett (the son-in-law of Caleb Blodgett) was elected as council president. Mayor Goodhue announced that the first order of the city was to appoint a superintendent of schools, that new boardwalks be laid in down-town Beloit where the need was urgent because of the muddy streets after rains, and that a fire department be organized.

In the matter of licensing saloons, Mayor Goodhue stated that he would abide by the decision of the city council, it being noted that this issue was an important one to the new city, and perhaps the Mayor’s ownership of a distillery making him somewhat less than objective on the issue. William Tyler Goodhue joins his father, Charles Fredrick Henry Goodhue, as a member of the Beloit’s Hall of Fame, both of whom true builders of Beloit. He married Carrie Pond in 1859 and they had two daughters. He died April 19, 1879, at the age of 56 and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery. His wife, Carrie, survived him, dying in 1901.