View source for William F. Goggin

William F. Goggin, alias Kerry Eagle - whoever he really was - had all the markings of a first-class frontier character.

From "This Last West" by Lorman L. Hoopes: 1880: has ranch on tongue river, about two or three miles from M.C; raises string beans and squash. [[29 Dec 1883]] accused of the Murder of [[Daniel McCarthy]], age 56, a neighbor. Crime commited about Christmas morning ([[25 Dec 1883]]), '83. Jury trial renders verdict of "not guilty". [[24 Oct 1886]] marries [[Margaret Burns]]; [[Father Lindesmith]] performs ceremony; best man is [[E.F. Fish]]; bridesmaid is [[C.C. Fish]]. Rev. Lindesmith notes "Mrs. Burns came here six months ago." ([[Apr 1886]])


C. N. Strevell: "Kerry Eagle, who could neither read nor write...During a political campaign he stated, "If I run for anything, it will be for clerk for I am handy with a pen."


Frontier character found way to beat murder charge
By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff

He was tried for murder and acquitted, despite evidence that included his bloody clothing. The Yellowstone Journal noted on the day after St. Patrick's Day, 1884, while Goggin was awaiting trial for murder, that "The 17th of Ireland passed off pleasantly and quietly yesterday, Kerry Eagle being in jail."

Army records list him as a deserter from October 1870 until he surrendered nearly two years later in August 1872. He married, but evidence suggests the union did not go well. His wife was living all the way across the country when he died.

The trail leading to what is known about Goggin begins with enlistment records obtained from the National Archives dating from May 25, 1870. Although officials working on the cemetery project at Miles City assumed he was a Civil War veteran, The Gazette could find no records to confirm that. But on the 1870 form, he listed his previous occupation as "soldier," and said that it was his second enlistment, the first ending Jan. 4, 1870. He signed up for the new five-year hitch in the Sixth Infantry at Little Rock, Ark.

According to the form, Goggin was born in County Kerry, Ireland, and he claimed to be age 25 and 3 months. Physically, he was described as 5 feet to 51/2 feet tall, with black hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion.

It would not have been unusual for an Irishman to join Army ranks during either the Civil War or Indian Wars periods. During the Indian Wars, 40 percent of the enlisted men were born in other countries - a good many of them in Ireland. Nor was it unusual for soldiers to desert - about a third of them did - and Goggin apparently found better things do a few months into his second enlistment.

He eventually made it back to his regiment after a prolonged absence, though the Register of Enlistments doesn't say where or under what circumstances, other than that he surrendered. Most of the remarks on the register are illegible, but the word "discharged" appears, and he seems to have left the service at some fort in Dakota Territory. Although the discharge date is not on the register, it is likely that it came in 1875, a year before the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

For the next five years, the trail is cold. He resurfaces in the notes of the Rev. E.W.J. Lindesmith, who served as chaplain at Fort Keogh and as priest for neighboring Miles City from 1880 to 1891. The priest reported Goggin living south of Miles City on a Tongue River ranch raising string beans and squash by 1880. He may have been making a living selling his produce at the fort. In 1882, when Lindesmith was contemplating a new Catholic church and cemetery in Miles City, Goggin's name appears on a list of subscriptions, but it is not clear what the subscription was for, according to researchers at Catholic University of the Americas in Washington, D.C., where the Lindesmith archives are stored.

It was Christmas Eve 1883 when Goggin really made a name for himself in the brawling city of 2,500. According to accounts in the Yellowstone Journal, he walked into the city early that morning to buy some meat and a jug of whiskey. Dr. J. Jay Wood, who examined the body of Goggin's roommate the next day, remembered seeing Goggin at the butcher shop about 2:30 p.m. Christmas Eve.

About 4 p.m., his neighbor, Mrs. Strong, saw him 150 yards from her house on his way home. She testified in probate court about a week later that he was talking, but she could not hear what he was saying. In an earlier account that appeared in the Journal, she was quoted as saying that Goggin was drunk and was swearing loudly as he walked by with a jug in his hands.

Goggin returned to town at 2 a.m. Sunday to report to Custer County Deputy Louis King that there was a dead man out at his ranch. King testified later that Goggin did not tell him that the man, Daniel McCarthy, had been murdered. King quickly put together a coroner's jury, procured a team of horses and left for the ranch.

"I found McCarthy dead, lying on the floor, with his face down near the door, but inside the house," the deputy said. "The floor was sprinkled everywhere with blood and near the body were several clotted pools of blood. The bed was disordered and the mattresses were besmeared with blood. The body was nude save its pants."

King said he discovered seven wounds on the victim's head, and could insert his finger to a depth of an inch into McCarthy's brain at the deepest wound. At probate court, Dr. Wood said the wounds had been made by a dull-pointed instrument. A pick ax with blood on the handle was found near the scene of the crime.

The deputy told the probate judge that he said to Goggin: "Kerry, can you look me in the face and say that you do not know something about this matter?" The Journal reported that Goggin's head dropped and King followed his eyes down to blood spots on Goggin's shirt. He described them as fresh and still damp. King said he then arrested Goggin and brought him to town.

King told the jury that although it was a cold night, the blood had not yet frozen, but he thought the man had been dead for at least two hours by the time he arrived. He re-examined the scene of the crime a short time later and found McCarthy's bloody clothes between the mattress and the bed. A bloody hand print was on the door frame of the house and the ground outside the shack indicated that there had been a scuffle about 10 feet outside the door and that the body had been dragged inside. He said he also found a hat with three holes in it, additional proof that the crime had occurred outside and that McCarthy was fully clothed at the time. He also found blood on a purse containing $2 in silver that Goggin had when he was booked into jail.

From the beginning, Goggin denied all involvement. He and McCarthy, 56, were friends, he maintained. He said in an interview with the Journal shortly after the murder that McCarthy, who worked as a section hand on the Northern Pacific, had asked to spend the winter on the ranch and that he agreed. They never had a quarrel and had breakfast together on Christmas Eve morning. Before coming to town, Goggin told the paper, he asked McCarthy if he wanted anything and McCarthy requested that he bring back a "drop" of liquor. Witnesses described McCarthy as "harmless and inoffensive."

When he got home that night, Goggin said, it was so dark he tripped over McCarthy's body. He said he was amazed at the sight of the body, but was hungry and fixed himself dinner before going back into town to inform authorities.

What puzzled the newspaper, but apparently not the trial jury, was the long delay between when neighbors saw him on his way home at 4 p.m. and when he reported the crime at 2 the next morning.

"The strangest thing about the this whole affair is that `Kerry Eagle' should not have, after discovering the body of McCarthy, gone to some of his many neighbors and related that fact, that he should have taken things so coolly and have had the nerve to cook his supper, consisting of soup, meat and tea, which would require some time, while the blood-stained and inanimate form of his friend was lying there amidst the chilling surrounding of that dismal shack," the newspaper said.

The probate judge decided he didn't have jurisdiction and turned the case over for criminal trial, which began one May evening in 1884. Final arguments took three hours on May 17. Much to the chagrin of the Journal, which called the results of the trial "dubious," Goggin walked away a free man.

"On hearing the verdict, Kerry Eagle dropped to his knees on the floor in prayer crossing himself and said audibly `thanks, Almighty God,' " the Journal reported.

Afterward the defense attorney told the newspaper that it was no easy task" clearing his client. Kerry by his indiscretions and carelessness consequent of heavy drinking, had left himself open to suspicion, which by diligent examination of the facts and attention to the case, Judge Miller has been able to clear away."

The Journal also reported that Goggin swore that night that he was through with whiskey and planned to start a new life. Whether he actually went straight probably will never be known. The next time Goggin merits mention in the historical record was when Father Lindesmith recorded his marriage to a woman named Mrs. Margaret Burns on Oct. 24, 1886. The priest noted that she had arrived in the area about six months earlier. The Journal reported in its society notes only that Goggin had been married to a lady unknown to us."

Six years later, on Dec. 15, 1902, Goggin died, according to probate records at the Custer County Courthouse. His wife was listed as his sole heir, but no one seemed to know exactly where she lived, speculating that she may be residing in Maine. His meager estate consisted of a scythe and 251/2 acres of land, worth an estimated $76.25. Among his few creditors was Custer County, which made a claim for $45. Since he had no relatives in the area, it may have been reimbursement for his burial costs.

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/frontier-character-found-way-to-beat-murder-charge/article_4c404dc5-b573-5434-9ced-67d802f4d98f.html#ixzz2qFOH6aBF


Headstones: A journey into a colorful and elusive Montana past
By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff
First of three parts

Oddly out of place on the grounds of the new veterans cemetery in Miles City sit two weathered military gravestones, side by side behind a new wrought-iron fence.

Two Irishmen, both veterans of the Indian Wars period and at least one of them with a record of service during the Civil War, were buried about 100 years ago in what was then part of the old Catholic cemetery. But they stood far apart from the rest of the graves in the small enclosure that was originally called Mount Olive Cemetery. And ever since work started on the Eastern Montana State Veterans Cemetery a few years ago, local and state officials have been wondering why.

It's a question obscured by time.

"We strongly suspected that since they weren't buried in the main cemetery, they might not have been in good standing with the church at the time of their deaths," said John Marks, Miles City and Custer County planner.

The church excluded various people - suicides, those who were excommunicated, people who divorced and remarried without an annulment, or those who scandalized the church in one way or another.

One of the veterans, William F. Goggin, apparently had some difficulties with the law, possibly with alcohol and maybe with his wife, but nothing known about him would suggest a reason why he could not be buried in consecrated ground. It is possible that he was a suicide, but neither Custer County nor the state of Montana has a death certificate, and the Miles City papers did not carry any account of his death or funeral that would have shed light on how he died at about age 57.

The other veteran, Patrick Thomas Dunnigan, seems to have been a pillar of the early church in Miles City and definitely was not a suicide. Before a Catholic church was built, masses were conducted in the private homes of church members. The Dunnigan home was on the list during 1880 and 1881. Family records show he died of heart disease three years later, and that Father E.W.J. Lindesmith presided at the funeral.

Lindesmith, whose life is a story in his own right, came to Fort Keogh in August 1880 at the age of 53 to serve as chaplain. He reluctantly returned to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1891, after doing double duty at the fort and in nearby Miles City. For many years, he was the only priest between Helena and Bismarck. During that time, he meticulously recorded his activities on behalf of the church as well as those of church members. His records are now stored at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

In September 1883, Lindesmith wrote that he bought 40 acres of land two miles south of Miles City from Michael Pivacn for use as a Catholic cemetery.

"We called it Mount Olive Cemetery. I plotted and surveyed it with family lots, society lots, sections for graves in rotation; and a respectable section for those who cannot be buried in consecrated ground; and a respectable potters field."

Potter's fields are generally where paupers and people who can't be identified are buried. Dunnigan and Goggin appeared to have two things in common - both had come west with the military and both were poor. Lindesmith doesn't mention a military section in his plotting of the new cemetery. But the notation of a potter's field is intriguing.

Researchers at Catholic University were unable to locate any drawings or maps of the cemetery Lindesmith made, but it is possible that Goggin, who apparently died with no relatives in the area, and Dunnigan, who had been ill and probably unable to work for a while, were buried in the section set aside for those who couldn't afford to purchase their own plots. Longtime cemetery workers told The Gazette they had always understood that the two graves were part of a potter's field.

Then again, maybe not. Also among Lindesmith papers were notations from 1882 that appear to be a listing for subscriptions or payments of some kind, according to Mary Beth Fraser, an archives assistant at Catholic University. Near Goggin's name "Section 9" is written in brackets. Could this have referred to payments made on a burial plot in Section 9 of the proposed cemetery? If so, did he make the payments?

It's a mystery that may never be solved.

The two men themselves remain elusive, especially Goggin, who died without heirs other than a wife who county probate records indicate lived in Maine. Many members of the Dunnigan family still live in Miles City and Billings and have records that can at least document pieces of his life.

Since the headstones list only their names and the outfit in which they served, little could be gleaned from the actual monuments themselves. Lindesmith's records and family documents placed Dunnigan's date of death at June 13, 1884.

Looking for even the most basic information about Goggin was like a treasure hunt. Montana did not require the filing of death certificates until 1907. Before then it was hit and miss, and with Goggin, it was a miss. Custer County had a file card saying that he had been buried, but it had no date of burial or any other information. The church had no record of the burial and even funeral home records turned up just a name and location of the grave. Military records supplied by the National Archives were nearly illegible, and contained no information on his date of death.

Finally, with the help of the Custer County clerk of court, the first concrete information surfaced in the form of probate records. There in the small pile of paperwork was the date of death - Dec. 15, 1902. Records listed his wife Mary as the sole surviving heir and noted that she resides in the "far east, presumably in the state of Maine."

The estate's value was estimated at $76.25, include a scythe and a 251/2 acre ranch four miles south of Miles City on the Tongue River. The county filed a $45 claim against the estate. Could that have covered burial expenses?

Always there are more questions than answers.

Coming Monday and Tuesday, The Gazette will present what we have learned during a year of research about the lives of the two men who lie under the silent headstones in Miles City.



Bruce Goggin  	Posted: 	Fri Aug 2 2002
The mystery of the graves
and William Goggin may be eternal.

There is a question mark about his age. He shows up
in the 1900 census with his wife as 63 years old.
He may have lied about his age when he entered
the Army. The 1880 census is harder to read but
it looks like the age was forty something.

My connection to William is not complete. He may be
the brother of my great-great grandfather, John Goggin.
Both were from Kerry and a William shows up as a godfather
to John's first child in St. Joseph, MO. William was the name of John's second child. These facts and his not showing up until 1870 point to William as a strong possibilty.

John died in the Civil War and no one ever mentioned
William Goggin. Of course, this might have been a
good thing.