After the Great War, veteran Jennings Bryan Goff married Tessie Pauline Sauvago in 1920. Their daughter Maxine was born March 8, 1921, Guthrie Center, Iowa.
Tessie gave birth to a son, Merrill Jennings, on January 27, 1924. Both mother and baby came down with mumps. Four days later, Tessie died from it.
Tessie was buried in the Goff plot at Guthrie Center near a younger sister of Jennings, Georgia Laurayne Goff, who had died just over a year earlier.
Tessie’s folks, the Sauvagos of Wichita, Iowa, tended baby Merrill while the Goff grandparents kept three-year-old Maxine, who was sick with measles.
These folks, especially Jennings, must have been overwhelmed with mourning Tessie and tending sick little ones. He moved into the Victorian house in Guthrie Center with his parents and younger siblings. It wasn’t long before all of them moved to Dexter, to be closer to his oldest sister, Leora Wilson, whose husband Clabe had become a tenant farmer near Dexter.
More about the life of Merrill Goff, a first cousin of the Wilson children.
Leora’s Early Years: Guthrie County Roots
