Daniel Johannes Goos, Jr.

Daniel Johannes Goos, Jr.'s sister, Katherine Goos, married Florence Augusta Flanders's brother, Willie Wardwell Flanders.

Germania Lodge Certificate of Adoption, 1852
The Withered Rose, 1863
Goosport Looking Up Again, 1882
Death Announcement, 1884

(Parts of the following obituary are torn.)

        GOOS – Mr. Daniel ... in Biloxi, Miss., ... and died in Lake Charles ... 1884. Shortly after ... moved to Lake Charles, leaving him with his aunt, Mrs. Brown. After being educated in the public schools of New Orleans he returned to his parents. Mr. Goos having a talent for mechanics and desiring to become a machinist, during the late war accompanied an uncle to England and there remained till he became a proficient. Returning to New Orleans he was employed in Leeds' Foundry, and while there he married Miss Florence A. Flanders, the daughter of Capt. W. C. Flanders, an old citizen of New Orleans. Shortly after marrying he removed to Galveston, where he was employed in a firm of which his father was a member. The climate of Galveston not agreeing with him, and the firm having failed, he removed to Lake Charles. Collecting together the remnants that were left from the failure, he took hold of his father's business, and with an indomitable energy, with untiring perseverance, he held steady on in the midst of gloom and despair: Sometimes bright hopes would lure him on, but to elude his grasp. Yet at last, by his zeal, the Calcasieu Lumber Company was formed, in which the old business was absorbed. During the last year he was a stockholder as well as an employee of this Company. For the last two months he was confined to his bed with that awful malady consumption which he contracted by his intense energy and constant exposure. During all those long days and weary nights he stood his suffering like a hero, neither murmuring nor repining. It was with the deepest gratitude the attentions of the friends and loved ones were received, and in all his pain and anguish he always gave a smile of welcome.... The business circle has lost a man of strong vim, strict honesty and fair dealing. A man of earnest and clean cut principles, he proved a true friend, an earnest, conscientious counselor to those in need. That large family has had two central links taken away; Dan, who proved himself a devoted son to his father and a true and loving brother to the rest, has gone with the mother. To the wife and orphaned little ones our deepest sympathies go forth, but we commend them to an Eternal Father, the healer of all wounded hearts, the Father of the orphaned and Husband of the widowed, and we mourn as those who feel that it will be a separation for only a time, for if we are all faithful to death we shall meet him, beyond the "pearly portal,"

"Where no sin, nor dismay
Neither trouble nor sorrow,
Will be felt for a day,
Nor be feared for the morrow."

PASTOR.

From Maude Reid's Scrapbook:

        Young Daniel Goos, whose diary of a trip to the British Isles during the Civil War is here given, was the eldest son of Captain Daniel Goos, who settled in what is now called Goosport in the northern section of Lake Charles in the 1850's.
        One of a family of sixteen children, he was largely reared by his aunt, his mother's sister who had no children, Mrs. Henry Brown of New Orleans, along with his sister, Babette, who later married a Mr. Fitzenreiter. He attended the New Orleans schools and received a fair education which his diary bears out. I remember Mrs. Brown, who after the death of her husband, came to Lake Charles and made her home with the Goos family, and later with her niece, Mrs. Albert Bel – who was Della Goos. She was a very attractive elderly woman with snow-white hair and spoke with a marked German accent. The family – and everyone else – called her "Aunty Brown."
        The lad was a credit to her careful rearing, as was, indeed, Babette, who was a charming and delightful person to converse with. I knew her in her later years. Young Dan was the apple of his father's eye, and the old man had great confidence in his son's ability else he would not have sent him on the dangerous trip to Europe that the boy writes about.
        Young Daniel Goos... began his trip to England, running the Union blockade during the War Between the States, when he was just a little past seventeen years old. In fact, he celebrated his eighteenth birthday while he was in Europe on this mission.
        Leaving Lake Charles on a schooner loaded with cotton which was contraband material and which could have brought him into serious trouble had he been captured by Union forces, this lad evidently felt nothing on this trip other than homesickness.
        Returning home after a successful trip with his cargo disposed of in England, he later married Miss Florence Flanders, sister of Will Flanders who married his sister Katherine Goos....
        While still a lad his father sent him to Galveston, Texas to manage a saw mill there that Capt. Goos owned and which was supplying him with lumber for his boat building enterprises which the old man had turned to after first starting a saw mill near his homestead in Lake Charles....
        Old Captain Goos was evidently very proud of his young son. When he built his first steamboat – the first in Calcasieu -- the boat was named for his son, The Little Dan....
        The family moved to Lake Charles in the 90's, and here Dan died of pulmonary tuberculosis, a disease which may have had its incipiency in that early European trip which he records in his diary of frequent accounts of colds that would not get well, sore throat and fevers that came and went.
        At the time of his death the family were living in a large rambling frame building on Hodges street, that later we called Nason Villa when it became a boarding house. This house has since been torn down but the site was that of my grandfather's cotton gin on part of his original 160 homestead acres.
        The diary begins with a reference to Pejoy's old landing; this means, Pujo's old landing. Old timers still call the name Pejo. The Devil's Elbow – the sharp bend in the river just after passing Clifton Ridge on the way to the Gulf.