Celebrities and Heroes

Rhoda Lavinia Goodell

Rhoda Lavinia Goodell fought for the right to practice law before the Supreme Court.

Born and educated in New York, Goodell moved with her parents to Janesville in 1871. She worked long and hard to obtain legal training in Janesville and was allowed to practice in Rock County in 1874. Denied the privilege to practice before the state supreme court, she persuaded the legislature to change the law and was admitted to those august chambers in June 1879. Eleven months later, at age 40, she died. Goodell's story reveals much about the status of women in the latter half of the 1800s, but also how a woman of determination and ability could alter that status. A York Stater, she had a leg up on the social pecking order in her time and place, but only if she remained in her place as dictated by that order. However, she fought and won a good fight. Tragically, illness soon denied her the fruits of that victory.

Frances Willard

Frances Willard's work as an educator and suffragist had a profound effect on how women exercised politcal power.

Born in New York in 1839, Willard came to a farm near Janesville with her family in 1846. She did not live in Janesville. She attended a one-room rural school and later college in Milwaukee and Evanston Illinois, returning home to teach the summer session at what became known as the Willard School. In 1859, she and her family moved to Evanston and returned to the Janesville area only to visit. In 1873, she became Dean of Women at Northwestern and in 1874, corresponding secretary of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. President of the WCTU in 1883, she made it into an international organization opposing the abuse of alcohol and in favor of equal rights, especially suffrage, for women. She did not live to see the success of both her causes in constitutional amendments adopted in 1919 and 1920.

She spent little time in Janesville, returning once for a farewell address in January 1898, one month prior to her death. The Rock County WCTU acquired the Willard school house and dedicated it to the her memory in 1911. It now rests at the Rock County Fairgrounds in Janesville. Willard is commemorated in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, her figure place there by the state of Illinois, where she lived most of her life.

Carrie Jacobs Bond

Composer Carrie Jacobs Bond was an astute business person who retained her rights, publishing and selling her music through her own company.

Carrie Jacobs Bond was born in Janesville in 1862 and she lived in the city for the first twenty-five or so years of her life. A prodigy at the piano, she gained fame in Janesville as the four-year old who could pick out any tune after hearing it only once. In another place and time she probably would have received formal musical training and pursued a career as a performer and composer. Instead she experienced one unhappy marriage, a happy marriage that ended in the early death of her husband, a son for whom she was the sole means of support, and--doubly tragic for a pianist--chronic rheumatism that periodically disabled her.

She never stopped playing and composing music and, after her husband died in 1894, she did what many other Midwesterners seeking to make their way in world at time did. She moved to Chicago where, through a combination of pluck, luck and real ability, she achieved success as a songwriter. By 1910, she was billed as the first woman composer to earn $1 million (about $20 million today).

Bond achieved success in the heyday of the parlor piano, for which her compositions were eminently suited. They were relatively easy to play, pleasantly singable and expressed socially acceptable and popular sentiments. She was also an astute business person. The story of the struggling artist who sells rights to her work to an unscrupulous agent or producer is well-known. Bond retained her rights, published and sold her music through her own company. She also apparently made fair deals with the producers who first recorded her music. The new technology enabled her to resell the old songs in new formats, from wax cylinders and piano rolls to 78rpm discs. So Bond should be recognized not only as an accomplished artist, but as an successful arts business person too.

Her most popular tune was A Perfect Day, published in 1909, while her most-enduring is I Love You Truly, which was a staple at wedding receptions for most of the 20th century and is still heard at golden anniversary parties today, and not just in Janesville. Despite her rheumatism, Bond herself lived to age 84. She died in 1946.