Goudy, William C.

Born: 1824-05-15 Indiana

Died: 1893-04-27 Chicago, Illinois

William C. Goudy was a lawyer, state's attorney, and state senator. Goudy and his family moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1833 and he graduated from Illinois College in 1845. He studied law with Stephen T. Logan and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1847. Goudy moved to Fulton County in 1848, and served as state’s attorney for the Tenth Judicial District from 1852 to 1855. In 1856, voters elected Goudy as a Democrat to the Illinois Senate, where he served one four-year term. In 1859, he moved to Chicago and continued to practice law. In 1860, he was living in Chicago's ninth ward and owned real and personal property valued at $38,000.

Goudy married Helen M. Judd in August 1849. The couple had two children, a son and a daughter.

Frederic B. Crossley, Courts and Lawyers of Illinois (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1916), 1:289-90; The Biographical Encyclopaedia of Illinois of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: Galaxy, 1875), 168-69; H. W. Howard Knott, "Goudy, William Charles," Dictionary of American Biography, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 4:1:443-44; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 9, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 33; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Fulton County, 21 August 1849, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; The Chicago Daily Tribune (IL) 28 April 1893, 1:5; Gravestone, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, IL.