Stone Gardens: A Scott County preacher wove baskets and religion into a life well lived from 1858-1944
- Dennis McCaslin
- Apr 19
- 2 min read
William Isom Goff was born on June 7, 1858, in Madison County to John Henry Goff and Fannie Tidwell Goff. The family lived in the rural hills of northwest Arkansas, where farming and small-scale trades shaped daily life for most residents.
As the oldest of several siblings, he grew up amid the post-Civil War recovery that defined much of the region.
He married Amanda Elizabeth Terwilliger in the early 1880s, and together they raised nine children. The couple made their home first in Logan County and later in areas around Scott and Sebastian counties. To provide for his wife and children, Goff turned to a practical skill he had learned as a young man. He wove sturdy handwoven baskets of varying sizes, adding distinctive feet to the bottoms so that each creation would sit level on uneven surfaces.
One large basket served as a laundry or cotton container, while a smaller peck basket became a gift for his granddaughter Eva in 1942.
Goff served as a traveling preacher during the early decades of the twentieth century. He moved from settlement to settlement in Sebastian County, conducting prayer revivals and offering spiritual guidance to scattered farm families and small congregations.
His ministry required constant travel over poor roads and through isolated communities, yet he balanced those demands with the steady production of baskets that supplemented the household income.
By the 1930s, he had retired from active circuit work and settled into quieter routines.
Amanda died in 1922, leaving him to continue life with the support of his grown children, some of whom had moved as far as California and Oklahoma.
On April 12, 1944, at the age of eighty-five, William Isom Goff died at his home on North 31ST Street in Fort Smith. Funeral services took place shortly afterward, and he was buried in Pleasant Grove Cemetery Number One and Two in Scott County, near the community of Abbott.
His handwoven baskets remain on display today in an exhibit at the Fort Smith Museum.
Donated by his granddaughter Eva Goff Smith, the pieces stand as quiet evidence of a man who sustained both his family and his calling through simple, skillful labor.
