John Goad

John Robbins Goad (1860-1933) was a Scott County public official and businessman who served as Scott County Sheriff from 1894 to 1896. He was the only sheriff in Scott County’s history who legally executed a convicted person.

See Also: Sheriffs of Scott County
Preceded By: Frank Hughett • Succeeded By: Frank Hughett

Early Life

Born Sept. 9, 1860, John Goad was the son of Joshua Goad (1824-1910) and Elizabeth Robbins (1831-1907). His great-grandfather, Abraham Goad (1740-1816) was a Revolutionary War veteran who migrated to present-day Scott County from Virginia in the early 1800s with his son (John Goad’s grandfather) and other family members. They settled on what became known as the Vanderpool Farm on New River just outside present-day Huntsville.

Goad was one of at least eight children. His sister, Ettie Tennessee Goad, was the grandmother of U.S. Congressman and Knoxville mayor John J. Duncan Sr.

Goad married Martha Phillips in 1897. She was the daughter of Riley Phillips (1843-1910) and Elizabeth Chitwood (1851-1940), and the granddaughter of Scott County public official Jehu Phillips. The Goads had three children, one of whom — son Claude — died as a young child in 1899.

Professional Life

Goad served as an elected official in several different capacities. In addition to sheriff, he served one two-year term as Scott County Trustee and four two-year terms as Scott County Circuit Court Clerk.

Goad also served as chairman of the board of deacons at First Baptist Church of Oneida. His first venture into private business, before he moved to Huntsville and then to Oneida, was a general store with his brother-in-law, Scott County Superintendent of Schools William Fred Lee, on Rugby Highway near Robbins. Later in life, he was superintendent of Oneida Hosiery Mills, a position he had held for 18 years at the time of his death.

Sheriff of Scott County

Goad was elected sheriff in 1894, replacing his cousin-in-law Frank Hughett, who was married to Goad’s first cousin on his mother’s side. He has the distinction of being the only sheriff in Scott County who hanged a man.

In 1894, a Scott County jury convicted a Winfield man, Mike King, of murdering a schoolteacher, W.A. Beck. The teacher’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the forest. He had been rooming with King.

The jury sentenced King to hang. It was a task that fell on Goad as the high sheriff, but he was so bothered by the prospect of executing a man that he considered resigning the office. It was written that King himself talked Goad out of resigning, saying, “This is your duty and you must perform it.”

The hanging was to be the first public and legal hanging in Scott County’s history. Historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote in County Scott and Its Mountain Folk that “men, women and children had been pouring into Huntsville since daybreak in order to have a point of vantage from which they could see and hear plainly.” Some rented horses and wagons to make the trip into town to see the hanging, historian H. Clay Smith wrote in Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past.

George Cecil, a well-known Baptist minister in Scott County, preached King’s funeral from the gallows. King was then said to have given a stirring speech during which he urged the crowd to remember him as an example “that crime does not pay.” As King was hanged, Cecil said, “May the Lord have mercy on your soul.” Sanderson wrote that children screamed and women fainted.

While Goad carried out his duty as sheriff, he decided not to seek re-election. Instead, he ran for trustee and won. Frank Hughett returned for a second tenure as sheriff.

During Goad’s tenure as a public official, he lived on the corner of the courthouse square in Huntsville where the Baker Law Office would eventually be built, next-door to the courthouse. His niece, Cassie Lee, frequently stayed at his home. Her mother, Goad’s sister Etta Tennessee Lee, had died at a young age. It was there, in the sheriff’s home, that Cassie Lee met Flem Duncan, a Spanish American War veteran from Paint Rock. They were eventually married and one of their children was John Duncan, who famously hitchhiked from Huntsville to Knoxville with $5 in his pocket and became the city’s mayor and, later, was elected to Congress.

Death

Goad developed diabetes and died from complications of the disease on July 31, 1933, at the age of 72. A funeral was held the next day at First Baptist Church of Oneida, with Rev. T.H. Roark officiating. Goad was buried at Potter Cemetery in Huntsville. His wife remarried to Joseph Shoopman (1876-1965). She died in 1963 and is also buried at Potter Cemetery.