Coane quite possibly may have found employment in the U.S. Army upon his arrival. There is a record of a Private Robert Coane who received payment of $26.53 for his work as a soldier and servant to Brigadier General Wilkinson from June 12 through December 31, 1797. It appears that this may have actually been some sort of punishment, although no specifics are given and he did get paid for his service.9 No other instances of Coane having any further affiliation with the U.S. military could be found.
The Philadelphia Directory for 1805 lists Eliza twice—as both Eliza Cone, pastry cook, 68 Dock Street and Elizabeth Pearson, widow, 64 Dock Street. We can assume they are referring to the same person. (“Coane” was sometimes written phonetically as “Cone,” a common practice for the time.) Also, the listing for the shop location changes back and forth between 64 Dock Street and 68 Dock Street until about 1828.10 Philadelphia directories were customarily published a year after the data was collected, which could explain why her name is listed both ways.
It is likely Robert Coane died sometime in 1807 or 1808, as Elizabeth is still listed as Eliza Cone, pastry cook, 68 Dock Street in 1808. According to Coane descendant Kathy Cundith, the family Bible says he was “lost at sea.”11 Perhaps he was a sailor or fisherman, or turned to one of these occupations later in life in order to make ends meet. In any case, he must have been deceased by at least 1808 because later that year on October 16 Eliza wed her third husband, watch and clockmaker William Goodfellow, at Old Swedes Church in Philadelphia.12
William Goodfellow was born in 1749 or 1750 in Scotland to John and Margret Goodfellow and arrived in the United States around 1790.13 He first appears in Philadelphia directories in 1793 as Wm. Goodfellow, watchmaker, 24 Chestnut Street.14 In 1796 he married Sarah Wood of Philadelphia, also at Old Swedes Church.15 She died in November 1805 at the age of forty-eight.16
By the time he married Eliza in 1808, he was in his late fifties and she was around forty. In 1809, they are both listed with their businesses at 64 Dock Street—she as a pastry cook and he as a clockmaker.17 Eliza appeared to stay at this location until at least 1825. She had no children with William, and he died July 1, 1818. Although this was the longest of her three marriages, it still lasted only ten years.
Like many other Philadelphia artisans from this time, William Goodfellow was an involved and respected member of the Philadelphia community. In 1799 he joined the St. Andrew's Society of Philadelphia and signed the charter of 1808. According to its charter, the St. Andrew's Society was created for the “sole purpose” of providing “relief [for] distressed Scottish immigrants” throughout the city.18
He was also a member of the Universal Society, a small deist debate club established in Philadelphia in 1790. This group met weekly for instruction, conference, and debate upon moral and philosophical subjects.19 They covered a wide range of topics, from the appropriateness of polygamy, capital punishment, and the central tenets of Christianity, to questions about physics and meteorology. One issue raised by Goodfellow was whether belief in an afterlife was conducive to human happiness.20
Members of the Universal Society were able to keep out of the public eye by expressing their deism in the semiprivate realm of a debate club, where their unconventional ideas and conversation would only be heard by and shared with people who willingly joined. Therefore, this group was able to discuss their provocative religious opinions without attracting community ire.21 It is unknown whether Elizabeth shared these thoughts and opinions.
William's obituary from the July 4, 1818, United States Gazette characterizes him as follows:
Departed this life, on Wednesday morning, Mr. William Goodfellow, late a watchmaker in this city, and for twenty eight years a respectable citizen of the American Republick. Inheriting all those undeviating principles of rectitude, which characterize a Scottish gentleman, he could not be swayed from their immutable laws by the mercenary advantages of profit or gain. His energy was strong and vigorous, enriched with “Learning's Lore,” his conversation was pleasing and instructive. His mind was reflective and discriminative, and solution, with few exceptions, was the result of his investigation.22
William had chosen a lucrative profession, as watches were an essential fixture in Philadelphia from its early days onward. By the time he became a resident they were even more vital due to the presence of the affluent merchant and mariner class. In fact, in Philadelphia watches were symbols of economic prosperity and dependability of character more than in any other city in the United States.23
However, it appears that William might not have been as prosperous as some of the other watchmakers in the city, as he did not leave a will for Eliza. According to the administration that was filed, she estimated that the total of his estate to be worth not more than $200 at the time of his death. In fact, she had to settle debts of $400 for him, payable to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.24 He is listed sporadically in city directories in the years leading up to his death, so perhaps he was ill toward the end of his life.
Eliza Goodfellow continued her business at the Dock Street location for a number of years after William's passing. Situated with a view of the Delaware River and its many wharfs, Dock Street was within easy reach of the numerous daily auctions of newly arrived goods which were held right on the docks and in stores nearby. The wide range of items included foodstuffs such as English mustard, fresh nutmegs and cloves, green coffee, imperial tea, muscovado sugar, lemons, figs, and lime juice.25 In addition, her shop was an easy walk from the twice-weekly markets on High Street (later Market Street) featuring locally grown produce, fresh meats, and high-quality dairy products. Many of these ingredients would have been incorporated into her recipes.
The docks were a major point of commerce from Philadelphia's earliest days. Quaker business connections in England and the West Indies helped many Philadelphians maintain a comfortable livelihood and created a profitable marketplace based on mercantile trade. The lush farms bordering the city produced an abundance of wheat, flour, and grain. A portion of these goods were then shipped to the West Indies to trade for sugar and molasses; another percentage was sold for profit to buy imported merchandise from England.26 The London market paid top prices for Pennsylvania wheat, which produced harder flour than British wheat and yielded more loaves of bread per barrel.27
Philadelphia became the greatest of the colonial seaports, and Quaker shipping operations there and in Wilmington, Delaware, could obtain luxury foods not available elsewhere in the United States such as fresh pineapples from the Caribbean, Seville oranges, and winter grapes from the Canary Islands.28 This rapid growth enabled Philadelphia to quickly become the third most important commercial city in the British Empire, behind only London and Liverpool. This was a direct result of Quaker business savvy combined with its port location and nearby rich farmland.29
Even though New York's population had surpassed Philadelphia's by 1810, Philadelphia was considered more metropolitan, leading all the other U.S. cities commercially and in its openness to new ideas and free thinking.30 Philadelphia was, after all, founded on the acceptance of diversity. Both citizens in the city and those living on surrounding farms were able to retain their own traditions while simultaneously influencing each other. Food was one way they could maintain a sense of identity with their individual cultures while forging New World customs and styles.31
An established and cosmopolitan city, Philadelphia had good hotels, theaters, restaurants, circuses, bookstores, a fine library, museums of natural history, science, and art, and groups of talented and interesting people. And as new cities were founded in the U.S. middle and far west, their planners laid them out in the same grid pattern of streets William Penn had used to design Philadelphia in the 1680s.32
A writer describing the city in 1805 said the following: “The streets of Philadelphia are paved with pebblestones, and bordered with ample footways, raised one foot above the carriageway, for the ease and safety of passengers. They are kept cleaner than those of any city in Europe, e
xcepting the towns of Holland.…London is the only capital in the world that is better lighted at night. Many of the New Streets have been latterly planted with Poplars.”33
Due to the city's thriving interest in scholarship and fine arts, Philadelphia was referred to as the “Athens of America” between 1790 to 1840, although the term was being used to describe the city before those dates.34 Visitors both foreign and domestic continued to praise the city's beauty and individuality. French botanist André Michaux described it as “the most extensive, handsomest and most populous city in the United States.”35
However, by the 1840s, the passion in Philadelphia that had generated the comparison “Athens of America” tapered off, as New York began to dominate Philadelphia as well as other U.S. cities, both culturally and economically.36 This was a result of several factors. First, when the federal capital moved to Washington in 1800, Philadelphia lost its political power. Then the War of 1812 strained the city's trade and shipbuilding, and it never regained its leading position. Additionally, New York's harbor was considered easier to navigate and its port was closer to the ocean than Philadelphia's. When New York replaced its seasonal spring and fall sailings by launching the Black Ball Line of regular ships in 1817, a new business model was created.37
Although Philadelphia remained a major seaport, by 1824 its foreign commerce had declined to third or fourth place in the United States. However, this was not as much of a blow as it might sound. The removal of the capital to Washington forced Philadelphians to focus even more on their industries and drum up new sources of revenues. Philadelphia had always had important commercial interests, excelling in this area over other U.S. cities.38 Houses and shops continued to multiply along the Delaware and back toward the center of the city.
The part of Dock Street between the Delaware River and Second Street had existed as a business district since the founding of the city. In the eighteenth century boats frequently discharged flour at a bakery located at the southwest corner of Dock Creek and Second Street, and ferried goods up the creek to the High Street markets.39
Originally two branches of Dock Creek flowed into a nearby tidal basin, but this mosquito-ridden marshy spot was paved over by the time Mrs. Goodfellow lived there as the vicinity's population boomed, thus becoming the wide, curved avenue known as Dock Street. The hub of maritime activity near the docks enticed skilled workers to be closer to the action in order to sell their goods and services. As a result, Mrs. Goodfellow's neighbors in the Dock Ward district were tanners, curriers, bookbinders, cabinet and furniture makers, ship captains, and ship makers, in addition to some well-to-do merchants, whose daughters would have been likely student candidates for her cooking school.40
It was a lively and crowded area, supporting residents from a variety of cultures, religions, and occupations. The common thread tying Philadelphians together was a strong desire for success, which they realized was indeed possible, as they watched many of their industrious fellow residents work their way into the city's upper levels of society.41 It was not uncommon for more than one family to share a home in order to make this dream happen. Rents were expensive, and splitting the cost would have helped to make ends meet. Space was at such a premium that many folks often used the lower level of these narrow buildings for their businesses, with their respective families using the upper floors as their living quarters.
Many artisans and merchants worked by themselves. Some craftsmen hired themselves out as journeymen (free to work for anyone, being paid by the day); others made and sold their goods out of these rented homes, which also doubled as their places of business. A few merchants had partners or enlisted family members to help. They all performed their jobs within very limited geographical boundaries.42
It is very probable that Mrs. Goodfellow and her family were in this category, at the very least sharing the 64 Dock Street location with other enterprises. Philadelphia newspaper announcements from the early 1800s advertise several other businesses at this address during the same time Mrs. Goodfellow is listed in city directories. For example, in 1803 artist James Cox ran a “Drawing and Painting Academy” for young ladies and gentlemen at 64 Dock,43 and between 1810 and 1820 goods such as fresh fruits, Malaga wine, Muscatel white grapes, sun raisins, and “genuine gum Arabic”44 were sold by merchant William Read from this location.45 Read also provided real estate services, offering homes for sale in both the city as well as a fifty-three-acre “country seat near the Falls of Schuylkill.”46 In addition, an unnamed navy agent advertised space for freight on a route to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1819.47
So although space might have been tight for Goodfellow and her family, the selling of these other products and services in the same spot would have surely given her business more exposure and likely increased her clientele. It is easy to imagine that a gentleman coming to purchase a cask of wine might have also bought some of her pastries to bring home. After rave reviews from his family, perhaps they then used her catering services for their next party, and signed up their daughter for cooking school lessons. Word among their friends would have spread quickly, increasing Goodfellow's customer base and increasing student attendance.
And how convenient for Mrs. Goodfellow to have some of the merchandise she needed to produce her confections right on the premises; William Read may have cut her a price break on the imported goods he was selling or bartered with her to obtain her baked goods. Additionally, having a drawing and painting school in tandem with a cooking school would have been a stroke of pure genius, as many of the same girls could have had instruction in both cooking and art at the same location. Perhaps Cox and Goodfellow even worked out special deals for young ladies—cooking lessons in the morning and drawing and painting in the afternoon. Any of these scenarios could have been possible business arrangements—we simply don't know.
Mrs. Goodfellow likely appreciated all the help she could get. Her life must have been rather difficult and stressful, with her first two husbands dying within five years, leaving her with two young children to support and a business to run. Her three marriages spanned a total of only fifteen to twenty years of her eighty-three-year life.
So, she had to learn to be self-sufficient and provide for her family, transitioning in and out of marriage while coping with the successive deaths of her husbands. It was not uncommon for women to be widowed during the colonial and federal eras; many men were killed fighting in the Revolution or War of 1812, those working in the maritime trade were often lost at sea and there were numerous casualties from yellow fever and other diseases. By staying in the city where it was easier to get work, many women became heads of households. Indeed, like Goodfellow, Philadelphia resident Betsy Ross also survived her third husband and ran a successful business.48
Once widowed, a woman's economic situation determined who else shared her residence, including the hired help she could afford. Her fellow inhabitants were especially dependent on the type of work she could perform in her home.49 In Goodfellow's case, it is likely she had family or servants helping her with the pastry making and running the shop. It is not known who was living under her roof during 1800–1810 when she was twice widowed, but at the time of the 1810 census, the household she shared with husband William Goodfellow totaled eleven members. In addition to William, Eliza, and her two children, there were seven other members, all females ranging in age from children to adults.50
At least some of these women and girls probably assisted Mrs. Goodfellow not only in the shop, but also with performing all the duties required to maintain her home. The list of tasks between both must have been endless: cooking, cleaning, running errands, stoking the fire, fetching water, sewing and mending, as well as taking pastry orders, working in the shop as storekeeper, and bookkeeping, just to name a few.
At least she would have had a steady stream of labor to choose from. In nineteenth-century America, many girls worked as servants before they married, and most adults of all social classes had household help at some point. Th
e assistance came from a variety of sources: their own children, relatives and the children of relatives, neighbors, servants, or slaves. Servants were either “hired” (paid wages) or “boarded” (living and working under the same roof as family members).51
In Goodfellow's case, it appears that she maintained a full household during the time she ran her business, as shown by census records from other years. For instance, the 1820 census shows ten individuals living under her roof at the Dock Street residence, which would have included herself and her two children. Widowed for the third time at this point, she still has seven people outside her family living under her roof, including three males in addition to her son Robert. Two were in the sixteen-to-twenty-five age range,52 so perhaps they were pastry chefs or apprentices. Whether these people were family, servants, or boarders, any of these scenarios would have been extremely useful, even necessary to her in order to keep things running smoothly.
When nineteenth-century advancements led the Dock Street area to become increasingly commercial, private residences and shops were pushed out in favor of large warehouses and boardinghouses.53 Likely one of these casualties, Elizabeth relocated her shop to 134 South Second Street in 1828. By 1835 she had moved to the more picturesque 91 South Sixth Street (just off Washington Square), and was there until 1845 when the location changed slightly to 71 South Sixth, probably a consequence of a shift in street numbers, not a true location change.54
Beginning in 1830, her son Robert Coane's occupation was listed as a cabinetmaker, first at 4 Laurel Street and then later at Sixth Street above Spruce.55 However, in January 1837 he went into the confectionery business with his mother at the 91 South Sixth Street location. The shop was expanded and renamed E. Goodfellow, & Son. A receipt from the shop dated September 1837 has on the reverse an announcement confirming that “Eliza Goodfellow has taken her son into the business, and having considerably enlarged the establishment they are now prepared to furnish in any quantity, ice cream, jelly, blanche mange, and fancy cakes of every description. Also, candy baskets, pyramids, confectionary and fruit.”56
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