This home has connections with one across the street

With the cooperation of the Southeast Iowa Union/Mt. Pleasant News, The Mt. Pleasant Historic Preservation Commission will be publishing, every week or two, peeks at some of the featured homes in the 1909 book, Mt. Pleasant Beautiful.

In the series, the 1909 picture will be contrasted with one of recent vintage. The Commission has been collecting information for the eventual issuance of a new book updating the information on the still standing homes from the 1909 publication.

You can test your knowledge of historic Mt. Pleasant with this column. The identity of the featured home will be published with the next featured home. The last featured home was the Powell House at 707 North Broadway.

This week’s featured house was built in 1896 and duplicates a house directly across the street which was built in 1894. There is, however, much more that tie the two homes together than meets the eye. The builders of the 1896 house were Roger and Lola Goan Galer, who had been married about nine years at the time

When married in 1887, they were both respected teachers; Roger at Howe’s Academy (from which he had graduated) and Lola in the Mt. Pleasant school system. Roger had both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Iowa.

By the time of the home construction, Roger had been admitted to the Iowa bar. He proceeded to practice law in Mt. Pleasant for the next 57 years.

Lola was the daughter of Andrew Goan, who had an abstract and real estate business in Mt. Pleasant. Her brother Rushton was also involved in that firm. In 1893 Roger Galer purchased the firm of Goan & Son, renaming it Galer & Goan.

From all reports everything was going along well until the spring of 1897, when it came to light that Rush Goan had been borrowing money from local banks with forged endorsements. While there does not appear to have been an exact accounting, the debt was in the range of $25,000 which would be close to $850,000 in 2022 dollars.

The Daily News deemed the affair the “greatest financial crash in the history of the county.” What we do know is that Roger Galer pledged much of his property to cover the debts when Rush Goan hurriedly left town and may never have been heard from again—or at least it didn’t make the papers.

An 1899 report in the Mt. Pleasant News indicated that there had never been any concerted action to capture Goan and he was reported to have been in New York and later in Manilla.

Oh yes, we promised a home connection: the “house across the street (and the earlier of the two houses) was built by none other than Ruston Goan.

Roger Galer’s wife (and Rush Goan’s sister) passed away after an extended illness in March 1909 just as Mt. Pleasant Beautiful was being issued. Roger remarried in 1912 to Laura Bowman, a well-known religious scholar and Universalist minister.

Both led active careers in liberal religious movements while Roger continued with his law practice. They enjoyed almost 40 years of marriage before Roger passed away in 1950 with Laura joining him in 1956.