Clara Goddard (1864 – 1953)
Clara Goddard was born near Wilson, Iowa. She and Albert J. Goddard were married in 1886.1) They moved to Seattle and settled in what was then the town of Fremont. They were living on Kilbourne Avenue near Aurora in 1890. Albert and his brother Charles ran a machinery business in Freemont.2) While Arthur Goddard became a partner in the iron foundry, Clara raised money for the Edgewater Congregational Church.3)
When they heard news of the Klondike gold rush, Albert Goddard and three partners had two steamboats built in San Francisco. They knocked them apart and hauled them over the Chilkoot along with a small saw mill. Clara was part of that group. Clara Goddard was the first woman to pilot a Yukon River steamer.4) According to Mrs. Goddard’s obituary, she and her husband were the first to operate a steamer on the upper Yukon and they made their first trip between Whitehorse and Dawson in June 1898.((Obituary. Post-Intelligencer, (Seattle), 31 July 1953.)