Profile
The Ellsworth Family
Farmers. Cotton producers. Ostrich ranchers. The maternal line behind the Goodman medical legacy.
Focus
Pioneers in Queen Creek and Show Low
Ostrich ranching entrepreneurs in early 20th century
Farmers and cotton producers
Maternal line of the modern Goodman family
One thousand ostriches
Before the Ellsworths entered this family story through a 1940 marriage, they were already Arizona legends. Louis Ellsworth — born in Salt Lake City in 1865 — had moved to the East Valley and built one of Arizona’s largest ostrich operations: more than a thousand birds. He was also one of the state’s first cotton producers. His ostriches were exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair. [S2]
In the early 1900s, ostrich feathers were the most expensive commodity by weight in the fashion industry — used in hats, boas, and stage costumes across Europe and America. Arizona’s hot, dry climate was ideal for raising the birds, and the Salt River Valley became one of the world’s major ostrich- farming regions. Louis rode that wave. [S2]
Mormon pioneers in the East Valley
The Ellsworths were among the early LDS colonists in Arizona. One branch helped found communities in the White Mountains around Show Low in the 1890s. Another — Louis’s branch — settled in the Gila Valley and Queen Creek area near Mesa. [S2]
Louis married Josephine Lauvina Crismon on February 22, 1889, in Lehi, Arizona. Together they had eleven children. Their son Earl Ellsworth, born in Mesa in 1903, would become a farmer and the father of Leoma Earlene Ellsworth. [S2]
Leoma Earlene Ellsworth
Leoma Earlene Ellsworth (1922–1994) was Earl’s daughter. She grew up in the East Valley during the Depression, surrounded by farms and family. In 1940, she married Dr. Clifford James Goodman Sr., uniting two pioneer families. [S2]
The young couple moved to Washington, D.C. while Clifford completed his medical training at George Washington University. Their first child, Clifford “Cliff” Goodman Jr., was born in D.C. in April 1943.
Together they had eight children. When Clifford Sr. died unexpectedly in 1962 at age forty, Earlene was left to raise them alone. Their eldest son, Cliff Jr., was just eighteen and stepped into the role of family patriarch while pursuing his own medical education.
Earlene died on September 22, 1994, in Phoenix, and was buried at the City of Mesa Cemetery alongside Clifford Sr.
The Grand Marshal
The Ellsworth name came full circle in 1989. At the first annual Chandler Ostrich Festival — a celebration that grew directly from the East Valley’s ostrich-farming heritage — Grandpa Earl Ellsworth rode in the parade as Grand Marshal. [S2]
The Goodman-Ellsworth union
The marriage of Leoma Ellsworth and Clifford Goodman Sr. brought together two strands of Arizona pioneer history:
- Ellsworth side: Farmers, merchants, cotton producers, and ostrich ranchers who built Queen Creek
- Goodman side: Pharmacists and civic leaders who built Mesa
Their children carried both traditions forward. Clifford Jr. became a physician like his father. The Ellsworth work ethic and the Goodman civic duty merged into a family culture of service and persistence.