A Pioneer’s Search for an Ideal Home: A Book of Personal Memoirs

Phoebe Goodell Judson (1831-1926), sometimes called Phoebe Newton Judson, was a Canadian and American pioneer and author. Along with her husband, Holden Judson, she founded the city of Lynden, Washington. In 1886 she founded the Northwest Normal School, which would become Western Washington University. Born Phoebe Newton Goodell on October 25, 1831 in Ancaster, Canada, Judson was the second eldest of eleven children with her twin sister Mary Weeks Goodell. Her parents were Jotham Weeks “J. W.” Goodell, a Presbyterian minister descended from British colonists, and Anna Glenning “Annie” Bacheler. In 1837, Judson’s family emigrated to Vermilion, Ohio, where she and her siblings were raised. She married Holden Allen Judson in 1849, and they emigrated to the American West on March 1, 1853. There, the couple founded the city of Lynden, Washington, and in 1886 Phoebe Goodell Judson founded the Northwest Normal School, which would become Western Washington University. She kept a diary of her experiences following the day she and her family left for Washington Territory, which she later abridged and rewrote into A Pioneer’s Search for an Ideal Home, her memoir published shortly before her death in Lynden on January 16, 1926, aged 94. Owing to the large role she played during the 1870s through 1890s in the development of the Nooksack Valley, including giving Lynden its name, Judson is often referred to as the “Mother of Lynden”.