GOIN, Mrs. James David (Jeannette Pike)

The sitter was born on 18 December 1866 in Cincinnati, Ohio and died 12 August 1941 in Rutherford, New Jersey.

The Social Truth of Saturday, April 23, 1892, says that the sitter was ‘the daughter of the Hebrew millionaire, Pike, of Opera House fame.’ Samuel Napthali Pike (1822-1872) commissioned John Montague Trimble to build Pike’s Opera House on West 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue, New York, and it was opened on January 9, 1868.  The following year it was bought by Jay Gould and its name was changed.  He was of Dutch origin, and settled in Cincinnati about 1843, where he built an opera house in 1857 which subsequently burnt down in 1866. Pike is mentioned in this connexion in The Saga of American Society – A Record of Social Aspiration 1607-1937, by Dixon Wecter (New York, 1937, reprinted 1970), pp.106 & 138. He was married to Ellen Miller Pike (1822-1908). He was a wealthy alcohol merchant, distiller of Magnolia whisky, and had four children and as well as Mrs. Goin, had a son called Lawrence, and was the father of the portrait painter Alice Pike Barney (1857-1931), his youngest child. He was also the owner of 3800 acres on Hackensack Meadows, the salt marshes which he drained in the 1860s, and which were sold by his estate in 1893 for $3 million.

James D. Goin (1848-1925), age 30 and Helen Goin, age 3, were living in the household of Ellen M. Pike, according to the 1880 census of New York County, Enumeration District 73, page 38.  The census return showed “no relation” between James D. Goin and Helen Goin.  Both were born in New York. However, an Ellen M. Pike was living at 582 Fifth Avenue in 1906-7.

In 1893 Mr. and Mrs. James D. Goin lived at 582 Fifth Avenue. Their daughter Ellen Goin (1877-1966) became Mrs. Manuel Enrique Rionda of Alpine, New Jersey, married a wealthy Cuban sugar importer (born 1877) in 1911, but had no children, and he died 8 February 1950.