618 7th Street South Former Site of Edith Darrow Godfrey Home

A century ago, there would have been a hospital where Bogstad Manor West is today, and Bogstad Manor East would have been a row of fine houses lining 8th Street. In one of those houses lived the founder of the hospital, Doctor Daniel C. Darrow, and his wife Alice. Right next door to them, just about directly across the street of Esther Russell, lived their daughter Edith Darrow Godfrey, who was a chairman of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association.

Edith grew up the daughter of one of Moorhead’s most respected families. Her father was a pioneer doctor who moved to Moorhead to join his brother, Fargo physician Dr. E. M. Darrow soon after he graduated medical school in 1884. Edith’s mother Alice was one of the founding members of the Moorhead Woman’s Club. In 1899, Edith Darrow married a promising young businessman named Joseph V. Godfrey. Joseph V. Godfrey’s name is written all over town even today, but you have to look down to see it. He had a concrete business and you’ll see his maker’s stamp on sidewalks throughout Moorhead’s older neighborhoods. We are walking on his sidewalks all through this tour. Joseph and Edith had two children - a boy and a girl. But in January of 1911, Joseph got a flu that turned into pneumonia. He died at the age of 36, leaving Edith a young widow with a ten-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. Joseph’s obituary called him “one of the best known and best liked citizens of Moorhead.”

Edith Darrow Godfrey came from one of our region’s most prominent suffrage families. Her aunt in Fargo was Clara Dillon Darrow. Clara Darrow was one of the earliest and strongest voices for Woman’s Suffrage in North Dakota, a woman who gave suffrage speeches to prairie homesteaders and was the founding president of the North Dakota Votes for Women League in 1912. Clara’s daughters Mary Darrow Weibel and Elizabeth Darrow O’Neil were also active in North Dakota’s suffrage movement, and so was their little brother Daniel. When Edith’s husband passed away, Cousin Mary, Aunt Clara, and her parents were all with her at his bedside.