Volume 10 , Issue 1

Pioneer Henry E. Noble - Alva, OK

Remember the first hardware business in Alva, Oklahoma? According to A Standard History of Oklahoma, pg. 1523, by Joseph Thoburn, we have found out a little bit more of Noble's Hardware business and about H. "Henry" E. Noble. Henry E. Noble was a representative business man, popular citizen, cashier of the Central State Bank, and was well known figure in financial circles in the northwest section of the state. He served as a member of the city council during the first four years after the municipal government was carried forward under the city charter.

H. E. Noble was one of the organizers of the bank of which he was cashier. He established his home at Alva in 1893, when he came to Woods County as one of the pioneer settlers upon the opening of the Cherokee Strip. He opened the first hardware establishment in the ambitious young village of Alva, in Oklahoma Territory and during the intervening years he had not only kept pace with but had been a recognized leader in the work of development and progress in Alva.

Henry E. Noble was born at Albany, Green County, Wisconsin, on October 13, 1856, a son of Edmond B. and Nancy B. (Throop) Noble. Edmond Noble was born in Wyoming County, New York, on September 10, 1828, and his parents were natives of New England. Edmond Noble was raised educated in his native state and there he continued his residence until he became a pioneer of Wisconsin. There he followed mercantile pursuits until 1876, when he moved with his family to Kansas and became one of the pioneer settlers of Harper County, where he secured a tract of government land and where he was actively concerned in the formal organization of the county. He developed one of the excellent farms of that section of Kansas and continued his residence upon his old homestead until 1888, when he moved to Medicine Lodge, the judicial center of Barber County, where he engaged in the mercantile business.

In 1900 Edmond Noble came to Woods County, Oklahoma, and purchased a farm 5 miles West of Alva, where he passed the residue of his life and where he died on March 13, 1912, at the age of 83 years and six months. Edmond's political allegiance had been given to the republican party.

In 1851 Edmond B. Noble and Nancy B. Throop, who was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1832, and whose death occurred at Albany, Wisconsin, on October 10, 1876, her father, Daniel H.Throop, was a native of Warsaw, Wyoming county, New York. Edmond B. and Nancy Noble had four children:

Frank, died in infancy;

Henry E;

Flora May, who was born May 31, 1862, at Albany, Wisconsin, married in 1881, James H. McKeever, their place of resident being in Wichita, Kansas, and their two children being Gertrude and Edmond H.;

Millie R., who was born at Albany, Wisconsin, on March 4, 1868, became the wife of Huston H. Case, in 1891, her death occurred, without child, on July 4, 1893, in Kansas City, Missouri, her remains being interred in the cemetery at Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

In 1878 Edmond B. Noble contracted second marriage, when he wedded Mrs. Betsie J. Hoyt, and the two children of this union, Rena and Walter, survived their father, as did also their mother.

Henry E. Noble was indebted to the public schools of his native village for his early educational training, which was effectively supplemented by a course in the Worthington Business College, at Madison, the capital city of Wisconsin. It was in this institution he graduated in 1875 and while attending the same he employed his otherwise leisure hours by serving an apprenticeship to the tinner's trade, which he thereafter followed, as a journeyman, for two years, in the State of Iowa. He then went to Auburn, New York, where he assumed the position of bookkeeper in the mill machinery manufacturing establishment of his uncle, Gardiner E. Throop.

After retaining this incumbency two years he returned to the West, in 1880, in which year he became bookkeeper for an agricultural implement establishment at Winfield, Kansas, where he remained engaged for a period of five years. In 1885 he moved to Medicine Lodge, where he engaged in the hardware and implement business in an independent way and continued his operations in this line until he found better opportunities, incidental to the opening to settlement of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma Territory, in 1893.

As a pioneer of Alva, he opened the first hardware store in the new town, on the West side of the downtown square. You can still read the name of H. E. Noble Hardware on the building today. Henry Noble retired from the hardware and farm implement business in 1912, and in the following year he became associated with G. A. Harbaugh, Thomas G. Fennessey and others in the organization of the Central State Bank of Alva, of which he had been cashier. Through his straightforward and careful executive policies this bank had become one of the stable and popular financial institutions of Northern Oklahoma, with deposits somewhat in excess of $320,000 at the opening of the year 1915.

Henry E. Noble became a member of Alva's first municipal council, and of this position he continued the incumbent four years. Besides his banking association, he was exclusive agent for the Buick automobiles in Woods County, Oklahoma. He completed the circle of York Rite Masonry, and attained to the 32nd degree in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite.

It was on January 15, 1882, at Montezuma, Iowa, that Henry E. Noble married Miss Ida A. Norris, who was born in Ohio, on January 24, 1858, who was a popular figure in the social activities of her home community, besides being a zealous member of the Christian church. Henry and Ida Noble had three children:

Mary Edith, born at Winfield, Kansas, on March 7, 1883, was afforded the advantages of Northwestern State Normal School, at Alva, Oklahoma, and Hardin College, at Mexico, Missouri. In 1910 she became the wife of Edward J. Hampton, and they had one child, Noble D., born May 31, 1912;

Ethel J., born at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, November 21, 1887, graduate of same schools as Mary Edith, and wife of Frank D. Crowell;

Henry Elbert, Jr., born December 2, 1899, graduate of Alva public schools and of Missouri Military Academy of Mexico, Missouri.

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