Henry E. Noble. The fine little City of Alva, county seat of Woods County, claims as one of its representative business men and popular citizens the cashier of the Central State Bank, and this well known figure in financial circles in this section of the state has proved himself one of the liberal and progressive men of Alva, where 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.

Mr. Noble, who was one of the organizers of the bank of which he is cashier, established his home at Alva in the year 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 and during the intervening years he has not only kept pace with but also been a recognized leader in the work of development and progress in this now thriving little city. Mr. Noble claims the fine old Badger State as the place of his nativity and is a scion of one of its sterling pioneer families. He was born at Albany, Green County, Wisconsin, on the 13th of October, 1856, and is a son of Edmond B. and Nancy B. (Throop) Noble.

Edmond B. Noble was born in Wyoming County, New York, on the 10th of September, 1828, and his parents were natives of New England, within whose borders the respective families were founded in the colonial era of our national history. Edmond B. Noble was reared and 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 removed 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 the Sunflower State and there continued his residence upon his old homestead until 1888, when he removed to Medicine Lodge, the judicial center of Barber County, where he engaged in the mercantile business. In 1900 he came to Woods County, Oklahoma, and purchased a farm five miles west of Alva, where he passed the residue of his honorable and useful life and where he died on the 13th of March, 1912, at the venerable age of eighty-three years and six months. He was a consistent member of the Baptist Church and was long in active affiliation with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, his political allegiance having been given to the republican party.

In 1851 was solemnized the marriage of Edmond B. Noble to Miss Nancy B. Throop, who was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1832, and whose death occurred at Albany, Wisconsin, on the 10th of October, 1876. her father, Daniel H. Throop, having been a native of Warsaw. Wyoming County, New York. Of this union were born four children, of whom the first, Frank, died in infancy: Henry E.. of this review, was the next in order of birth; Flora May, who was born May 31, 1862, at Albany, Wisconsin, married, in 1881, James H. McKeevor. their present place of residence being the City of Wichita. Kansas, and their two children being Gertrude and Edmond H.; Millie R., who was born at Albany, Wisconsin, on the 4th of March, 1868, became the wife of Huston H. Case, in 1891, and her death occurred, without issue, on the 4th of July, 1893, in Kansas City, Missouri, her remains being interred in the cemetery at Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

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

He whose name introduces this article is 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 fair capital city of Wisconsin. In this institution he was graduated in 1875 and while attending the same he employed his otherwise leisure hours by serving a thorough 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 thus engaged for a period of five years. In 1885 he removed to Medicine Lodge, that state, where he engaged in the hardware and implement business in an independent way and where he continued his operations in this line until he discerned better opportunities, incidental to the opening to settlement of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma Territory, in 1893. He was among those who became at that time pioneers of this now opulent and progressive section of Oklahoma and at Alva he opened the first hardware store in the new town. He brought to bear in the enterprise an excellent knowledge of the business, the strictest principles of fairness and integrity and most progressive policies, so that, with the rapid development of the agricultural resources and other business activities of Woods County, he developed a large, and prosperous trade. Mr. Noble retired from the hardware and farm implement business in 1912, and in the following year he became associated with G. A. Harbaugh, Thomas F. Fennessey and others in the organization of the Central State Bank of Alva, of which he has since been cashier. Through his straightforward and careful executive policies this bank has 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.

After the organization of the City of Alva Mr. Noble became a member of its first municipal council, and of this position he continued the incumbent four years, but his civic loyalty has been manifested rather through productive enterprise and ready co-operation in progressive movements than through the medium of official preferment. He is one of the resourceful and influential business men and honored citizens of Woods County and in addition to his banking association he is exclusive agent for the Buick automobiles in this county. Mr. Noble has completed the circle of York Rite Masonry, and has attained to the thirty-second degree in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite.

On the 15th of January, 1882, at Montezuma, Iowa, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Noble to Miss Ida A. Norris, who was born in Ohio, on the 24th of January, 1858, and she is a popular figure in the social activities of her home community, besides being a zealous member of the Christian Church. Mr. and Mrs. Noble have three children: Mary Edith, who was born at Winfield, Kansas, on the 7th of March, 1883, was afforded the advantages of the 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 have one child, Noble D., born May 31, 1912; Ethel J. was born at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, November 21, 1887, is a graduate of same schools as Mary Edith, and is now the wife of Frank D. Crowell, concerning whom individual mention is made on other pages of this publication; and Henry Elbert, Jr., was born December 2, 1899. He is a graduate of the Alva public schools and of the Missouri Military Academy of Mexico, Missouri.