1896 Diary of C.M. Noble, Sr.

FROM RICHLAND MEMORIES, VOLUME 1. PAGES 146-148.

SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 1896

Warmer and cloudy, my wife and I start to New Orleans today and expect to be gone until next Friday. We arrived in Rayville about 11 o’clock and found a great many people in the town. There was a harmo­nizing committee from the State Executive Committee to try to get the peo­ple in this parish to agree on some man for sheriff, but no, the Brumbies don’t want Harmony so the Harmony Committee went like they came.

SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 1896

We stayed at Robert Faulk’s today. We heard of so much Small Pox in New Orleans that we laid over til today. We started to New Orleans from Monroe this evening at 6:30.

MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1896

We arrived in New Orleans this AM. About 11 o’clock. I bought my drugs, crockery, etc. Capt. James Hamilton, an old steamboat captain, came to see us about 6:30 o’clock.

TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1896

We are having lovely weather and are making good use of it, buying and getting ready to go home. I bought today -hardware, boots and shoes, dry goods. We hear but little of the Small Pox down here. We went up in the Hennen Building today, 11 stories high, and then up on the observato­ry, which makes it equal to 13 stories.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 1896

Getting cloudy this morning. About 11:30 we had a heavy rain storm, flooding the streets. I bought groceries, hats, and sundries. We see Capt. Hamilton every day. He is very obliging in going about with us. Cleared off about night.

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1896

Clear and cool. The steamer, Ouachita, left this evening and failed to get my groceries. This is a serious blunder on the part of the house from whom I bought. We are to reship on steamer, Parlor City from Ouachita, and P. City may not come back here at all. Now the question is, “What am I to do?” I shall try to get the Parlor City to wait over for the next trip of Ouachita. We start home tonight. Had our picture taken together, bought up candy for the children and are ready to sail.

FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 1896

Cold and Clear. We arrived in Monroe about 9:30 and ate breakfast with Florence. Left at 12 A.M. and arrived in Rayville at 12:55. Ate din­ner and found politics raging, with 6 candidates for sheriff, subject to nom­ination of mass meeting tomorrow. Dr. Bell of Rayville and W.N. Traylor of Alto are in the field. I feel very poorly and do not feel like going back to Rayville tomorrow, but must.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1896

Clear and cold, ice and big frost. Mid cotton in N.O. 7 3/4 cotton seed $6.00 per ton. Nothing doing in the way of work or business. This finish­es this diary, also the old year passes out tonight.

To sum up the years doings and business, and see what has been done and what things could and should have been done, and this little book’s work will be finished, and it will be like all things of this earth, laid away to rest, and it’s successor, young and full of hopes and unwritten leaves, will step into it’s place and begin it’s daily record of men and things.

May it’s records be no more sor­rowful, or painful than these. Although times have been hard and the strin­gency of the money matters has been upon the country now for the past two years, our business has been in good shape. While it has not flourished as it would have done in good times, still we cannot complain.

During 1895, we have done a good furnishing business, added a sawmill to the gin, and are now sawing all the lumber we use. Have built 5 nice cabinets, besides numerous other improvements; fencing small houses, etc., all from the lumber of our own make. Ernest Faulk and I purchased the old Dyson place just above us and expect to fence and rent a part of it.

We now have 4 families on it and hope by another year to have it all in cultivation. We have finished paying for Holland and will have two payments on Lockwood today. The negroes on all of our places with exception of a few (say two) families will remain with us, and we gain one family, making a loss of only one family. We are holding about 335 bales of cotton, and I am uneasy, and fearful that I have made a mistake in doing so, but the mar­ket is up today 118th and steady.

I hope yet to gain by holding, but hold­ing cotton is entirely too risky. My experience is it is best to send it to the market as you get it and sell as it gets there. We have much to be thankful for, health and reasonable prosperity, loved ones, a good happy home, and numerous other things. And I feel thankful to our great and all wise cre­ator. This community also built a nice Methodist church.

Obituary for C.M. Noble, Sr.

The Richland Beacon-News, Rayville, Louisiana. 23 Feb 1924, Sat  •  Page 2

C. M. NOBLE C. M. Noble, Sr., aged 73 years, died on last Tuesday morning at home in Charlieville, of pneumonia. Funeral services were conducted at Union Church, with Rev. J. D. Nesom, of the Methodist Church, officiating, assisted by Rev. A. S. Lutz, Commissioner of Education of the Methodist Church. Dr. Lutz delivered a masterful funeral oration and paid a beautiful tribute to the deceased.

Mr. Noble is survived by his widow and a son, C. M. Noble, Jr., of Charlieville; and two daughters, Mrs. F. B. Hatch, of Buckner and Rayville, and Mrs. H. R. Hays, of Jackson, Mississippi.

Mr. Noble was born in Ouachita parish in 1851, and removed to Richland Parish in 1875, where he has resided ever since. He was engaged all his life in the planting and mercantile business, and was one of the big men in Richland Parish affairs all his life, taking a prominent part in every thing which meant for the welfare and advancement of his community and parish. His large means were spent with a lavish hand for charity and church work, and we doubt the parish has ever produced a citizen more honored and respected than he, who has just died. The large and representative crowd of sorrowing citizens at his grave from every part of Richland Parish, and other parts of North Louisiana, attests to the high esteem in which he was held generally.

In the death of Chas. M. Noble the Parish of Richland has lost one of its foremost and best men. He was preeminently a leader in every good cause in this section, and was a distinct credit to this part of Louisiana which claimed him, and his death was received with the profoundest regret in every nook and corner of the Parish, while in the immediate neighborhood of Charlieville there was deeper and more heart-felt, sorrow than was ever felt upon the occasion of a death of any citizen. It was his great heart that endeared C. M. Noble to all and made them love him; and made them rejoice in his financial success, in the full knowledge that it would be used for the betterment of mankind and for the upbuilding of his Master’s kingdom.

True love is unmistakable in its manifestations. He who really and truly loves his fellows need not fear that they will fail to find it out. It will manifest itself, not in the arts and wiles of the deceitful, but in a thousand ways which need not be premeditated, and can not be misjudged or misunderstood. Mr. Noble loved his family, his friends and his neighbors.

And his love was not a mere sentiment, but a real passion, to which he gave expression in his never tiring acts of devotion and his cease less efforts to aid them and by every means that lay in his power. He thought of their happiness here and was concerned about their future over there. He is gone, and the beneficiaries of his great, warm heart can only mourn his loss, and indulge the hope that the good he has done may live after him. It is certain that he has cone to a merited reward, and the great God who fashioned and finished his magnificent character also tenanted his soul with that blessed belief which led him from out the walks