George H. Noble Dies of Spanish Influenza

George H. Noble died at his home in this city this (Thursday) morning at 3:30 of Spanish influenza after a brief illness, age about 35 years.

For a number of years Mr. Noble was proprietor of a clothing store in Blair, but for some time has been traveling for the New Prague Milling Co. He was reared in Blair and educated in the city schools, and was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Noble, deceased, and a grandson of the late Dr. H. Noble. He was a member of the Masonic order and well known throughout the county.

He leaves a widow, two daughters, Jane and Betty, and numerous relatives and friends to mourn his demise. The funeral will be held Friday at 3 o’clock at the home, Rev. A. R. Jones of the Congregational Church officiating.

#2-Published in the Enterprise November 15, 1918

Following a few days illness from a virulent attack of influenza, George Noble died at 3:30 o'clock yesterday morning.

Deceased was born in Blair 35 years ago and had been a resident here continuously since. He was the only son of Ed Noble, deceased many years ago, grandson of the late Dr. H. Noble and nephew of Mrs. F. M. Castetter, his father's sister. His wife and two little daughters, Jan and Betty, are bereft of the love and tender care and affection of a king husband and father.

Funeral service will be held at the family home at 3 o'clock P.M. today.

#3-Published in the Pilot November 29, 1918

George Noble Has Passed

George Noble passed out of this life, life failed him when extra work put an illness of just a week from pneumonia, following influenza. He came home from off the road the Thursday before, sick and his condition grew steadily worse until the end came. He had had a heart weakness for a number of years and it was his heart that failed him when extra work was put upon it.

An outdoor funeral service was held at the residence on west Grant Street at 8:30 last Thursday morning Rev. Jones, of the Congregational Church, officiating. Music was furnished by a quartette composed of Misses Ethel Mead and Mary Cook and Messrs. F. H. Claridge and the writer. The pallbearers were E. B. Carrigan, M. R. Lippincott, Wm. Cheely, Hugh Cooke, Sam Cheely, and Curtis Edwards, of Omaha.

George was a member of the Washington Lodge, Not. 21 A. P. and A. M. and also the Adeniran Chapter. A large delegation of the Masonic attended the burial service at the grave. Dr. Mead acting as Worship Master and Rev. A. E. Marsh as chaplain.

George was born in the city June 20th, 1883 and was therefore past 35 years of age. His parents Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Noble, are both dead and he was the last of the Dr. H. Noble family to bear the name of Noble.

He was married to Miss Edna Cantlin, Nov. 9th, 1904, and two daughters were born to them, Jane aged 12 and Elizabeth, aged 9. He was a nephew of Mrs. Anna Castetter, of this city.

For a number of years George conducted the Blair Clothing Co., selling out to Effenberger & Sip. Since then he has been traveling for the New Prague Milling Co., and was on the road for them when taken sick with the illness that proved to be his last.

It seems hardly right for the rest of us to be walking about when George is dead. But such is life and death, the two great mysteries that we have to deal with and cannot understand. The wealth of flowers sent in his memory show something of his esteem in which he was held by a large circle of acquintances.

Following are the remarks made by Rev. A. R. Jones at the funeral service:

Psalm 102: 24 O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days.

The great lesson of our mortality is ever with us and impressed upon us in many ways. But it is not the fact that we are to died and that human life in its longest span is but brief frailty of life, the uncertainty of life the insecurity of our days upon earth.

Hence the wisdom of the admonition “Go to, now ye that say today or tomorrow we shall to into such a city and continue therein a year and buy and sell and get gain; Where as ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For that ye ought to say if the approach of death.

“Leaves have their time to fall and flowers to wither at the north winds breath
And start to set, but all thou hast, all season for thine own, O Death”
Man dies in the midst of the allotted period of his life, the three score and ten year. Infancy, childhood and youth dies as well as manhood and old age. The journey of life is not a direct approach to the distant and dark abyss of the grave, but a path along its crumbling verge over which the wayfarer is liable to fall any moment.

Man dies in the midst of unfurnished plans. The broken column is a symbol of the interruption of the most ambitious professional and commercial or political pursuits. He dies while his house in building, his friend increasing and his fortunes brightening.

Man dies often in the midst of unsettled convictions and to say the least unsatisfactory experiences of religion, frequently without faith, without penitence, without prayer.

And why should it be so as a feature of our human life in a world where everything, to the minutest particles is governed by law and is a part of a most orderly universe, is a question we are constrained to ask even with agony of soul and bitter tears, however humble and reverent our spirits.

To the humble and reverent the only reply seems to be that so it pleases God in the moral government of like creatures and disciplinary unto the end that we may be ever mindful, even at the cost of others, that life is related to God, that the true content of life are spiritual and that one career beyond this life is all important and essential.

Our highest wisdom is to “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding,” Prov 11:5

Ye believe in God believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14, 1-2

It is little matter at that hour of day
The righteous fall asleep, death can not come
To Him untimely who has learnt to die
The less of this brief life the more of totality
The shorter the time, the longer immortal heaven

Yes, we must part and parting weep.
What else hath earth for us in store”?
Yet we shall meet again in peace
To sing the song of the festal joy Where none shall bid our gladness erase
And none our fellowship destroy

There, hand to hand, firm linked at last,
And heart to heart enfolding all;
We’ll smile upon the troubled past,
And wonder why we wept at all.

#4 Printed in the November 21, 1918 Fort Calhoun Chronicle

Red Cross Notes

The sympathy of the entire chapter goes out to Mrs. Geo. Noble, first assistant secretary, A.R.C. in the loss of her husband, who died Thursday, Nov. 14, after a brief illness with influenza.

~~~~Obituaries courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file at the Blair Public library.~~~