WI BIO - Dane Co - NOE, Walter C.
Biographical Review of Dane County, WI. Chicago: Biographical Review Pub. Co. 
1893, Vol II, p 596

Walter C. NOE, the secretary and director of the Fuller & Johnson 
Manufacturing Company, of the city of Madison [Dane County, WI], has held his 
present position since the business was started in 1883. He was formerly 
secretary of the old company from which this one was formed, which was known 
as the Madison Plow Company. Mr. NOE was one of the promoters and 
incorporators, as well as secretary of the old Madison Plow Company while it 
was in existence under that name. The plow company was started in January 
1880, and the first president was Frank H. FIRMAN. It has had a steady 
growth since it started and employs 300 men, and is the leading manufactory 
of this kind in the State, having business both in the Northwest as well as 
in the Southwest.

Walter C. NOE came to the city of Madison in 1876, and in the fall of that 
year he started the business of plow manufacturing under the firm name of the 
Billing & Noe Plow Company, the former now deceased. It was continued until 
1880, when the Madison Plow Company was incorporated. Mr. NOE came to this 
city from St. Louis [St. Louis County], Missouri. He was born in the 
northern part of old Virginia*, and was reared and educated in his native 
State, and came West when still a young man. [* By "old Virginia" the 
biographer refers to VA before 1861, when in 1861 fifty counties withdrew 
from VA and became, in 1863, the state of WV. Some WV records are in VA, e. 
g., the 1790-1860 federal census schedules for the first fifty counties of WV 
are included in the VA schedules. Thus Walter C. NOE's birth may have 
occurred in a county that was then in VA, but is now in WV, before the fifty 
counties withdrew.]

His father, Crowel NOE, was a native of Vermont and of French ancestry. He 
had grown up in his native State, where he became a contractor and then went 
to Virginia, where he married Miss Mary SPAULDING, who was born and reared in 
Maryland, and whose ancestry was the same as that of Bishop SPAULDING. Mr. 
and Mrs. NOE lived in Virginia, and there Mr. [Crowel] NOE died at the age of 
sixty-seven, but the mother of our subject came West a little later and died 
in Madison [Dane County], Wisconsin, at about the age as was her husband. 
Both had been members of the Presbyterian Church. Our subject was one of six 
children, but he and one sister, Mrs. William JAMESON, of St. Louis [St. 
Louis County, MO], are the only ones remaining.

Mr. [Walter C.] NOE was married in Madison [Dane County, WI] to Miss Jessie 
BARTLETT, who was born, reared, and educated in the city of Madison. Her 
parents came here from New England, and her father, Seth BARTLETT, is yet 
living in this county, a farmer, and is now quite on in years. Mr. and Mrs. 
NOE are members of the Episcopal Church, and Mr. NOE has been Alderman of the 
2nd Ward of this city. He is a Democrat in politics and is quite decided in 
his views. Mr. and Mrs. [Walter C.] NOE are the parents of four children: 
Walter B., Roberta, Mary, and Edgar.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly