Mattie Nunnelley and Herman Noth elope on train No. 6

On the morning of Wednesday, September 27, 1911, Mattie Nunnelley, the cashier at the Evans Mercantile Company in American Falls, left town on train No. 6 with Herman Noth, a brother of Dr. R. F. Noth, one of the town's physicians. The next day's American Falls Press told how they were found to be gone. Over the following eight years its columns followed the couple from town to a ranch in the Arbon valley.

A homesteader's daughter in town

Mattie belonged to the Kentucky Nunnelleys whose first winter in the valley is told among the site's Stories. The Press of August 14, 1909, reported that W. A. Nunnelley and family had moved to their Arbon valley homesteads that Tuesday, August 10. On the same page it noted that Iva Burrell had left the dry goods department of the Evans Mercantile company: "Miss Mattie Nunnelley is her successor." That store belonged to the American Falls Evans family, not to the Evans families of Arbon.

So while her father and sisters settled at the south end of the valley, then all in Oneida County, Mattie stayed in town. In April 1911 she was named as one of the alto soloists for a Palm Sunday cantata by the Episcopal and Presbyterian choirs, and that July she went out to Arbon on a visit. In September the paper said of her father, "Mr. Nunnelly is a successful dry farmer."

Herman Noth was a brother of Dr. Richard F. Noth, an American Falls physician, and had visited the town about 1908 and again in 1910. In 1911 he worked in Oregon for the O.-W. R. & N., the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company. He had come in on Friday, September 22, for a few days with the doctor, on his way home to visit his parents in Wisconsin.

Train No. 6

According to the Press, the couple "quietly packed up" and left on No. 6, bound in the end for Chicago. It was said that they stopped off at Pocatello to be married before going on east, and their friends had no hint of what was coming. The paper told how the doctor found out:

When Dr. Noth went to call his brother yesterday morning he found his bed unoccupied. He immediately telephoned to the residence of Mr. Hooker, where Miss Nunnelly was staying and was told that she had packed her trunks, paid her board and left. It was later learned that the couple departed on No. 6.

The paper, which spelled the name Nunnelly, called Mattie one of the most popular young women in American Falls, "of a cheerful sunny disposition," and the daughter of "one of the leading citizens of Arbon." It closed on a kindly note:

The young people are both popular and all their friends are ready to extend congratulations at the earliest opportunity. Their marriage was confidently looked to as a future event, but no one expected it at this time. May all the joys of life be theirs.

On page 4 the same issue announced that Roll Evans was the new cashier at the Evans Mercantile, adding that he "can not hope to be as popular as his predecessor."

The Press gave Pocatello only as something "said"; where and when the marriage was recorded is not in the papers read for this post.

A ranch at Arbon

By 1913 the couple were living in American Falls, where Mattie's sister Virginia, "of the Arbon valley," came that June to visit them for a month. When word came on June 30, 1914, that the Noth brothers' mother had died at Medford, Oregon, Dr. Noth's car was sent to Arbon to fetch Herman, who was to take her body home to Wisconsin. That December the paper said he had been farming at Arbon for the past year.

From then on the Herman Noths turned up in the South Arbon news from the Highland neighborhood at the south end, where Mattie's family lived. The South Arbon column of September 9, 1915, told how Mrs. Gus Brahmstadt had Mr. and Mrs. Herman Noth, Albert Noth and Mattie's sisters Mamie, Virginia, Irene and Thelma Nunnelley to dinner, and Dr. Noth and his wife came out from American Falls to spend a Sunday with the couple. Before Thanksgiving, the North Arbon column noted, Herman took a load of turkeys to Pocatello. That fall the Highland school went up on Mamie Nunnelley's land.

Virginia had gone to Salt Lake City in 1913 to train at the Holy Cross hospital. In June 1918 she and Mrs. R. F. Noth visited Mr. and Mrs. Herman Noth at Arbon, and the Press reminded readers that Mrs. Noth "was formerly Miss Mattie Nunnelly." In October 1918, when Dr. Noth was down with influenza, Virginia was called from Salt Lake to help nurse him.

The winter of 1919

On Saturday, January 18, 1919, Herman and Mattie and their son drove down from Arbon. Herman went home the next day to care for his livestock, leaving his wife and son as guests of Dr. and Mrs. Noth. In early February the Arbon column reported that Mattie was visiting there.

She died at the doctor's house on Saturday, February 22, 1919, after an illness of about ten days. She was 28. The Press said she left her husband, two small children, her father and four sisters, Virginia, Mayme (Mamie), Irene and Thelma, who were all nurses and had helped care for her through her illness. She was a Baptist. The paper recalled that she had lived in American Falls for several years before her marriage, and for the past several years with her husband "at Arbon on a ranch." The funeral was held from the Noth home on the Monday afternoon, with music by a male quartette. The paper did not say what her illness was.

That October the Press reported the funeral of "little Richard Noth," the eight-month-old son of Herman Noth. The baby had died at Logan, Utah. Relatives had cared for him after his mother's death; he had ailed for many months. He was buried at American Falls.

The papers read for this post do not name the couple's other child, or say what became of Herman Noth and the Arbon ranch after 1919.

On this site: the Nunnelley sawmill fire of 1916, how the new telephone line brought Dr. Noth out to the valley in 1915, the earliest wedding on record held in the valley itself at Christmas 1913, the Summit area history and the Nunnelley family album.