There seems little chance they met in New York City while Kathryn was attending Columbia Teachers College. Kathryn returned to her hometown of Wilkes Barre, PA, after graduation and picked up her teaching certificate, not exactly something a woman would do who planned to court a man living in Baltimore.
According to data provided for a family genealogy (3) by Kathryn herself, she and Robert married on June 7, 1918. The genealogy doesn't provide a location, and the genealogist's records were destroyed by vandals.(4) There is no record of a marriage certificate for Robert and Kathryn in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, or in the Manhattan records of the City of New York.(5)
Family tradition states that one or both families opposed the marriage on religious grounds, supposedly because the bride was Protestant and the groom was Catholic. Whatever if anything might have happened, Kathryn and Robert shied away from their relatives for many years. There were virtually no visits with the children's grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. None of the Noble children have any significant recollections of their parents' kin.
The tradition continues that, as a result of this religious conflict, Robert and Kathryn pledged not to foist any particular religion on the children. The children chose an assortment of churches to attend, including Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist and Presbyterian.
Robert and Kathryn had been married about six months when World War I ended on 11 November 1918.
Their son, Robert James Noble, Jr was born at the hotel on 9 October 1920.(9) There was a terrible thunderstorm that Saturday night, and the ambulance was several hours late, so delivery was accomplished right at the hotel. (10) Kathryn had gone to the hospital earlier, but the doctor sent her home because she wasn't ready yet. Robert was outraged when he got a bill for the delivery room anyway. (11)
Robert was still working at the inn at the time of its great fire, according to his children.(12)
Robert no doubt waited to see whether Cahill would rebuild. When Cahill retired from the Clark Company in 1922, (13) Robert left Baltimore for a job at the Monticello Hotel in Norfolk, Virginia.
Mount Holly Inn
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Completed in 1900 as a summer resort overlooking the Gwynns Falls Valley from Clifton Avenue, the four-story Mount Holly Inn's 120 sleeping rooms offered Baltimoreans a cool respite from the local summer weather.(14) The inn was located at the corner of Clifton and Lyndhurst in the Windsor Hills and Walbrook sections of Baltimore City.
[The Windsor Hills area, where the inn was situated,] was so "country" that cows wandered up Alto road. Monticello road. . . consisted of two muddy ruts. There was no store of any kind until you got to Garrison boulevard or Walbrook junction. Windsor Mill road was the only decently surfaced street leading into the community. The Mount Holly line No. 1300 streetcar ran along [Windsor Mill road]. (15)
After the First World War, the Mt Holly Inn was bought and converted to a year-round resort by Winfield Scott Cahill, President and Treasurer of the James Clark Company, marine engine and boiler builders and repairers of steamships. Cahill's parents were both Irish Catholics born in America, his father a Civil War naval hero. Cahill was born in Baltimore on Nov 2, 1861 (16), making him almost thirty years Robert's senior. Cahill held interests in tugboat operations, in harbor dredging companies and marine railways, according to his obituary. A Baltimore Sun piece related the following:
At the Cahill plant, and that of the James Clark Company, of which Mr Cahill was president before the formation of the company which bore his name, were built most of the engines and boilers for the tugs in Baltimore's harbor and the great fleet of steamers which plied the Chesapeake and its tributaries in the latter part of the last and first two decades of this century. (17)
One can speculate that Robert knew or was introduced to Cahill through mutual acquaintances, given the latter's Irish heritage and steamship business connections.
Mrs Helen Boyd was chaperone of the inn.
Under her ever-watchful eyes, couples danced the two-step, gavotte and whirled to the waltz. Dances looked upon as too flamboyant were strictly taboo -- although the "Bunny Hug" and "Grizzly Bear" were accepted innovations. (18)
The inn burned to the ground in its second fire in twenty years, which occurred on December 7, 1920.
The burning inn, situated on a hill, cast a shimmering glow in the night sky which attracted people from all over the city. . . . When the final flames went out, only a couple of walls and a chimney were left standing.
No lives were lost and only minor injuries resulted. Senator Ovington E Weller and his wife, who were among the 136 guests the night of the fire, lost all the clothing and jewelry in their room.
Cahill's plans to rebuild never materialized. He tried offering a barn on the property as a dance hall, but the venture wasn't tremendously successful. On the site a recreational center was built and dedicated to Cahill, who donated the property to the city in 1939.
Footnotes
1. Some family members say there was an Aunt Kate living in Baltimore who was quite wealthy and took in her niece. Kathryn's Aunt Katherine Morgan seems to have lived in Wilkes Barre her whole life. An Aunt Laura, possibly Laura Barnes, who lived in Baltimore in the late 1920s, might simply have been a friend of Kathryn's.
2. One story says Kathryn worked part time as a food auditor; another says she was a cashier. She worked with Robert at the Lord Baltimore or the Mount Holly Inn, according to some versions; she worked at the Lord Baltimore or some other downtown hotel while Bob worked at the Mount Holly Inn, according to other renderings. Pat remembers a story about a supply elevator in the sidewalk involving one of these hotels.
3. The Descendants of the Four Grandfathers of Walter Samuel, Jr and Mary Louise (Wootten) Carpenter (Carpenter-Wootten), by George Valentine Massey, 1970, Chart 23
4. According to a May 1980 letter from Massey, "Vandals broke into my house some years ago & ransacked my genealogical files. Some were burnt in the fireplace. So I am afraid I do not have the notes I made for your grandmother."
5. This record should be recoverable once US marriage records are gathered and stored in a national database.
6. Kathryn says her birth certificate states her parents were residing at the Mount Holly Inn at the time of her birth. She adds that her father's place of birth is listed as Red Bank, NJ.
7. Photo on file at Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD, labelled Mt Holly Inn, Dec 1915, Barker 209.
8. Enoch Pratt Free Library, in a letter dated Jan 12, 1993, said that the neighborhood where the Mt Holly Inn was listed as the 15th Ward in a 1924 Baltimore City ward map. This information might help locate the hotel in the 1920 Federal Census. Robert and Kathryn Noble do not appear in the Soundex of the 1920 Maryland Federal Census, based on a search conducted by the writer.
9. Bob says his birth certificate is says West End Maternity Hospital, 103 W Franklin, Ward 15, Baltimore City, MD, which is marked over with the Mount Holly Inn.
10. According to Bob Noble.
11. According to John Noble.
12. It isn't clear why the Noble family doesn't appear in the 1920 Maryland Soundex. Census takers usually would poll hotels in small towns, but it isn't clear what their practice would have been in the bigger cities.
13. Ibid
14. "Windsor Hills Best Known As City Summer Retreat", by Harold I Silverman, The Baltimore American, Dec 21, 1958.
15. "The Early Days of Windsor Hills", by Robert E Base, The Baltimore Sun, Jul 29, 1956. Photo in article has caption: "It was in 1910 that this photo was taken, looking west from the intersection of Clifton avenue and Mount Holly street. The big building is the Mount Holly Inn; the Cahill Recreation Center now occupies the site."
16. History of Baltimore, Maryland, S B Nelson, Publisher (1898), pp 791-2
17. The Baltimore Sun, Sunday Oct 16, 1945.
18. Silverman, ibid
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