Unbearable Loss - A Fishing Trip With Pa

NATHAN FARR > WILLIAM FARR > WILLIS CORNELIUS FARR > ELNA ANN FARR

DR CHRISTOPHER RIBBLE > SUSANNAH RIBBLE m JOHANNES C KEGLEY > MICHAEL CAGLEY > JOHN L CAGLEY > MARY CAGLEY m Henry Noble > MONTFORD CAGLEY NOBLE

Montford Cagley Noble, 23, married a cousin, Elna Ann Farr, in Plainfield, Iowa in early July of 1919. She went with her husband, also of Plainfield, to their new home in Grand Island, Nebraska to start their married life. Not a month had passed when word came to her of the death of her father, a well-respected Methodist man and farmer, W.C. Farr, who was a mere 64 years of age. She returned for his funeral and then went back to Nebraska.  Less than a year later, she was dead from peritonitis following abdominal surgery at a Lincoln, Nebraska hospital.

Montford, or "Mont" as he was called by those who knew him, found a new bride in about 1921 in Nebraska.  Jeanette "Nettie" Forke was part of a large Elk, Nebraska farming family.  Her paternal grandfather had come from Germany and settled in Illinois.  Her father relocated from Illinois to give the wide open spaces of Nebraska a try.

Soon after their marriage, Nettie gave birth to their first child, Robert, on 14 Jun 1922.  They later had two more boys, Glen and Richard. The Noble's spent much of the next few years in Nebraska, but spent a few years in the Springfield, IL area.  Mont was a civil engineer.  In 1930 he was working for a steel mill in that capacity.


In August of 1939, Mont and his son Robert, now nearly 17,  took a fishing trip to Lac La Croix in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Lac La Croix is a border lake surrounded by what is now Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area to the South, and to the North lies Ontario's Quetico Park. The area is a protected canoe area with no public road access and some of the finest fishing in the world.

According to reports, the two had hired a guide to take them and a friend, David Simmons, into the deep pine forest and to the fishing areas. What started out a routine fishing expedition on August 10, 1939, ended with the deaths of both Mont and his son Robert, who were drowned after capsizing their canoe over a set of rapids.

The Forestry Branch at Fort Francis and Minnesota Game and Fisheries  were called in to do search and recovery and eventually, the provincial police arrived.  The bodies were located on August 14th.

In 1940, Nettie was living with her two sons and a boarder in Lincoln, Nebraska.  She lived on, never remarrying, until 11 Feb 1983 where she died in Los Angeles County, California at the age of 84.