Noe, Cotton, 1864-1953

Poet, teacher, lawyer.

John Thomas Cotton Noe was born in Washington County, Ky. He attended Franklin College in Indiana and did graduate work at Cornell and at the University of Chicago. He taught English for a time and was an administrator at the secondary school level. He later taught English at Lincoln Memorial University and at the University of Kentucky, where he became head of the College of Education. He published seven volumes of poetry and wrote many poems for anthologies under the name Cotton Noe. In March, 1926, the General Assembly of Kentucky conferred the honor of Poet Laureate of Kentucky on Noe which he retained until his death in 1953.

James Thomas Cotton Noe was born on May 2, 1864 in Washington County, Kentucky, seven miles from Springfield. He attended public and private schools in Springfield up to the age of eighteen and then continued his education at Franklin College, Indiana. After receiving awards for his knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as his oratory skills, Noe graduated from Franklin College in 1887. For the next two years he taught as a principal in small high schools in both Kentucky and Indiana before attending Cornell University for graduate studies in Shakespeare, English Literature, and Philology. Receiving his Master's Degree in 1890, Noe returned to Kentucky where he taught in a district school in Marion County before becoming an instructor in English at Williamsburg Institute, now Cumberland College, in Williamsburg, Kentucky. It was in the town of Williamsburg where he met his future wife, Sidney Stanfill. The two were married on May 2nd 1894 and in that same year Noe returned to Springfield, where he began to practice law and became Police Judge.

In 1898 Noe returned to teaching, serving as principal of the Masonic Institute, 1898-1901, and the Theodore Harris Institute, 1901-1904. He then became an instructor at the Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate Tennessee, 1904-1906. Afterwards he became an instructor of English at the Agricultural and Mechanical College, which became part of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He was named the head of the Department of Education in 1912 and served the position until 1923 when the department was raised to the rank of College of Education. Noe recommended a younger applicant for the position of dean and continued on the staff as a full professor and head of a department until 1934 when he retired from active teaching and moved to Beverly Hills, California.

While connected actively with the University of Kentucky, Professor Noe taught at about one hundred teachers institutes and gave more than a hundred commencement addresses. He also lectured in summers on the Lincoln and Redpath Chautauquas in twenty states and gave two addresses at Lake Chautauqua Assembly in New York. His Alma Mater conferred the honorary degree of Literature on him in 1919 and Georgetown College gave him the same degree in 1933. He was the 8th of the 21 founders of the National Poets Memorial of the United States of America and the General Assembly of Kentucky by a joint Resolution made him Poet Laureate of Kentucky in 1926. He taught literature in the summer school of Morehead State Teachers College, 1935-1936, and in 1937 he taught Kentucky literature and Romantic and Victorian Poets in the Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College at Richmond, Kentucky.

James Thomas Cotton Noe is the author of five volumes of poetry, The Loom of Life, The Blood of Rachel, Tip Sams of Kentucky, The Legend of the Silver Band, and The Valleys of Parnassus. He compiled an anthology of Kentucky poetry and an anthology of Kentucky eloquence and his poetry has appeared in more than thirty anthologies. James Thomas Cotton Noe died on November 9th, 1953 and was buried at the Lexington Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky.