Short history of James Thomas Cotton Noe

Short history of James Thomas Cotton Noe

James Thomas Cotton Noe was born 1869 in Washington County, Kentucky near Springfield. He was educated in the schools of Springfield and Perryville, Kentucky and then attended Franklin College (Indiana) where hr received his A.B.degree in 1887. After his graduation from Franklin College he taught school and was principal of high schools in Kentucky and Indiana from 1887 to 1992. He obtained his A.M. degree in 1890. In 1891-92 he studied at Cornell University (literature and philology). In 1893 he taught at Williamsburg Institute in Kentucky and it was in Williamsburg that he married Sidney Stanfill on May 2, 1894. He practiced law in Springfield, Kentucky from 1894 to 1898. He gave up the practice of law to resume his studies at the University of Chigaco in 1899. He then returned to teaching in Hartsville, Tennessee; Pineville, Kentucky and Lincoln Memorial University and in 1908 became assistant professor of education at the University of Kentucky. He was on the faculty of the College of Education for nearly thirty years and was head department from 1912 until his retirement in 1934. Cotton Noe was Kentucky's first poet laureate, an honorary title he held from 1926 until his death in 1953. He published eight volumes of poetry before his death in Beverly Hill, California on November 9, 1953. He is buried in Lexington, Kentucky. Poem by James Thomas Cotton Noe:

SUNSET IN BREATHITT

Through purple haze of evening mountain mist,

A spiral thread of dark blue smoke arose

From hidden cove and rugged steep defile;

While like a ball of blood o'er some fair magic isle,

The sun a moment hung in deep repose,

Above a placid sea of amethyst,

In mystic prophecy of death and doom,

Then dropped and splashed the sky with crimson

spray and spume! Cotton Noe, published in "All That's Kentucky" Combs