James Noble was an American politician. He served as the first U. S. Senator from the U. S. state of Indiana.
Background
James Noble was born on December 16, 1783 in Clarke County, Virginia, United States. He was the second of the fifteen children of Elizabeth Claire (Sedgwick) and Thomas Noble, a physician of Scotch descent. Toward the end of the century the family moved to Campbell County, Kentucky, where Thomas Noble had a grant of 210 acres on the Bank Lick.
Education
James received the self-directed and informal education in Campbell County, Kentucky.
Career
Noble began to read law in the office of Richard Southgate of Newport. Some six or eight years later he removed to Indiana, where his two younger brothers, Noah and Lazarus, soon followed him and where his family continued to be important in Indiana politics for many years.
He was admitted to the bar and became one of the first lawyers in Lawrenceburg. There were, perhaps, other men who knew more law than he, but, as an orator who could appeal to the emotions of the crowd, he was unsurpassed.
When Franklin County was formed in 1810, he was appointed prosecuting attorney and thereafter made Brookville his home.
In 1811 he became lieutenant-colonel of militia and the next year, when his regiment was called out to protect the frontiers of the county, he became colonel.
In 1815 he operated a ferry across the Ohio from his lands in Switzerland County.
On April 25, 1815, Governor Thomas Posey appointed him to fill an unexpired term as judge of the third circuit. The following year he was sent by the voters of Franklin County to represent them in the Indiana state constitutional convention.
Legislative work was not new to him for he had served as clerk of the territorial House of Representatives as early as 1810. In the convention he was chairman of the committees on the legislative department, elections, and banks and banking companies, and was a member of the committees on the militia, judicial department, and school lands. Characteristically, he was one of the chief leaders of the convention and when forced to a vote usually carried his point.
On November 8, 1816, four days after the meeting of the first state legislature, to which he was a representative, he and Waller Taylor were elected as Indiana's first two senators. To this same office he was reelected in 1821 and again in 1827.
His work in Congress did not bar him from other activities. In 1820 he became a director of the Brookville branch of the Vincennes Bank, and, when that institution became involved in difficulties with the United States, he was assigned by the government to settle the affair, which he did to the satisfaction of all.
Achievements
Politics
Noble fought for internal improvements and the development of the west, and he pushed along the bill in Congress to authorize the selling of the public lands in quarter sections.
Personality
Noble was popular, ambitious, and a political opportunist.
Connections
On April 7, 1803 Noble married Mary Lindsay of Newport, Kentucky.