Glen Charles Nobles was born April 1st, 1929, in Jackson County, to Moses Harrison "Sug" Nobles and Rosa Ruth Nichols, at the old James Nichols Place where many of his mother's people were born in a log cabin that lasted more than a century. The cabin was taken down in 1995.
Glen served in the USAF from April 1947 to June 1965 when he resigned and accepted an appointment as a Warrant Officer in the Signal Corps with the US Army. He was immediately sent to Vietnam where he served as Radio Frequency Manager for all allied forces in and adjacent to the Republic of Vietnam 1965-66. Glen was awarded the Bronze Star for his service there. He also received the Purple Heart for wounds resulting from the enemy attack upon the Hotel Victoria April 1, 1966.
Glen retired from the United States Army at Fort Rucker, Alabama, August 1, 1968.
He was employed at Apalache Correctional Institution July 1968 to June 1971, at which time he became the Postmaster at Grand Ridge, Florida. Glen again retired November 30, 1990 after serving nineteen and a half years. Much of Glen's time in the military was spent overseas, including tours in Japan, 1947-50, Philippines, 1951-53, Labrador, 1955-56, Spain, 1959-61, and then one year in Vietnam less the six weeks spent at Tripler Army Hospital being patched up from his wounds.
Most of Glen's time since retirement from the Post Office has been doing genealogy, finding where his folks came from and what they did. The oldest Nobles that Glen has found that he is directly descended from was Lewis Sanders Nobles, born in Old 96 in 1760. This Sanders Nobles was a Revolutionary Soldier from South Carolina. Glen has the stubs where Sanders was paid for his service and a horse lost during that service.
Some info on my sons:
William C. Nobles born December 25, 1950, married to Kay Gilley, is a Nuclear Engineer employed with David Melvin Engineering consultants.
Glen Charles Nobles Jr. born November 18, 1953, married Amy Burton, is a School Teacher in Jackson County.
Brady Harrison Nobles born July 25, 1957, married Beth Rentz Wilson, is Mechanic for Horticulture Department, Florida State Hospital.
Wendy Gaska asked me to do a column for the Jackson County Floridan back in 1995 since I was always finding interesting things that I wanted Wendy to use in the paper. She knew that I planned to publish a book about the early landholders, so the way she approached me was that since I was going to be trying to sell my book it would help if people knew who I was, so that sold me on the idea and in mid 1995 I began to write, and at first I tried to write enough to have an article in every paper, but that didn’t work out, so we dropped back to Sunday and Wednesday, then just Sunday, so now my article appears in Sunday paper.
My world until I was thirteen was very small. We lived on a 60 acre farm where we are now known the school books as subsistence farmers. As you may know, that means we grew what we ate with a little over to sell as money crops, like a few fat hogs in winter, butter and eggs to the rolling store, sugar cane syrup in barrels, and we planted 30 to 50 acres of peanuts for market that we plowed with horses and mules and hoed every hill by hand.
As a boy I spent much of my time in the woods with my sling shot, then later when I was 16, with a .22 caliber rifle. My limits were the Bateaux Pond, Cowpen Pond, and Wolfhead swamp. There I fished and hunted with other boys, most of which are still living. My closest associates were James Newman who lives within two hundred yards of where I used to spend the night with him. Alfred and Alvin Allen were two others that I spent a lot of time with hunting and fishing. They lived on the Cowpen Pond, and I did too, quite a bit. We fished with worms that we grunted up with a stob out in the woods. We would drive a stob down into the ground and then we would rub a board, or flat object across the top of the stob to make it vibrate. The worms would come up out of the ground when we tickled them with the vibrations. I also loved to ride horses and my horse-riding buddy was Alfred Basford who now lives in Chattahoochee, Florida, with his wife, Vivian Mercer. Alfred Basford and I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons riding our horses over the countryside where we mostly rode in the woods.
I began to work on the farm as soon as I was able to carry stove wood into the house, or carry a water bucket of water to the back porch. I also began plowing when I had to reach up to the plow handles and was too small to lift the plow at the end of the row.
The Pioneer, historically true happenings about Jackson County Pioneers