The Noxons

Scott’s mother, Toye (née Florence Kelso Noxon), descends on her father’s side from Thomas and Gertrud (Hogeboom) Noxon, who married in 1691 and belonged to the insular if vast Dutch settlements of the Hudson Valley. Meticulous Dutch Reformed baptismal, death, and property records make pre–Revolutionary War Noxon genealogical research a delight. Toye’s grandfather was Dr. Abram Martin Noxon (b. 1824, Glens Falls, N.Y., d. 1883, Idaho Springs, Colo.), who was the first physician in the gold camps, arriving in what was then territorial Kansas in June 1860. In 1863 Dr. A. M. Noxon met and married Ella Kelso (b. 1841, Franklin Co., Ohio; d. Idaho Springs), the daughter of Robert Sylvester Kelso, Dr. Noxon’s fellow Fifty-niner.

Dr. and Mrs. Noxon’s eldest child, Victor Irwin Noxon (b. 1865), was a member of the first graduating class at the University of Colorado (1882) and his oldest child, Gertrude, became the University of Colorado’s first second-generation graduate in 1911. A lifelong Democratic party leader and activist, Vic Noxon was editor and publisher of the Boulder County Miner & Farmer. He is Scott Carpenter’s beloved Grandpa Noxon, described in Carpenter’s biography, For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut.

Vic Noxon, ca. 1936,
Boulder, Colo.