Shenandoah County Library Archives

Shenandoah County Library Digital Archives

Rosalie Keith (Benchoff) Noel

Files

Title

Rosalie Keith (Benchoff) Noel

Subject

Noel, Rosalie Keith Benchoff (1907-1973)

Description

Portrait photograph of a Rosalie Keith (Benchoff) Noel as a young woman with short hair.

Rosalie was born in Virginia, the daughter of Howard Johnston and Kathryn (Mahon) Benchoff, originally from Pennsylvania. In the 1920 census for Woodstock, she and her family lived on Muhlenberg Street.

Her father was the Superintendent of Massanutten Military Academy in Woodstock for many years while she was growing up.

When Rosalie married in 1930, a long article published in the Daily News Leader (Staunton) on July 27th called the event, “A wedding of great interest throughout the state…”. The article went on to note that the groom, Dr. William Baker Noel (1904-1971), was from Farmville. The couple had met in Baltimore when Rosalie attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Dr. Noel was at Johns Hopkins Medical school (class of 1929). The large wedding took place in the Massanutten Military Academy’s chapel and the reception was held on the lawn outside. The couple went to the Great Lakes and Canada for their honeymoon before settling in Detroit, Michigan, where Rosalie’s new husband started a job on the staff of the Henry Ford Hospital there.

Twenty years later, the 1950 census found the family living in Henderson, North Carolina, where Dr. Noel was still a practicing surgeon and Rosalie was caring for her two sons, Robert F. and Richard J. Noel.

Rosalie stayed in North Carolina for the rest of her life. Both she and her husband are buried together in Elmwood Cemetery in Henderson, N.C.

Creator

Morrison Studio

Source

Morrison Studio Collection - Shenandoah County Historical Society

Publisher

Shenandoah County Library

Date

The glass plate negative of this image was stored in a box labeled "Feb 1933".

Contributor

Identified in 2025 by Katharine Shilling (Stamm) Schindler, a relative of the subject.

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE PERMITTED

Relation

Rosalie K. (Benchoff) Noel appears in Morrison Studio Collection Images 001856, 013736, 016794, 016974, 016975, 020159, 020276, 020287, 022480, 024401, and 024402.

Identifier

022480

Original Format

Glass Negative

Citationzork

Morrison Studio, “Rosalie Keith (Benchoff) Noel,” Shenandoah County Library Archives, accessed December 5, 2025, https://archives.countylib.org/items/show/52062.

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