Sam and Ed Noble arrived in Ardmore, Chickasaw Nation, in 1893 from Oakland Prairie in Pickens County after a brief stay in Pottsboro, Texas, where they had been partners in a general merchandise business and operated a ferry across the Red River into Indian Territory. They married sisters, Hattie and Eva Skinner, from their former home in western New York, and after taking part in the Cherokee Outlet land run, they chose not to prove up their claims and instead settled in the frontier town of Ardmore, then home to 2,000 residents. Their wholesale grocery, a wooden building on East Main Street near the railroad tracks, was destroyed in the great fire of 1895, with all property lost except the company books saved by Eva Noble, Ed's wife. Afterward, the brothers left the wholesale grocery trade and opened a hardware business in rented space east of the Santa Fe freight depot. Five years later they had enough money to build a brick store there, first measuring 40 by 70 feet and later enlarged by an addition of 25 by 90 feet. The business carried Racine buggies, Studebaker and Moline wagons, John Deere and Eagle plows, and wood stoves and ranges. In that store, young Lloyd Noble, Sam's son and a delivery boy, listened to local farmers and ranchers and learned of the economic hardships they faced. After a successful oil career in which he created Noble Drilling Company and Samedan Oil Corporation among others, he established the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in 1945 as a charitable trust aimed chiefly at meeting the needs of local farmers and ranchers.