Noah Henry Schmidt was born July 29, 1884, the son of Hermann Schmidt and Anna Elizabeth Pletsch. Noah’s father was born in Hessen, Germany and emigrated to Canada, about 1861, with his parents, John Schmidt and Catherine Kraft.  They settled on a farm in the Township of South Easthope, Perth County.

On May 5, 1863, Hermann married twenty-one year old Anna Elizabeth Pletsch, the daughter of Fredrick Pletsch and Elizabeth Reese who were also born in Germany and had emigrated to Canada in the early 1840s. Elizabeth was born about 1842 in South Easthope Township. Hermann and Elizabeth had nine children. Noah was the youngest.

Until his early twenties Noah worked on the family farm or as a labourer on neighbouring farms. On October 25, 1907, Noah married twenty-three year old Margaret (Maggie) Roth, the daughter of Nicholas Roth and Barbara Luckhardt in the Town of Preston, which is now part of the City of Cambridge. Maggie’s parents also farmed in South Easthope Township. She was the eldest of nine children.

Shortly after their marriage, Noah and Maggie moved to the Village of Norwich, which is south of the town of Woodstock. Noah worked as a miller in the village. Their only child, Edith May Schmidt, was born in Norwich at five thirty on the morning of May 10, 1909 at their Church Street home.
In 1910, Noah took a job as labourer with the Grand Trunk Railway. Consequently, he moved his family to Stratford and rented a house at 225 Ontario Street. Within the year, he was accepted in the Grand Trunk’s four- year apprenticeship program for boiler makers. Noah also purchased the newly built house at 95 Water Street.

For some reason, perhaps because boiler making was not to his liking, Noah left the Grand Trunk Railway about 1913 and joined the McLeod Milling Company, in Stratford, as a miller. The year 1917 marked another major change for the family. They moved to a house on Cambria Street and Noah established a grocery store at 143 Nelson Street at the corner of Cambria, now a vacant lot. By 1920, he relocated to 351 Ontario Street, the present home of Yesterday’s Things and Books. The property included the grocery store and their residence. By the 1930s, Noah and Maggie moved to Romeo Street, which in those days was in North Easthope Township. They lived on Romeo Street for the rest of their lives.

Maggie died on April 22, 1946 and Noah on February 5, 1959. They are buried in South Easthope Cemetery. Their daughter, Edith, married Leslie Tracksell Hutchison and had four children, three of whom survived. Edith and Leslie lived into their nineties and are buried in Avondale Cemetery.