Preface: There were three Noltimiers in early Barnes County history: Louis, Charlie and Fred. They were cousins - their three fathers were brothers. Louis had a farm nine miles northeast of Valley City. Charlie had a farm about five miles southeast of Valley City. Fred had a farm near Oriska. The following write-up is about Louis Noltimier - the one that Noltimier Township was named after.
Louis Noltimier's parents were both from Germany (Hannover area). He was born in Missouri (1856) as they made their way up the Mississippi, finally settling in Northport, Minnesota. When he was 24, he and a friend, Bill Olson, shipped a carload of horses and machinery in to Valley City and started to work, breaking ground for others. That fall, he bought a tree claim relinquishment from William Kernkamp, on which he filed a homestead. It was the Northwest ΒΌ of Section 28, Twp 141, Range 37, nine and a half miles northeast of Valley City, in what is now Noltimier Township (later named after him). Originally, a lean-to building was built for living quarters, the house being added later (as can be seen in the picture of the farm, taken about 1910). In 1885, he went to LeSueur, Minnesota, to marry Emma Jane Meyer. They had five children, Lazetta, Wilbert, Earl, Walter and Reva. The older four are all dead now (1975). In 1920, they moved to Valley City, to a house at 740 East Main Street, where he died in 1931, she in 1948. The farm remained in the family until 1938.
Of the children, Lazetta married Crearer Creighton, and they had three children; James, Louis and Dorothy. Bert married Blanche McCready and they had two children; Jean and Ross. Earl married Bertha Schulz and they had two children; Elaine and Faye. Walter and Reva never married.
Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 179