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Landmark day • Wednesday, January 4, 1922

January 4, 1922: Scottsdale Gets a Judge and a Constable

Thirty years before Scottsdale had a council, the county gives it a court: the Vice President's father-in-law on the bench and a rodeo roper as constable.

Illustrated plaque for January 4, 1922 in Scottsdale history SCOTTSDALE JANUARY 4 1922 STATEHOOD & THE FARM TOWN

What happened

In December 1921 the Board of Supervisors, at the request of a Scottsdale Farm Bureau committee of Charles Miller, a Mr. Smith and Dr. J. S. Bishop, created a Scottsdale justice precinct out of parts of the Tempe and East Phoenix precincts. On January 4, 1922, according to the Arizona Republican, the supervisors appointed William E. Kimsey, the bank's president and Thomas R. Marshall's father-in-law, justice of the peace, and A. F. Fredericks constable.

Why it matters

Scottsdale would not incorporate until 1951. Until then the justice precinct was the only government with only the town's name on it: a local judge for small claims and misdemeanors and a constable to serve papers and make arrests, in a place with no police of its own.

A court for a town that wasn’t one

Until the end of 1921 Scottsdale shared its justice of the peace and its constable with Tempe. Candidates advertised to “the voters of Tempe and Scottsdale precinct,” and when a rabid dog turned up near Scottsdale in December 1921 the warning came from the Tempe precinct’s health officer. The Scottsdale Farm Bureau set out to change that. At its meeting of December 16 its committee, Charles Miller, a Mr. Smith and Dr. Bishop, reported that the Board of Supervisors had created a Scottsdale precinct, running “three miles east of the Verde river, north of Scottsdale 15 miles, south to Salt river, and west to the road just west of the old cross cut canal.” The Arizona Republican’s Scottsdale column added: “The committee is to be complimented on their work, for the officers have been badly needed in this district.”

On January 4, 1922, the paper reported nine days later, “William E. Kimsey, father-in-law of former Vice President Thomas E. [R.] Marshall, was appointed Justice of the new court … by the board of supervisors and A. F. Fredericks was appointed as constable. The new justice precinct takes in all of Scottsdale and a small portion of the Tempe and East Phoenix justice precincts.”

The judge and the constable

W. E. Kimsey was seventy, a former Indiana merchant and county clerk who had planted oranges at Scottsdale and, a year earlier, had become president of the town’s new bank. A. F. Fredericks, “Al” in later items, had won the burro roping at the town’s rodeo the previous February in ten seconds; by April 1922 the paper called him both deputy sheriff and constable.

Their work in the first months was a small town’s. “Judge Kimsey” conferred with the supervisor of the reservation about Indian ponies breaking into ranchers’ fields. The constable posted notices that stray stock would go to a pound the chamber of commerce was building on a corner of Charles Miller’s corral. In April he caught two men selling whiskey to boys near Twin Buttes, and Kimsey jailed one for twenty days and fined the other $30.

Kimsey served until he died in April 1924. A 2022 city newsletter is reported to say that Fredericks was elected constable that fall and kept the office until his death in 1950; that has not been confirmed. The 1920s politics chapter tells the rest, and the year is at 1922.