Why he matters
Scottsdale had no government of its own until 1951, but in the early 1920s it got its first bank and its first court, and the same man presided over both. William E. Kimsey was an Indiana storekeeper and county clerk who came to the Salt River Valley around 1907 for his wife’s health and planted oranges at Scottsdale. He was also the father of Lois Kimsey Marshall, whose husband, Thomas R. Marshall, was Woodrow Wilson’s vice president from 1913 to 1921.
That family tie runs through a decade of the town’s history. A land company sold the townsite in 1913 on the Vice President’s three lots. The Marshalls wintered near the Kimseys and spoke at town events. When the Farmers’ State Bank opened in January 1921, Kimsey was its president and Marshall one of its vice presidents. And when the county carved out a Scottsdale justice precinct at the end of 1921, the supervisors made Kimsey its judge.
Where to find his mark today
The Kimsey Building site. The family’s orange grove at the northwest corner of Scottsdale and Indian School roads became Mort Kimsey’s land and, in the 2020s, the development called The Kimsey.
The bank building. The 1921 bank he presided over is the Rusty Spur Saloon at 7245 E. Main Street, with the vault still inside.
Marshall Way. The gallery street is named for his son-in-law.
From Steuben County to the Arizona Canal
An 1885 history of Steuben County, Indiana, gives the early record. Kimsey was born on October 12, 1851, the son of Dr. Joseph C. Kimsey, in Allen County (the city’s 2021 preservation plan for the family’s land says DeKalb County). He married Elizabeth Dole of Huron County, Ohio, on April 11, 1872, kept a store at Salem Center, and had been its postmaster since January 1880. The couple then had two children, Lois and Wallace. The city’s plan adds that he was clerk of the Steuben County circuit court from 1886 to 1894 and that a third child, Morton, was born in Indiana; the Mort Kimsey of Scottsdale’s first town council is that son by the plan’s account. Lois married Thomas R. Marshall, a lawyer in Columbia City, Indiana, in 1895.
Elizabeth’s health brought the Kimseys west around 1907; Kimsey himself wrote in 1916 that he had “been a resident of the valley for more than nine years.” In February 1912 the Arizona Republican’s Scottsdale column reported that the Kimseys expected their son-in-law, then governor of Indiana, and noted that “Governor and Mrs. Marshall came to Scottsdale five years ago for the first time.” The city’s plan says Kimsey bought five acres north of the road near today’s Scottsdale and Indian School roads in November 1909, built three houses and planted oranges.
The Vice President’s town
From 1913, Scottsdale traded on the connection. The land company that took over the townsite that fall advertised that “VICE PRESIDENT MARSHALL purchased three lots here for his future home.” A house was going up for the Marshalls in November 1914, and in October 1917 several hundred people drove out to hear Marshall speak about the war from its front porch. The 1910s politics chapter tells those stories.
Kimsey had his own civic career. When the farmers organized a Scottsdale local of the county Farm Improvement Association in October 1915, he was elected one of its two vice presidents. In February 1916 he announced for president of the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association, the most important farm office in the Valley, and on April 4 he finished fourth of four, with 8,712 votes by the acre to John P. Orme’s 25,635. (The city’s preservation plan says he won; the newspaper’s returns say otherwise.) In the Third Liberty Loan of 1918 he was one of Charles Miller’s captains.
The bank and the court
The bank. On December 21, 1920, as the cotton market collapsed, Kimsey, Y. C. White and R. A. Chestnut filed articles of incorporation for the Farmers’ State Bank of Scottsdale, with $20,000 in capital and Kimsey named as its legal agent. “That their faith in Arizona is not disturbed by the unrest throughout the country,” the Arizona Republican wrote, “is demonstrated by their launching a banking institution at this time.” The state licensed it on December 30. It opened on Monday, January 17, 1921, and the Scottsdale column reported that “W. E. Kinsey [Kimsey], father-in-law of Vice President Marshall, is president of the bank. Vice President Marshall and Charles Miller of Scottsdale are vice presidents.” The bank lasted until the 1933 bank holiday; the bank’s guide has the rest.
The court. Until the end of 1921 Scottsdale shared a justice of the peace and a constable with Tempe. In December a Farm Bureau committee of Charles Miller, a Mr. Smith and Dr. Bishop reported that the Board of Supervisors had created a separate Scottsdale precinct, running from three miles east of the Verde River to the road west of the old Crosscut Canal, and from the Salt River fifteen miles north. On January 4, 1922, the paper reported, the supervisors appointed Kimsey justice of the peace and A. F. Fredericks constable. It was the first public office with only Scottsdale’s name on it. “Judge Kimsey” was soon settling disputes over reservation ponies in ranchers’ fields and, in April 1922, sentencing two men the constable had caught selling whiskey near Twin Buttes. The day page for January 4, 1922 and the 1920s politics chapter tell the story.
The end. Kimsey died in Phoenix on Saturday, April 12, 1924, the Indianapolis Times reported, with “Marshall and Mrs. Marshall … at his bedside,” and was buried in the family plot at Angola. The city’s plan says he held the judgeship until his death and that Elizabeth died in 1932. Marshall himself died in June 1925; his will left $10,000 “for purchase of a farm” to Morton and Clanie Kimsey of Scottsdale.
What the record doesn’t show. Where exactly the Marshalls’ house stood, how Kimsey ran his court (its docket does not survive in any source found), and who succeeded him on the bench in 1924. The county supervisors’ minutes and the Arizona Republican for April 1924, on microfilm, are the places to look.