S. Fred Noon, Attorney at Law
October 3, 2008
Samuel Frederick Noon was born in San Jose, California in 1879, but came with his family to Oro Blanco, AZ at the age of one. His parents were Dr. Adolphus and Emma Noon, who had come to the area because of mining interests and the potential for a new start in a growing state. Dr. Noon practiced medicine, raised cattle, and mined in the Oro Blanco-Nogales area until his death in 1931 at the age of 93.
When S. F. Noon was a child, the town of (new) Oro Blanco was a stage stop with hotel, store, and mill for the surrounding mining district. As a town, it lasted only a few years, but during that time Fred grew up and attended the one-room school. Along with his four older brothers and younger sister, Fred became bilingual in English and Spanish. This upbringing influenced him for life. When he moved with his parents to up-and-coming Nogales in 1898, he was effectively a self-educated man with a strong interest in law. In those days you “read law” under an established attorney and then passed the bar, which he did in 1904. Fred’s law career began in the same year that the Santa Cruz County Courthouse was dedicated, and where he worked for many years. Fred was appointed Clerk of the District Court in Nogales when Santa Cruz County was established and served there five years. He then was elected District Attorney in Nogales where he served three terms, besides two terms as County Supervisor. He was on the Board of Education and also served as the U. S. Vice-Consul in Nogales, Sonora, besides having a private practice of his own.
In 1903, Fred joined Brodie’s First Cavalry Troop of Nogales, a National Guard unit that was activated to assist in quelling violence during a miners’ strike in Morenci. Apparently they had to buy uniforms but never got paid by the government for their trouble.
During the years that Fred Noon practiced law in Nogales, he was the attorney for a number of people who had dealings with the Land Office (now BLM). The Mexican land grants in the area had been processed through the Court of Private Land Claims and either disallowed or allowed. If they were disallowed, the property was essentially up for grabs, and in some areas homesteading was opened up. But from the time of the Gadsden Purchase until the early 1900s, people had been living on these “land grants” without documents of possession. Many of them were Mexican-Americans and some spoke little English even if they had been born in the United States. Fred Noon became the attorney for a number of people whose land holdings were in jeopardy. Real estate entrepreneurs saw it as an opportunity for cheap land, while Fred had sympathy for hard-working small ranchers and farmers who had lived on the land, sometimes for 30 years or more. He helped them work through the legal system to obtain clear title to their land and forestall the onslaught of land grabbers. Among those in the Arivaca area were Phil Ward and Rita Sanchez de Mora. Rita had married an alleged Mexican citizen, and although she was born in the U. S. and had farmed in Arivaca valley for years and even held water rights, her tenancy was threatened because of her husband’s legal status. Fred was able to show that his status should have no bearing on her property rights because she had not moved with him to Mexico. In those days, if a woman citizen married an alien and went to his country with him, she lost her American citizenship, but if she could prove that she had stayed in the U. S. she could retain it; however, there was a question about this for some time. In fact, Fred showed that Mora had probably been born in the U. S. but spent his childhood in Mexico. People didn’t always have the paperwork necessary to protect their rights. Times were different then, but Rita kept her homestead.
As District Attorney in Nogales, S. Fred Noon was front and center in any case of local interest. One of the more widely publicized cases involved the murder of Tomás Elias by the sons of Charles Proctor. (see the Connection, January 2000) As District Attorney, he prosecuted the case, which ended up finding the Proctors not guilty by reason of self-defense.
S. Fred Noon practiced law in Nogales until 1925, when he moved his family to San Diego, California. He opened a law practice in 1926 and practiced law until almost the day he died at the age of 86. During the years in San Diego he drew on his upbringing in Southern Arizona and fluency in Spanish learned growing up in Oro Blanco. Fred served as counsel to the Mexican Consul. According to an article by Leland Stanford, Fred was considered to be one of the best authorities on Mexican law in the United States. He was considered a friend of the Mexican-American community and would often give free legal counsel to San Diegans who spoke no English. In this capacity, he plays a bit part in Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor, providing legal help to Victor’s bootlegging grandfather, the main character. “The potpourri of Spanish-Mexican-American traditions had influenced California’s legal milieu” and into that system Fred Noon found a niche that suited his talents as well as his desire to support justice.
In 1931, Fred Noon was an attorney for the group of Mexican-American parents who filed suit against the Lemon Grove school system against the segregation of their children. This was the first successful legal challenge to school segregation in the United States. Although in this time period there was a large influx of Mexicans immigrating legally into the United States, about 95% of these children had been born in the United States. The parents group had gone to the Mexican consul in San Diego, and he referred them to Fred Noon and A. C. Brinkley for legal help. They successfully won the case in favor of the students. A documentary film was made of this case, called “The Lemon Grove Incident. ”
Fred and his wife Natalie had four children: three daughters, Edith, Virginia and Sarah, and one son, Bonsall, all born in Nogales. Bonsall also became an attorney and practiced with his father in their firm, Noon and Noon. Bonsall became a Superior Court Judge in San Diego.
The Noon family is rightfully proud of “Uncle Fred” who not only provided an example of a lifetime supporting justice, but who also provided a window on Oro Blanco in the 1880s. He took pictures of Oro Blanco in the days when few people had cameras, and often wrote letters of reminiscence regarding his childhood days to his namesake nephew, Fred C. Noon of Arivaca.
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Hi Mary,
i have been looking for you for several years. I was spelling your name wrong. I hope this gets to you.
Linda