Frederick Charles Fisher

Daily Independent Journal
Wednesday, October 23, 1957

Judge Frederick C. Fisher of Ross died last night of a heart attack at Marin General Hospital.

Judge Fisher, who was 82 years old, had been a justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, the Mayor of the town of Ross, and a lawyer whose practice took him abroad and required him to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Fisher was born in Plymouth, England. His parents settled in San Diego when he was 10 years old. In 1898, he joined the 3rd Artillery and saw action in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, remaining in Manila after the armistice.

During the war he served on the staff of General Arthur MacArthur. Judge Fisher was given the assignment of persuading the hiding leader of the Filipino insurrection after the armistice, Emilio Aguinaldo, to give himself up. Judge Fisher was successful in his mission. For many years he kept a copy of Aguinaldo's signed-in-blood capitulation.

Judge Fisher studied law while working as a clerk in a Manila court and later was admitted to the bar. He returned to the United States and practiced law at Washington DC, for years before President Woodrow Wilson appointed him to the Philippine Supreme Court in 1917.

Judge Fisher returned to this country in 1927 and represented a number of Philippine clients before the U.S. Supreme Court.

He was asked to be a member of the American-Mexican Claims Commission which heard and arbitrated claims, some of them 100 years old, of American citizens against Mexico. He also was associated with Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes of the U.S. Supreme Court in arbitration of a border dispute between Guatemala and Honduras in the early 1930s.

As a legal counsel for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co., he made frequent visits to Liberia and to Europe. He spoke Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Portuguese.

Judge Fisher and his wife Grace, lived at 19 Wellington Road, Ross, since 1941. Judge Fisher was a member, and later mayor, of the Ross Town Council. He helped codify the Ross town ordinances.

He also did legal work gratis for the Ross Valley Sanitary District when the Greenbrae area opened up.

Judge Fisher was a vestryman of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in San Rafael.

He was a member of the Press and Union League Club of San Francisco, the Manila Elks Lodge; a former member of the Cosmos Club of Washington DC; and an honorary member of the Manila Rotary Club.

He is survived by his wife; 3 children, Mrs. Alfred C. McCrea of Philadelphia, PA; Robert C. Fisher of San Francisco; and Frederick R. Fisher of Paraguay; and a brother, Robert S. Fisher of Carlotta, Humboldt County.