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YOUR PURCHASE OF THESE BOOKS SUPPORTS THE WEB SITES THAT BRING TO YOU THE HISTORY BEHIND OLD AIRFIELD REGISTERS

Your copy of the Davis-Monthan Airfield Register 1925-1936 with all the pilots' signatures and helpful cross-references to pilots and their aircraft is available at the link. 375 pages with black & white photographs and extensive tables

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The Congress of Ghosts (available as eBook) is an anniversary celebration for 2010.  It is an historical biography, that celebrates the 5th year online of www.dmairfield.org and the 10th year of effort on the project dedicated to analyze and exhibit the history embodied in the Register of the Davis-Monthan Airfield, Tucson, AZ. This book includes over thirty people, aircraft and events that swirled through Tucson between 1925 and 1936. It includes across 277 pages previously unpublished photographs and texts, and facsimiles of personal letters, diaries and military orders. Order your copy at the link.

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Military Aircraft of the Davis Monthan Register 1925-1936 is available at the link. This book describes and illustrates with black & white photographs the majority of military aircraft that landed at the Davis-Monthan Airfield between 1925 and 1936. The book includes biographies of some of the pilots who flew the aircraft to Tucson as well as extensive listings of all the pilots and airplanes. Use this FORM to order a copy signed by the author, while supplies last.

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Art Goebel's Own Story by Art Goebel (edited by G.W. Hyatt) is written in language that expands for us his life as a Golden Age aviation entrepreneur, who used his aviation exploits to build a business around his passion.  Available as a free download at the link.

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Winners' Viewpoints: The Great 1927 Trans-Pacific Dole Race (available as eBook) is available at the link. This book describes and illustrates with black & white photographs the majority of military aircraft that landed at the Davis-Monthan Airfield between 1925 and 1936. The book includes biographies of some of the pilots who flew the aircraft to Tucson as well as extensive listings of all the pilots and airplanes. Use this FORM to order a copy signed by the author, while supplies last.

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Clover Field: The first Century of Aviation in the Golden State (available in paperback) With the 100th anniversary in 2017 of the use of Clover Field as a place to land aircraft in Santa Monica, this book celebrates that use by exploring some of the people and aircraft that made the airport great. 281 pages, black & white photographs.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Thanks to Guest Editor Bob Woodling for help researching this page.

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I'm looking for information and photographs of Noyes and his airplane to include on this page. If you have some you'd like to share, please click this FORM to contact me.

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DEWEY LEVI NOYES

Dewey Noyes was born January 27, 1899 at Rutland, VT. His first U.S. Census in 1900 listed him living in Rutland with his parents, George, age 41, mother, Lizzie M. (40) and three older brothers. I could find no 1910 or 1920 Census information for him. However, from FindaGrave, the following describes the passing of his father from the Rutland (VT) Daily Herald, Dec. 11, 1907. So Dewey was living in Rutland in 1907. Incidentally, if his father George was 41 years old at the 1900 Census, then the news article misstates his age in 1907.

George Noyes, aged 52 years, died early this morning at his home on Park street after a long illness with a complication of diseases but as a direct result of a shock of paralysis suffered about three weeks ago. He is survived by his wife, five sons and one daughter, all of this city. The funeral will be held at the house tomorrow afternoon.

About a year later Dewey and his sister Helen were admitted to the Rutland City Farm or “poor farm.” But in 1909 he “found a home” and was released from the City Farm. In the 1910 census, Dewey’s mother remarried and took in Helen. His mother died in 1916. Her obituary from from the Rutland Daily Herald, April 3, 1916, below, indicates that Dewey was living in Rutland in 1916, so the home he found must have been there in 1916. 

Mrs. Lizzie M. Noyes of Pearl street died yesterday afternoon at 12:30 o'clock at the Rutland hospital after a week's illness with heart trouble. She was 63 years old and a native of Sherburne. Mrs. Noyes had been a resident of this city for 35 years. She leaves a daughter, Miss Helen Noyes and five sons, Charles G., Victor, William D., Henry H. and D.L. Noyes, all of this city. 

 

Dewey Noyes, Ca. 1929 (Source: Web)
Dewey Noyes, Ca. 1929 (Source: Web)

 

There is some mention that Noyes was enrolled at St. John's College in Annapolis as Dewey Lewis Noyes. In the CIRCULAR OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, for the Academic Year 1920-1921, SUB-FRESHMAN CLASS, Dewey Lewis Noyes was enrolled in the "Scientific Course."
After graduation he married Ruth Eloise Brown using the name Dewey Lewis Noyes (see below). Both U.S. Census forms I examined had his middle name listed as "Levi."

Noyes landed at Pitcairn Field sometime between May 12 and June 12, 1928 (he didn't enter an exact date). He carried Clifford Ball as his single passenger. They flew in an unidentified Fairchild aircraft and upon departure identified their destination as Pittsburgh, PA. Please direct your browser to Ball's link to learn more about his and Noyes' early air mail service in the Pittsburgh area, 1927-1929.

Photograph, left, shows Noyes with "Miss Pittsburgh," a Waco 9, which was owned by Ball (not a Register airplane). Another photograph of Noyes and "Miss Pittsburgh" is at the link.

"Miss Pittsburgh" still exists and, since April 28, 1995, hangs overhead today in static display in the landside terminal of the Pittsburgh International Airport, below. Note the difference in the propeller and spinner.

"Miss Pittsburgh," Pittsburgh Int'l. Airport, September 6, 2016 (Source: Webmaster)

The Spring, 2011 issue of the Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine featured an article about the acquisition by the airport of "Miss Pittsburgh," early aviation in the city, Ball and his commercial flight services. See the link.

Air Mail Inaugural, The New York Times, May 20, 1929 (Source: NYT)

 

The inauguration of air mail delivery from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, OH was captured by The New York Times (NYT) of May 20, 1929, right. Noyes was the pilot. The photograph of Noyes and "Miss Pittsburgh" linked above was probably one of these night flights. "Bettys Field" should read Bettis Field.

Noyes was married sometime in the early to mid-1920s to Ruth Eloise Brown. They were soon divorced. Brown led an interesting life. Her 1952 obituary appeared in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine, January 1952, page 30, below.

Ruth Eloise Brown Bunster, the daughter of Ernest Edwards and Mabel Alnette (Denis) Brown, was born in Cleveland on June 13, 1903, and died of pernicious anemia in SantiagoChile, on May 17, 1951.
When she was a child, the family moved to Oberlin, and she went to the Oberlin public schools. While a student in the Oberlin high school [class of 1920], she took some music courses in the Conservatory, and from 1920 to 1924 she was a regularly enrolled student, a harp major.
After leaving Oberlin, she played in small ensembles in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. She then went to Paris for further study and lived there a number of years. The last part of her life was spent in SantiagoChile.
She was three times married: in 1928 to Dewey Lewis Noyes, a commercial aviator, from whom she was divorced; to Walter L. Davis, from whom she was also divorced; and in 1935, to Fernando Hector Thomas Joseph Bunster. They made their home in Chile. Her husband and her mother, formerly Registrar and Secretary of the Conservatory, survives her.

 

 

 

Notice that the article states she was married to Noyes in 1928. This is probably an error (see below), unless he was married for a very, very short time before he married his second wife, Blanche..

Noyes flew the mail for Ball about 30 months. The 1930 Census placed him in Lakewood, OH (a community just west of Cleveland) living, at age 31, with his second wife and fellow Pitcairn Register pilot Blanche Wilcox Noyes (age 29). They had married ca. 1928. They rented their apartment for $75 per month. Both their occupations were listed as "Aviator (Pilot)" in the "Commercial Flying" industry.

Noyes Air Crash, The New York Times,
December 12, 1935
(Source: NYT)

 

According to information gleaned from The Sohioan, October, 1929 at the link, Noyes joined the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in Cleveland during June, 1929. Below, from the link, is a photomontage of Noyes and Blanche, and the Travel Air B-4000, NR657H, S/N 1242, the Register airplane flown by Blanche to Pitcairn Field in 1930.

The Sohioan, October, 1929 (Source: Web)

In The Sohioan article, an interesting testimonial was delivered to the Noyes couple, "To the best of our knowledge, the Noyes family is one of about three 100% licensed pilot families in the United States, the other two being Mr. and Mrs. [Phoebe Fairgrave] Omlie of Memphis, Tennessee, and Mr. and Mrs. [Gladys] O'Donnell of Long Beach, California." Consider the probablility that all of them would show up in our Registers and be featured on these Web sites.

I have no other information about Noyes' activities in our out of aviation during the rest of the early 1930s. If you can help fill in the blanks, please let me KNOW.

According to records at ancestry.com, on September 30, 1935, Dewey and Blanche arrived by ship aboard the S.S. Queen of Bermuda. The ship left Hamilton, Bermuda on September 28th. Their address was listed on the passenger list as 19 Pingry Place, Elizabeth, NJ.

Noyes was killed in an aircraft accident on December 11, 1935, about ten weeks after he returned from Bermuda. The New York TImes of December 12, 1935, left, documented the accident, which occurred about 50 miles southwest of Rochester, NY.

Note in the article that Noyes had moved from his employment with Sohio. At the time of the accident he flew for the Ethyl Gasoline Company of Newark, NJ. This explains his home address cited on the immigration passenger list, above. Weather was a major factor in the crash, which killed him and his passenger, another Ethyl employee.

The crash must have been extremely violent (but what crash isn't) because the article states, " Investigators said it was difficult to determine if the craft had been a monoplane or a biplane." It was a biplane, specifically a Beech Staggerwing model 17-R, NC499N, S/N 17R-1, manufactured November 4, 1932. On April 20, 1934, the airplane was sold to Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, painted black & Ethyl Yellow. Interestingly, this airplane was the first Beech Staggerwing ever built. One source states that, on May 24, 1935, the airplane was, "... delivered to pilot Dewey L. Noyes from Ethyl Gasoline Corp, New York City (NY) ($11,827,35)." It was delivered about a month after it was purchased, probably to give it time to be painted and/or modified for Ethyl fuel testing.

Regardless, the crash left the airplane in such poor shape that Ethyl abandoned it and buried it on the spot. The airplane also landed and is signed in the Peterson Field Register twice during 1933. It was flown by Peterson Field pilot Leon George Larson. Larson was a test pilot for Beech at the time.

Noyes was 38 years old when he died. Blanche lived on until October 6, 1981. They had no children and I could find no information that she ever remarried. Her obituary is exhibited on her biography page over on the Parks Field Web site at the link.

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THIS PAGE UPLOADED: 01/22/16 REVISED: 01/28/16, 09/07/16