Fredricks Vaudeville Stage Show

August Bert Fredrick was the half-brother of my husband’s great-grandmother, Bozana Fridrich Svejkovsky. He was born on the 31st of August 1883. His 1907 marriage license names his parents as, “Jas Pessick and Frances F Fredrick”.  It is uncertain whether his parents were ever married. I became interested in AB Fredrick’s story when I learned he was a “vaudevillian”. Searching the traditional family resources, along with newspapers and Billboard magazine opened up his story.

In 1946 Anna Stransky sent a letter to her cousin Bill Svejkovsky in Oklahoma. She shared some family news and mentioned her Uncle August and his family, who she had hardly known - “. .  the last time we heard of them they were traveling with a Circus side-show.” Family members were surprised that August had gone into “that sort of life.” In the early twentieth century, when August Fredrick was beginning his family, he operated a postal route near Geddes South Dakota. But, the 1930s and 40s found he, his wife Vera, and his two children Carlyle and Maxine, caught up in the Show Business life.

The Fredrick family may have begun this new life by “joining the circus”. They capitalized on their various talents by forming a sort of family group.  They made their home-base in Houston Texas and travelled primarily in Texas. August Fredrick was both a performer and promoter; his wife Vera Frush Fredrick was a magician; son Carlyle Fredrick a musician; and daughter Maxine Fredrick an aerial artist.

1932 City Directory of Houston Texas
Aug B Fredrick (Vera M); Orient Ball Room, manager
Carlisle M Fredrick; Musical Fredricks Novelty Band, director
Maxine, Miss; musician; Musical Fredricks Novelty Band
Musical Fredricks Novelty Band; home 5400 Harrisburg Blvd

Billboard (magazine) was founded in Cincinnati as a trade publication for men who posted “bills” on walls. From its first issue in 1894, Billboard covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for traveling entertainers.  August Frederick and his family used the Billboard mail service, and occasionally purchased promotion ads.

AB Fredrick circus unit has signed with Rice Brothers. It consists of musical act; Madam VeOra, magic and illusions; Major Dot, midget for Side Show; Maxine Fredrick, tight wire and rings; and Fredrick's trained dogs for big show. Will leave for Jackson Tennessee.
The Billboard, 21 March 1936.

In 1943 the family matriarch, Vera Frush Fredrick, died. She was remembered with a brief obituary and a memorial statement in Billboard.  

Vera M Frederick, 53, known as Madam Ve_Ara, magician, at Memorial Hospital. Houston, October 22 following a long illness. She formerly toured with the Frederick Vaudeville Playhouse tent show. Survived by her husband AB Frederick; a daughter Maxine, aerial artist; a son Carlyle, for the musical act, Fayne and Foster; and a foster son Louis L Stice, in the armed service. Interment in Brookside Memorial Park, Houston.
The Billboard, 13 November 1943.

In Memory of Our Dearly Beloved Wife and Mother “Madam Ve-Ara” Who passed away 22 October 1943. Husband – AB Fredrick, son – Carlyle I Fredrick, daughter – Maxine C Fredrick.
The Billboard, 4 November 1944.

Following Vera’s death the family forged on, placing occasional ads in Billboard’s magazine through the 1940’s.    

Wanted at Once; Team or family with specialities, anything suitable for three night stand vaudeville Tent Show. Established Texas territory. Long season; AB Fredrick, 4845 Yale Street, Houston Texas.
The Billboard, 5 April 1947.

Wanted - Single or Team doing two or more spots for Fredricks vaudeville stage show (tent), little spots, short jumps, two and three night stands. Texas only, long season. AB Fredrick, 302 Payne St, Houston Texas.
The Billboard, 16 April 1949.

The great depression years signaled a slow demise for the canvas playhouses of the Midwest. Vaudeville disappeared and the small circus began a decline.  Radio shows kept people at home, and after WWII, television and air-conditioning held sway.  Carlyle Fredrick married Mary Pearl Dozier in 1934. Maxine Fredrick married her ‘foster brother’ Louis Stice in 1946. There is no evidence that either had children. August Burt Fredrick died in 1967.  His obituary describes him as “retired entertainer and operator of a local trailer park”. He is buried with his wife Vera at Brookside Memorial Park in Houston.


Would you like to know more?

Tent Shows, by Randy Mallory, December 2018.
At the turn of the 20th century, traveling circuses and repertory theaters brought live shows to the Texas countryside. Blog Post appearing at the Sam Houston Electric Cooperative website.

About the Photo:
Trapeze Artist, by James Lechay, 1940; Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Anna Stransky's Letter: A Fridrich Family Story

In May of 1946, Anna Stransky, daughter of Joseph Stransky and Anna Fridrich, wrote a letter to her cousin Bill Svejkovsky of Oklahoma.  Bill Svejkovsky was collecting information for a family history, and Anna Stransky gave a helpful account of her grandmother’s Fridrich family.  As far as I know, Anna Stransky never married.  In 1946, when the letter was written, she was living with her sister Mary in Casper Wyoming.  From my mother-in-law, I received a copy of a ‘hand-written copy’ of this letter.  I do not know the whereabouts of the original letter.  This hand-written copy was all run together, without paragraphs. There probably were introductory and closing remarks in the original letter that were not included in the hand-written copy.  I have retyped from the copy, and present that portion of the letter here.  I have added a few bracket comments to aid identification:

Letter -  Anna Stransky of Casper, Wyoming to Bill Svejkovsky,  May 1946:

 . . . I think we have more information than you about Grandma Fridrich's [Frances Felepena Fridrich] family, but of course we would as Aunt Mary [Mary Fridrich Smith] and our Mother [Anna Fridrich Stransky] still remember the past very well.  Then there are some papers of Grandma's  that Aunt Mary saved when Grandma passed away.  There wasn't much, but I remember the divorce paper and we persuaded Aunt Mary to keep it as there were dates in it and mention of the children.  It proved helpful to Aunt Mary in establishing her birth and residence in this country when she applied for her old age pension...Grandma went by the name of Fridrich and so did her children after this first divorce, but it was not their name by birth.  Their father's name was Joseph Wasatko and that was your Mother's [Bozanna “Bessie” Fridrich Svejkovsky] rightful maiden name.  Grandma divorced him when the children were still young, and he married again, some widow [Frances Beska] in Nebraska.  She had children of her own, and they had one son together, his name is Anton Wastko [Anton Wasatko].  So he is a half-brother of your Mother's also.  We looked him up one time and he was in a bank in Lynch, Nebraska.  He had a nice family and seemed to be quite a progressive fellow.  They came over to Yankton to see us one summer about 10 years ago, but we haven't heard of them recently.  He said both his Father and Mother died years ago, and Mom says she remembers it as our Uncle Joe Fridrich from Tyndall went to the Funeral I believe.  Grandma married Mr Peseck [August Pesek] some years later and they had the one son who is Uncle August [August Bert Fridrich].  However, he never went by his right name either which should have been Pesek, but was always known as August Fredrick [also, August Frederick]. He didn't spell his name like Grandma did either.  You will notice her name has the German spelling, and her Father was a German.  She divorced Mr Peseck also, but I don't know when.  Then after her first husband's wife died in Nebraska many years later, and when she was quite elderly, she married Mr Wastko (our grandfather) again.  It didn't last but a very short time though and she left him and went back to Tyndall to live.  He didn't have any money and neither did she, so Aunt Mary says, and his son didn't approve of the marriage, so it didn't work out.  I often think that Grandma was sure ahead of her time, about fifty years at least.  We don't have any information ourselves, only what Mom and Aunt Mary know and remember.  For that reason we were of the opinion that some facts might be written in this old bible that your folks were supposed to have, that Grandma always said was given to her by her Father when she left the Old Country.  ..We don't know anything about Uncle August, other than that the last time we heard of them they were traveling with a Circus side-show.  Their son [Carlisle Frederick] was a musician and a nice boy, and we had heard that he was killed in the war in Germany.  We don't know this to be true though.  They had a girl [Maxine Frederick], who must be in her twenties now.  I saw her perform in the circus once, and she was very attractive.  Mom and Aunt Mary never could understand Uncle August going into that sort of life. He had a mail route in Geddes, S Dak for years.  But I rather think his wife was the promoter . . .

For more details about the people mentioned in Anna Stransky’s Letter, visit their pages at Family Stories, pamgarrett.com. Also see my blog post, dated 7 August 2013, and titled - The Fridrich Family: Moravia to America.

Photo:  South Dakota Landscape; USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2009. Creative Commons – Share Alike license.

The Fridrich Family: Moravia to America

Frances Fridrich (Wasatko) with her children

Joseph Fridrich and his wife Anna Novotny were both born about 1820 in Zamel, Moravia.  As best I can determine, Zamel is about 70 miles east of the city of Prague, near the present day town of Chrudim.  We only know the names of two children of Joseph Fridrich and Anna Novotny, but there were several others.  The known children were Frances Felepena Fridrich (1840) and John Fridrich (1848), both born in Zamel, Moravia.  Frances Fridrich married Joseph Wasatko about 1863 in Zamel.  America’s Homestead Act of 1862 invited a second wave of Czech immigration. In 1869 the Fridrichs and Wasatkos immigrated to America and settled near Cedar Rapid, Iowa. 

The story of Frances Felepena Fridrich is quite interesting for its time.  Family stories say that her father, Joseph Fridrich, was German.  Very little else is known of him except that he did die in Bon Homme county, Dakota Territory.  Frances first married Joseph Wasatko about 1863 in Zamel, Moravia.  Their first two children, Joseph and *Bozana “Bessie” Wasatko were born in the old country. In 1869 they immigrated to America and settled in the town of Norway, near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Three more children, Anna, William and Mary Wasatko were born to them there.  Then in 1875, Frances filed for divorce from Joseph Wasatko (Washatko) in the Iowa courts.  She received full custody of their five children and changed their names to Fridrich.  By 1877 she was found homesteading near Tyndall in Bon Homme county, Dakota Territory.  Five years later, in 1882, she filed for full ownership of her land.   She was among the first women homesteaders in the area.

Joseph Wasatko and Frances Fridrich both eventually remarried and each had one other child who would be closely related to our family.  Joseph Wasatko moved to Nebraska and had a son Anton Wasatko.  Frances married secondly August Pesek and had a son August Pesek jr.  Apparently she was also divorced from Mr Pesek, as her youngest son went by the name August Fredrick (“Americanized” spelling). Frances lived the rest of her life in Bon Homme county, Dakota Territory.  In 1905 she remarried her first husband, Joseph Wasatko, but this third marriage was of short duration. 

Most of Frances Fridrich’s children remained in the general area of Yankton, South Dakota.  Her son William, who was a cripple all his life, died at the age of 24.  There is a family story that her son August and his family traveled as circus performers for many years.  Her oldest daughter Bozana “Bessie” Fridrich married Frank Svejkovsky in 1883 in Tyndall, Bon Homme co, Dakota Territory.  She removed with her husband to Oklahoma Territory in 1891.                  

Frances Felepena Fridrich died 19 June 1931 at the age of 91 years and is buried at Tyndall, Bon Homme county, South Dakota.

For more details on Frances Fridrich, visit her page at Family Stories, pamgarrett.com.

Aside:   Researcher Diane Moore maintains an interesting memorial to John Fridrich and his wife Josephine Dvoracek (brother and sister-in-law to Frances Fridrich) at the Find A Grave website.  It includes photos and an excellent biography taken from "History of South Dakota Territory, Its History and Its People" by George W. Kingsbury, 1915.  It gives wonderful flavor to life in South Dakota for the Czech immigrants.  You will enjoy reading it!  Link for John Fridrich at Find A Grave.

Czech Ancestors enter Database

Over the past twenty years my mother-in-law, Aline Jewel Svejkovsky Garrett, has been gathering and compiling the stories of her ancestors who came from Central Europe to America during the mid-nineteenth century.  Her work will be a blessed legacy to future generations of her family.  To date she has put together significant notebooks on her Svejkovsky and Swanda families and she is currently updating the work of cousin Berniece Lebeda Brown on the Soper family.  These are very large families today and Aline’s notebooks are full of stories and photographs that she has gathered from her extended family members.  She retains the original notebooks and has made copies for each of her three sons. 

In 2003 I compiled a simplified version of her work in a small booklet to share with “the grandchildren”.   Now I am expanding on her work, adding it to my database website, Family Stories pamgarrett.com.  The four primary families that are followed are Svejkovsky, Swanda, Soper and Fridrich.  All of these families are Czechs who came to America from the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.   Generally speaking, they followed a typical Czech migration route in America – beginning near Cedar Rapids Iowa, moving on to South Dakota and Nebraska, and finally participating in the Oklahoma Land Run and settlement. 

The stories that Aline has gathered have come from many relatives who have been willing to share the fruits of their labors in exploring family history.  I appreciate the opportunity to draw on the work of others who have researched and written down stories.  Thanks to Aline Svejkovsky Garrett, William “Bill” Svejkovsky, Robert H Svejkovsky, Allie Swanda Svejkovsky, Anna Fridrich Stransky, Larry Nespor Swanda, Berniece Lebeda Brown, Olga Swanda Svejkovsky, and many others.

Over the next few months on this Blog, I plan to post a little “Czech” history, and tell the family sagas of “coming to America”.  There are also some great stories to share about, female homesteading, early day saloon-keeping, the first Oklahoma City police force, and life in a “Soddy”. 

Photo: The Moravians by Vaclav Maly (1874 - 1935); in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.