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BENJAMIN H. FRICK
Vol. 3 , p. 1076-1077

The unusual experience of a man spending twenty-five years in the
railroad business during which time he was promoted from brakeman to
the position of general superintendent, and leaving that vocation to
enter manufacturing on a small scale in a small town, is found in the
career of Benjamin H. FRICK, secretary, treasurer and manager of the
Ada Ice and Cold Storage Company, of Ada. He was a conductor at
nineteen years of age and so youthful looking that frequently
passengers hesitated before handing him their tickets. A few years
later he was familiar with many of the important details of railroad
engineering and building and possessed a general knowledge of the
superintendency of a railroad system. Another unusual experience
relates to his birth. It took place on a steamboat on the Missouri
River, while his mother was visiting his father, who was ill on the
boat, and it has not been determined whether he was born in Missouri
or Kansas. His mother, however, took him fifteen days late to the
Frick Home, at Savannah, Missouri, and he is content with saying that
he was born in that state.

Mr. Frick was born in 1868 and a son of Hezall and Frances
(WHITAKER) Frick. His father, who was a native of Pennsylvania, and
who died April 20, 1914, at the age of ninety-three years, was for
many years owner and operator of flour and lumber mills at Atchison,
Kansas, and during the Civil war these plants served supplies to the
armies of both the North and the South. The Fricks are of German
ancestry, but the first of the family that came to America settled in
Pennsylvania early in 1600. There were three brothers and from one
branch of the family sprang the Fricks who are large manufacturers in
Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, and Henry Clay Frick, who is associated
with Andrew CARNEGIE in the steel business and is owner of the Fort
Smith & Western Railroad that partly crosses Oklahoma. The mother of
Mr. Frick is descended from the family that produced Capt. John
SMITH, of Colonial days, and she was related to Mrs. William MCKINLEY
and many other Americans who are said to share in a large estate left
by Captain Smith, the control of which for generations has been in
the Bank of England. Charles WHITAKER, a brother of Mrs. Frick, was a
pioneer editor of Missouri. Charles Whitaker was at Savannah,
Missouri, a paper that sympathized with the Confederacy. His sons are
now editors of the Daily Democrat, at Clinton, Missouri. Charles
Whitaker was influential in politics, and Senator William STONE of
Missouri as a young man was a protege of Whitaker's. The Whitaker
family is of Irish extraction and Mr. Frick's maternal grandfather
was a Methodist preacher of Ireland who became as early settler of
Wheeling, West Virginia.

Mr. Frick's primary education was obtained in the public schools,
and at the age of seventeen years he entered railroad work as a
brakeman. In line of promotion and in service for several companies,
he filled the positions of baggage and express agent, conductor,
trainmaster, superintendent, general freight and passenger agent and
traveling auditor for a railroad pool. During this service of the
DeQueen & Eastern Railroad in Arkansas, and later was appointed, by
the United States Court, receiver of the Kansas & Southern. At
DeQueen, Arkansas, he became interested in the ice manufacturing
business and was secretary and treasurer of an ice company operating
there. He was also for a time a member of the board of directors of
an ice plaint at Kansas City. He came to Ada in 1908 and bought an
ice plant that then had a capacity of ten tons. During the last few
years the capacity has been increased to fifty tons and the plant is
one of the largest and most modern in Eastern Oklahoma. It supplies
all the trade of the county save that of one town and two railroad
companies. The plant has a large storage capacity, excellent railroad
facilities, and the ice is made from Byrds Mill spring water, a
liquid of such superior quality that it has made the town of Ada
noted throughout the state. C. W. DAWLEY, of McAlester, Oklahoma, one
of the wealthiest manufacturers of the Southwest, who owns an
interest in eighteen ice plants in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and
Arkansas, is president of the Ada Ice and Cold Storage Company. Other
stockholders and directors are: T. G. MCCROSKY, of Kansas City, who
was for a number of years president of the Livestock Exchange at
Kansas City, and Dr. H. D. HAMILTON, a prominent physician of Kansas
City.

Mr. Frick has a sister, Miss Anna Frick, who for a number of years
has been assistant treasurer of Swift & Company, packers, of Chicago,
and is in charge of the Kansas City offices of that concern. Mr.
Frick is a member of the Elks Lodge and a director in the Ada
Commercial Club. He is a member of the Oklahoma Ice Manufacturers"
Association and the Southwestern Ice Manufacturers' Association and
has served as a member of the executive committee of the former. He
is interested in the development of the gas and oil industry in the
vicinity of Ada and also has other property interest in Oklahoma and
Texas. He is a man of practical commercial ideas and a never-tiring
worker for the up-building of the town.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Vickie Neill Taylor November 28, 1998.