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From: "Madeline Millard" <>
Subject: [Tri-Counties] TODAY'S ANNIVERSARY: Stella & Frederick Frey (5 June1920)
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 09:04:12 -0600


Remembering the marriage of Frederick Stewart Frey and
Stella Elizabeth Willbrand Frey ~

Stella Elizabeth WILLBRAND and Frederick Stewart FREY were married on Saturday, 5 June 1920. We don't know where the marriage took place, but the two were from Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York, so that would seem a likely spot. However, their wedding picture was taken at the Robinson Studio in Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York, the city where they made their home.



Stella was the daughter of Carl WILLBRAND and Elizabeth LITZ Willbrand, and Frederick (or "Bud" as Stella called him) was the son of Frederick L. FREY and Mary C. SHONBACHLER Frey. The bride was 22 years old and the groom 23.



It is not exactly clear how the two met, but it was probably through Stella's older brother Arthur, who owned a motorcycle with a sidecar and drove his sister and himself all over Onondaga County and its environs, where they had many friends.



The couple settled in Ithaca, N.Y. where they bought a small, six-apartment complex on North Tioga Street and lived in one of the units. Frederick owned a wholesale confectionery business near downtown, on North Aurora Street, and also played violin in a dance orchestra. Their first child, a daughter, was Stella Maris, born in 1921.



Tragically, this idyllic life was not to last. First, the confectionery business went bankrupt and Frederick found work as a strikebreaker in the Lehigh Valley Railroad machine shop in Sayre, Pennsylvania. The summer of 1923, Stella -- now pregnant with their second child - and little Maris, joined Frederick in a campground beside the Chemung River, near his job.



On a Sunday afternoon, 12 August 1923, while Stella was preparing dinner, one of Frederick's co-workers found himself in trouble while attempting to swim in the river and called for help. Frederick Frey responded; but minutes later, both drowned. Frederick's body was shipped via train to Syracuse, N.Y. where he was buried in the Frey family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, after a Masonic funeral.



Stella returned to Ithaca to bear their second daughter, Fredericka Stewart FREY, and to raise both girls in the apartment building purchased with her husband's life insurance. Her mother-in-law moved nearby and helped with the girls while Stella worked. However, tragedy was not finished with Stella. On 1 June 1929, when Fredericka was only four, she was run over by an ice truck and killed. She is buried beside her father in Syracuse's Woodlawn Cemetery. Stella continued to live in the apartment building until after the death of her second husband, Edward Jenkins, in 1968. She died in Ithaca on 15 March 1990 and is buried in Ithaca's East Lawn Cemetery.

-- by Madeline JENKINS Millard

Originally published 5 June 2007



PHOTOS: Their wedding photo is posted on DeadFred.com. ID # 66270.



NOTE: If you would like to receive the text of a newspaper account of Frederick's drowning, let me know and I will be happy to send it to you as an attachment. (There were several accounts -- some having him drowned in the wrong river! This version appears to be the most complete.)



SOURCES:

Jenkins, Stella WILLBRAND Frey. Oral history as told to Madeline JENKINS Millard.



Millard, Madeline JENKINS. Personal knowledge. (Unpublished.)



Norton, Eric. Woodlawn Cemetery - Syracuse, NY. (Norton Research. Accessed online at http://nortonresearch.com on 24 Feb 2007.)



Unknown author. "Frederick Frey Dies Trying to Save Swimmer." (The Ithaca Journal. 13 Aug 1923. p.5).

NB. Article erroneously says that drowning occurred in the Susquehanna River.



Unknown author. "Two Sayre Men Drowned When Caught in Undercurrent in River at Waverly." (Elmira Star-Gazette. 13 Aug 1923. p.12.)



Madeline Jenkins Millard
Colorado Springs, CO


Researching: HOOVER, POOLE, JENKINS, WILLBRAND, LITZ, FREY




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