Frederick, Ben
(March 3, 1892 - Aug. 21, 1961)
War veteran

Certainly this World War I hero had another name. What was it? He said that he was born in Suwalki, which in 1866 became the capital of a gubernia in the Russian partition, and came to the United States in 1912. Within the next five years in Shenandoah, where mine bosses used numbers when they could not identify miners by their names, he changed it to an American sounding name.

He waited a little longer to marry. In the meantime, he served in the United States Army during the First World War. When he returned to the land of coal breakers, he met a Polish girl. Bertha Wroblewski, who was born June 6, 1904, and raised in the hard coal fields, and married her in 1921 at Our Mother of Consolation Catholic Church in Mount Carmel.

With decent houses harder to find in the beauteous place of their marriage, the couple found a practically brand new house in Kulpmont, four miles from Mount Carmel, and moved to Kulpmont in 1922. Kulpmont owed its existence for the most part to Scott Colliery, which employed 789 men in 1923, and was owned by the Susquehanna Coal Company. Altogether Northumberland County, the fourth largest producer of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania, had 28 mines between Trevorton and Mount Carmel. In 1929, the 10,220 mine workers were paid $17,190,220 in wages and were the backbone of towns like Kulpmont, Mount Carmel, and Shamokin.

Ben Frederick belonged to St. Casimir's Catholic Church, founded for Poles in 1914; Giest-Berkanski post 91, American Legion of Mount Carmel; West End Fire Company; and the Veterans of Foreign Wars at Kulpmont.

Frederick worked in the coal mines until he was thrown out of work in 1948. The decline of the hard coal industry in the 1950s literally paralyzed the mine patches of Pennsylvania. Two of his sons left the coal fields to look for work in Reading, Chester, and other places. Each one's story is different from Ben Frederick's. The rest remains to be seen.

After a Solemn Requiem Mass in St. Casimir's Church, Ben Frederick was buried in the parish cemetery on the back road from Kulpmont to Mount Carmel. Bertha Frederick died in Kulpmont in March 1972.

From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)