San Francisco County
Biographies
GEORGE
WILLIAM FRICK
GEORGE WILLIAM FRICK, Superintendent of Schools of Alameda county, was born in Santa Cruz, California, April 4, 1854, a son of George Washington and Mary E. (Bryant) Frick, both now deceased. Father Frick, a native of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, moved to Illinois about 1839, at the age of twelve, with his parents, who settled on a farm near Moline, remaining there to the age of twenty. He had received some education in the district schools of the period, which he supplemented by private study, owing more to his own industry than to teachers. Entirely through his own efforts he was enabled to spend some time in the Mount Morris Seminary at about the age of twenty. He was married in Galena, in 1852, to Miss Mary E. Bryant, and before the close of the year set out for California with his wife and her parents across the plains, arriving in this State in 1853. He taught the first public school in Santa Cruz for one or two terms, and then moved to Centerville in this county, where he was similarly engaged. He was one of the first Republicans in the State. From Centerville he moved to Sonoma county in 1857, buying 120 acres three miles northeast of Petaluma, and there taught the Bethel school for a short time, after which he devoted himself to farming, working very hard in that vocation. During that time he served the new party with vote and influence and was recognized as a local leader. In 1860 he was nominated for Sheriff, made an active canvass at expense of time, money and energy, but withdrew before election in favor of a Union Democrat, to promote the chances of the Union party, then formed of Douglas Democrats and Republicans. He was active in the Union League movement during the civil war, and president of the Bethel Union League. He was chairman of the Sonoma county delegation in the State Convention which nominated George C. Gorham for Governor. He was twice elected Supervisor, though the county had a Democrat majority, and his most bitter opponents never impugned his official integrity. He was recognized as a man of high principles, and though loyally attached to the party of advanced ideas, he loved freedom and had no use for party “bosses.” He was a school trustee for fifteen years, and an official of the Methodist Episcopal Church nearly all his life.
Selling his ranch near Petaluma, he moved in 1871 to Green Valley, in the same county; thence to Potter valley, in Mendocino county, in 1872, and to the town of Petaluma in 1873. He next identified himself with the Lompoc Temperance Colony in Santa Barbara county, moving there in May, 1874, being one of the pioneers in that movement. He was strenuous in his efforts to enforce the fundamental requirements of that enterprise. He kept the first general store in Lompoc, and served as a school trustee, being largely instrumental in erecting a $5,000 schoolhouse in about a year after the organization of the settlement. He was also an efficient promoter of the erection of a good Church building of the Methodist Episcopal church, and in every respect a public-spirited and liberal citizen. Selling his store in Lompoc, he bought a dairy ranch of 1,000 acres in the San Miguelito cańon about 1876, and settled on the place in 1879. After the death of Mrs. Frick, May 3, 1884, he rented his place and moved to this city, mainly for the better education of his younger children. He died on a visit to Lompoc, July 12, 1889, at the age of sixty-two. Mr. and Mrs. Frick were the parents of five children, all natives of California: George W., the subject of this sketch; Laura A. L., who died unmarried, December 3, 1888, of typhoid fever, at the age of twenty-seven; Abraham Lincoln, born February 21, 1866, now an attorney of this city; John Fred., born October 23, 1869; Mary Blanche, born October 9, 1874.
Grandfather Abraham Frick was of the sturdy, industrious type of German settlers, of German parentage or descent. He had six sons and two daughters, of whom four sons and one daughter are living, in 1891, the oldest being nearly seventy,--John, living in Moline, on the old homestead. Grandfather Frick was born in 1800, and died in 1888. Grandmother Frick died of acute disease at about the age of fifty. She also was of the Pennsylvania German stock.
Mrs. Frick, a native of Illinois, was the daughter of William Cowper Bryant, a native of New England, probably born in Connecticut. At one time a merchant in Galena, he was a pioneer of pioneers. He came to California first by way of Mexico; afterwards went East and returned to California. After 1860 he lived on a farm in Sonoma county. He had a varied career, and lived to the age of seventy-five. His wife, Ann (Sterrett) Bryant, was of German extraction. She was a remarkable woman, of great energy, piety, and known all over the State as “Mother Bryant,” prominent in church work. She came across the plains on crutches, and lived to an advanced age--about seventy. Of Mrs. Frick’s brothers two are living: Revs. John and William Bryant, of this State,--William being now about sixty. Thomas, another brother, died a few years since in Sonoma county. Those three and their sister, mother of subject, constituted the Bryant family. “Mother Bryant” died at the age of fifty-one. She was president of the W. C. T. U. of Lompoc, California, at the time of her death.
George W. Frick received his early education in the Bethel district schools in Sonoma county, and at about fourteen attended the Scientific and Classical Institute at Petaluma. In 1870 he took one term in a grammar school, under J. W. Anderson, now the State Superintendent of Public Instruction; and in 1871 entered the Napa Collegiate Institute. At nineteen he went to learn the printer’s trade in a newspaper office in Napa; then with the same employer in San Jose, where he first began to write for the paper. He then read law for nine months in San Francisco in 1876, but conceived a preference for the profession of teacher. Returning to Petaluma he worked as compositor and writer, studying also to qualify as a teacher. He received a teacher’s certificate in Santa Rose in 1877, and taught one term in that city, then at Sebastopol in the same county, and next in Lompoc, where his family had settled in 1874. In 1879 he came to Alameda county and taught school in Castro valley eighteen months; then a two-department school at Mount Eden three and a half years. In 1884 he took charge of the Haywards school of seven departments, and next of the San Leandro school of eight departments in 1886. In July, 1888, he was elected by the Oakland Board of Education as principal of the Tompkins school of eleven departments. In the fall of 1890 he was nominated and elected County Superintendent of Schools of Alameda county, which position he now holds.
Mr. Frick has been an active member of the I. O. O. F. since the age of twenty-one, and has held all the offices in the subordinate lodge and encampment of that order. In 1890 he joined the Oakland Canton, No. 11, of the order. He is a Past Grand of Sycamore Lodge, No. 129, and Past Chief Patriarch of Alameda Encampment, No. 29, both of Haywards, and was District Deputy Grand Master for two terms. He is also a Past Master of Eucalptus Lodge, No. 243, F. & A. M., of Haywards; Oakland Chapter, No. 36, R. A. M.; the Order of the Eastern Star, and Past President of Oakland Parlor, No. 50, N. S. G. W. He was married in this city, January 1, 1884, to Miss Rhoda Louise Tucker, born in Vermont, a daughter of W. J. Tucker, of New England descent, who is still living. Mrs. Frick was graduated at the University of California, and a teacher by profession.
A. L. Frick, a Deputy District Attorney of Alameda county in 1891, is a brother of the subject of this sketch. Educated in the public schools, he took a private course in the higher education and entered the Hastings College of Law of the University of California, from which he was graduated June 26, 1888, receiving the degree of LL. B., and delivering one of the commencement addresses of the class of 1888. He was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of California, June 29, 1888, and engaged in general practice in this city. In March, 1891, he was appointed to his present office. Mr. A. L. Frick is a member of Enterprise Lodge, No. 298, I. O. O. F.
J. F. Frick, a younger brother, was graduated from the Oakland high school in 1888, and entered on the study of law in the office of his brother.
Blanche Frick, their sister, is attending the Oakland high school.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages
634-636, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2008 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.