[As recorded by David Frost (B, Victor)]
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Arthur Karl Frost history as told by
Victor Frost (A, Arthur), with input from
Frank Frost
(A, Arthur) and Mary Link Frost [As recorded by David Frost (B, Victor)] |
Arthur Karl Frost was generally called Karl by his family. His friends at the Home Stake Gold Mine in Lead, SD usually called him Art. When introducing himself to strangers he often called himself A. K. Since this is a family web site, he will often be referred to as Karl.
Arthur Karl Frost was in the service in WWI from approximately 1918 to 1920.
Karl was wounded in battle in Belgium. After getting out of the hospital, he was going to the front lines. He met a soldier on a bridge who was helping another wounded soldier. They got to talking and realized that they hadn’t recognized each other - they were brothers! The other soldier was Hans Frost, and apparently was so muddy, that Karl didn’t recognize him at first. Why Hans didn’t recognize Karl isn’t known [bandages from his injuries?].
Shortly after returning from WWI Karl married Caroline (Carrie) Schulte.
Karl may have worked on the family farm at first after the war, however the farm couldn’t support as many people as the Arthur Knowlton family had. He then got a job at Robert’s Dairy in Omaha, so Karl and Caroline moved to Omaha.
Jack (September 14, 1924) and Joe (January 21, 1926) were born while they were living in Omaha.
About 1926 the economy was starting to drop off during the days leading to the Great Depression. There were cut backs at Robert’s Dairy, and Karl lost his job. At this point Karl may have tried selling Fuller Brush in Omaha. The family moved back to the family farm in Brunswick, and Karl fixed up an old "line shack" that was sometimes used to house field hands. This was a very small building.
Victor and Richard were born November 6, 1927, while they were living in the line shack.
Karl was scouring the country for work, and found a job at the Home Stake Gold Mine as a hard rock miner in 1928.
The family first moved into a "section house" outside of Lead. Helen (May 23, 1933) was born while the family lived here.
The night Helen was born there was a terrible storm. Carrie was in labor and "couldn’t wait any longer" (most deliveries were done in the home, not in the hospital). Karl went to get the doctor, so he walked into town. Doc Maddox rode a horse while Karl walked back beside him. The stream in front of the house was well out of its banks and the bridge was washed out. Karl tried to jump the stream, but didn’t make it, and was swept downstream aways, but then did get across. Doc Maddox went upstream to a dirt crossing that was still in tact. He rode down the road that went up a hill behind the house. He tied his horse up on the ridge behind the house, and scurried down hill to the house. Doc then delivered Helen. The next day the storm cleared, and Doc was able to go home.
In the middle of the winter in 1931 or 1932 the section house burned down. Victor remembers watching it burn from outside, and then returning inside to spend the night because there was no place else to go. The floors were solid ice the next morning from the freezing of the water used to put out the fire.
The family moved into Lead, living in the "Yates House". The Yates House is a house just behind and up hill from the house that the General Manager of the mine lived in - a man by the name of Yates.
Shortly there after the Frost’s took in the Kouba family when they fell on hard times. Irving Kouba married Anne Schulte. Irving was a well to do banker (owned a bank), but then his bank crashed during the Depression.
Karl taught Irving how to build a house - by building a home for the Koubas with Irving’s help.
Irving got various jobs for ~10 years. Approximately 1941 Irving got a job in Bellevue [sp?], NE (outside Omaha) in a foundry building sand castings. Irving and his sons built a house as the war was winding down. A soldier returning from the war offered to buy Irving’s house for considerably more than it cost Irving to build it. Irving sold it, and took the money and built a new home for the family, and built another to sell. Realizing this had potential, Irving became a very successful developer. So in a way, Karl helped Irving become rich by teaching him how to build a house!
But, back to Karl and Carrie. In 1934 things were generally going well for Karl and Carrie. They even went to the Worlds Fair in Chicago. Homestake loaned them the money, and built the house on Ridge Road that the family remembers so well. In 1939 they sold the house on Ridge Road and were heading to the West Coast without a job looking for work. They bought a 1938 Buick.
Karl had an opportunity to buy a gas station in Bellingham, Washington, that also had some acreage that he thought he could farm. Apparently at the last minute Carrie said no way were they going to run a gas station! This property was on a road that shortly afterward became a main truck route for the Kaiser Shipbuilding company for WWII - possibly a major lost opportunity.
About a month later they found a nice house in Oregon, but no jobs. They were running out of money, so they headed back to the Northern Plains. Specifically, they went to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where the Sturbaums lived. Karl and Carrie bought an orchard, and Karl hoped he could get a job in town. He was not able to get a job in town. Money was very short, and winter was coming.
Karl left the family in St. Cloud while he went to Lead to see if he could get a job at the mine. He talked to J. D. Johnson, who was the chief engineer at the mine. The families were friends, and J. D. and Karl were friends. J. D. got him reinstated.
Things were never the same financially for the family. This was probably in part to the actual loss of work and limited job opportunities, and in part to the large size of the family.
Later years
[This section is written by Dave Frost (B, Victor) and based on conversations Dave Frost had with Mary Link Frost and Frank Frost (A, Arthur), with input from Vic Frost (A, Arthur).]
Over time Caroline had increasingly strong feelings that she wanted the family to leave Lead, SD. Part of this may have been due to the culture of the area (it was a pretty rough place), but this was primarily due to the fact that she did not want any of her children to be miners or to marry a miner. Another possible contributing factor to the move from Lead was that Karl was starting to get frequent headaches.
In approximately 1952 the pastor of their church was moving to South Bend, Indiana to teach at Notre Dame. Carrie and/or Karl approached him and asked him if he could see if he could find work for Karl. The exact sequence of events isn’t known [at least to the author!], however this is approximately what happened.
Karl went to South Bend, leaving the family in Lead. With the help of their former pastor, Karl found work as a carpenter. Carpentry was work that Karl enjoyed, and had done in some form or another virtually his whole life. (Apparently he had a nice wood shop at one, or several times, and also was able to do some work in the local high school in Lead. He made quite a bit of excellent furniture, and probably helped various friends and neighbors build, repair, or improve their houses.)
Karl then went back to Lead and moved the family to South Bend in 1953.
Shortly after moving to South Bend the local building economy had a number of recessions. Karl and Carrie continued to have hard times on and off for the rest of their lives.
Karl and Carrie were very religious people. Carrie was born, and lived her entire life as a devout Catholic. Karl converted to Catholicism much later in life, after many of their children had already been born (all the children were baptized and raised as Catholics). Carrie’s family did not initially accept Karl very well - in large part due to not being a Catholic. In fact, Karl and Carrie eloped.
It is interesting that despite their financial problems, late in life, when most of their children were grown and gone, the church and state asked them to be foster parents. As part of her involvement in the Legion of Mary, Carrie was visiting a TB ward of a hospital, and she met a Mrs. Gridley. Mrs. Gridley asked Carrie to check on her children, who were home alone. Their father was a truck driver and was seldom home. When Carrie checked she found seven children, ages from about 2 to 14 years old. Eventually the State stepped in and placed all the children in foster care. Carrie and Karl were liscensed and took Charlotte, the baby. At that time it seemed that perhaps she was retarded, but in fact she wasn't. She was more a product of severe emotional deprivation. In any case, Carrie worked with her and she learned to laugh and talk, neither of which she had done before. A few years later the foster family of one of the other children, Bobby (approximately 7 years old at that time), moved to California, so the State asked Carrie and Karl to take him too. They were never formally adopted because in order to keep them they needed the monthly allotment. When Carrie died Charlotte and Bobby went to live with Bonnie and her husband Bob in Washington State. It is a testament to Carrie and Karl that despite their impoverished financial conditions, the church thought that they would be the best home in which to raise these two children, and apparently they were right!
With such a large family (13 children), it was inevitable that there would be mini-generations within the family. The four oldest (Jack, Joe, Victor, and Richard) are the most clearly defined by themselves and the others as a distinct group. There are also somewhat more loosely defined middle and younger groups. These groups have fairly different views of their parents.
All three groups clearly see Carrie as a loving mother, although with slightly different perceptions (these may be more based on individual experiences and the times they lived in - remember, the children’s births span 3 different decades). There are very clear differences in how the children perceive their father, Karl. The older boys see their father as a strong silent type, but a good father. As the roll-call of children continues on there is a general trend of having feelings that their father was cranky, too distant, etc. This is NOT to say that Karl’s children do not love him, or think that he was an evil man or something like that. It is simply a trend of certain feelings about their father shifting through the "generations" of his children.
As a grandchild of Karl I offer the following thoughts. First, one contributing factor to the shifting perceptions of Karl’s children towards him could be the changing times. A style of parenting that may have "felt" normal and appropriate for a child born in the 1920’s, may have seemed too strict, distant, etc. to a child born in the 1940’s! Second, the strain of a hard life (very hard work in the mines, some bad luck/decisions/events (Great Depression) that lead to financial trouble, etc.) may have made Karl less able to show love for his later children.
At any rate, there is an unusually strong family bond in Karl and Carrie’s children. They have generally kept in touch with each other through the years, and they have maintained a ritual of regular family reunions.
May Karl and Carrie rest in peace knowing that all of their surviving children lived good and productive lives, and especially for Carrie, that none of her children (or grandchildren for that matter) ever had anything to do with mining!
Last revised November 22, 2013.