In researching my Wagner relatives (Grays’ mother was Anna Wagner), I came across some curious census data that I just couldn’t understand. I found Gray’s great grandmother Margaret Grossmutter Wagner in 1910 and 1920 living in the home of Rose Friede and her son Frank Friede in Smithtown, Long Island. I asked Gray, “Who were the Friedes?” She told me, “Oh, Mother Friede had an inn at Middle Country Road in Smithtown. Then her son Frank took over the business and called it the Riverside Inn. That inn was on Jericho Turnpike in Smithtown. It was well known as a stop on the carriage trade between New York and the Hamptons. Everybody went there. It was a speakeasy.”
OK, a speakeasy. I’ve heard of those… What IS is a speakeasy? I can look that up. A speakeasy is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition (1920–1933). During this time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation (bootlegging) of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States. So…Grossmutter was living in a speakeasy?
I had to wonder WHY she was living at a speakeasy. First, I thought she was living at Mother Friede’s because her daughter Annie Wagner Kraus and son-in-law Martin Kraus happened to live next door to Mother Friede’s (the 1910 census shows them as next door neighbors). Maybe the Kraus family didn’t have enough room for Grossmutter. Or she was too ornery. So she lived next door at the inn. I also noticed that in the 1930 census Aunt Margaret Wagner (Gray’s aunt) and Uncle Frank Schmitt were listed as living at Mother Friede’s on Middle Country Rd. I passed that by Gray. She said, “Oh, well you know, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Frank ran the inn for Mother Friede. I remember going over there when I was a child. There was a large kitchen with a huge table. And on the end of the table there was a bird cage where they kept cockatoos. They let the birds out during the day and they roosted up in the trees. It WAS hygienic… I don’t mean to suggest it wasn’t clean.” The birds didn’t show up in the census. But here we have Grossmutter living with Mother Friede, and Aunt Margaret and Uncle Frank also living there AND running the place.
So I started looking into the Friedes. Somebody from Smithtown had taken an interest in the Friedes and put together a web page of old postcards, census data, and anecdotes of people who worked and partied at the inn over the years. It became clear to me that there were two inns, first Mother Friede’s on Middle Country Rd, then Frank Friede’s Riverside Inn on Jericho Turnpike in the 1930s and later. Mother Friede was still around in 1930 but Grossmutter Wagner had died by then. In 1930, the inn was still on Middle Country Rd. Frank Friede died in 1954. It seems the Riverside Inn was a popular restaurant, and place for weddings. Lots of notable people frequented it. Apparently, people would eat dinner and then go out to the barn for a snort and some gambling (the former is according to Gray, the latter according to another Smithtown local who grew up going to the Riverside Inn).
The Friedes, like Grosmutter, were from Hungary (though Grossmutter was ethnic German and hated being thought of as a “Hun”). Grossmutter immigrated from Schalke, Germany in 1899 with Annie and Martin Kraus. They lived at first in New York City. Rose Friede immigrated with her second husband Heinrich Welzel and her two sons, Frank and Tanny Friede, also in 1899, also from Schalke, Germany. They went to Allegheny, PA, where Heinrich was a coal miner. By 1910, they were in Smithtown, running the inn on Middle Country Rd and Grossmutter was living with them; by this time, Heinrich Welzel had died. I looked back at all the census data to see if I was missing something. That often happens. I saw that in 1920 Grossmutter was shown as “grandmother” of the head of household, Frank Friede. Grandmother? What? Did everybody think of her as grandmother? Then I had a crazy hunch. Grossmutter was born in 1831. Rose Friede Welzel was born in 1863. Frank Friede was born in 1881. The ages all worked out for Frank to be the grandson, Rose to be the daughter of Grossmutter, and Grossmutter to be the grandmother of Frank.
I called up Gray. “Was Rose Friede a Wagner?”
Gray said, “OF COURSE! That’s why everybody ended up living there and working there! My Uncle Henry worked for Frank Friede, too. For years, he was the clerk at the Riverside Inn.”
I said, “Did you know this the whole time and just not tell me?”
“Well, I don’t know why I said ‘Of course.’ It does make sense. I didn’t really know all of them. They were much older than I was. I don’t necessarily remember all these details until you jog my memory and things fit into place. I don’t think I really knew that Rose Friede was a Wagner.”
So I had truly dredged up something that was pretty much lost to history. Rose Wagner, Grossmutter Wagner’s daughter and Gray’s great aunt, married Henry Friede in Germany and had two boys. Her husband Henry died and she remarried, then emigrated to the US in 1899 with her second husband and two boys. The rest of the Wagners emigrated too. Peter and Barbara Wagner (Gray’s grandparents), with five children, emigrated in 1899 and went to Vandling, PA, and then to Carbondale, PA, where Mom was born many years later. Annie Wagner (Gray’s great aunt) and Martin Kraus emigrated in 1887. They lived in Manhattan until after 1910. All of Peter and Barbara Wagner’s girls (Barbara, Anna, Rose, and Margaret--Gray’s aunts) were very close, and when one moved to Smithtown, they all moved. I suspect that Margaret moved first, to run the inn on Middle Country Rd with her husband Frank Schmitt. Then Poppop and Nana moved to Smithtown in about 1930. Aunt Rose and Uncle Walter Loughney didn’t move to Smithtown until after 1930. Henry Wagner had also moved there by 1930.
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| Ship that brought Anna Wagner & family to the USA in 1899. |
One other interesting fact of little utility: the Friedes dropped a final “k” from their name. When the boys immigrated, they were listed as “Friedek.” And they were listed as Friedek in the 1900 census. They probably dropped the k in order to seem less foreign in their new country. I haven’t found much on Tanny Friedek. “Tanny” must have been a nickname as his real name was Peter. His WWI draft card shows he married a woman named Ava and in 1918 they lived in Buckner Ohio where he worked for the Old Ben Mine, mining coal. After 1918, I can’t trace him. He may have died in the war.
There you have it. How the Wagner family got to Smithtown, Long Island.
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