Most locals are probably acquainted with Fredville, that former little highway stop on the corner of old U.S. Highway 71 (now Gateway Drive) and Jute Road.
But has anyone ever wondered – just who the heck was Fred?
According to Mrs. Wilma (Hawes) Connely, of Tulsa, Fredville was named after her step-grandfather, Frederick Stacell, who was born in Germany in 1870 and later owned the store at the dot on the map that now shares his name. Frederick, or “Fred” as I like to call him, married Mrs. Connely’s step-grandmother, Leota (Phillips) Hawes in 1932.
It seems Fred owned the farm where the widowed Leota lived with her two teenage children. According to Mrs. Connely, her uncle told her that one day Leota, who was 33, went to Neosho in a buggy with Fred, her 62-year-old landlord. On their return, they announced that they were married. Mrs. Connely says her uncle also told her that Fred never drove a car, but rode in a buggy everywhere he went, though she doesn’t know if that is true or not.
As a girl, Mrs. Connely says she was scared of Fred, her step-grandfather. She remembers him as being a rather stern old German, who wore striped overalls and smoked a pipe.
“He was gruff-like and never smiled,” she described Fred in a recent letter.
One of her cousins supposedly once asked Fred, “don’t you ever smile?”
When Highway 71 came through, Fred was forced to move his house back from the road. Mrs. Connely says that from what she has heard from family members, it “sounds like Fred was kind of hard to deal with about moving his house back.”
Perhaps as a show of defiance, or maybe just because the crossroads had already been given its local nickname, Fred made a crude sign with “Fredville” painted on it and stuck it out by the new highway, according to Mrs. Connely (she says her cousin recalls it being nailed to an oak tree).
The folks at the highway department were apparently amused. Or perhaps the name “Fredville” became so common and widely-used that it turned out to be more or less official by de facto. Either way, the state later replaced the homemade sign with an official green town sign. Unfortunately, the metal highway sign has been stolen several times throughout the years and the last time it happened I don’t think it was ever replaced. But maybe I just haven’t noticed it.
