Anyone who has made a visit to Trail City Hall, specifically to council chambers, may have noticed the photograph of a man with a handlebar moustache standing in a patch of grapes.
But it’s not just any old patch of grapes, for this region that is.
The berries appear to be unusually large, ready to burst, with vines so thick and leaves so abundant that all the onlooker can see is this gentleman’s head.
More than a century later, the black and white image remains as attention-grabbing as it likely was back then.
So who was the man in the middle?
The first clue is at the bottom of the framed photo, which is mounted on the wall next to the chamber doors.
The sepia-toned picture is titled, “A.D. Fredericks Among His Prize-Winning Grapes, 1912.”
Curious about this enigma, the Trail Times asked Joyce Austin, from the Trail Museum and Archives, if she could dig up some details.
There is not a great deal of information on the man, but what Austin did find describes a renaissance pioneer and his very interesting life.
A.D. Fredericks, a bachelor, lived at Seven Mile Creek in the Pend d’Oreille Valley, Austin revealed.
“He was the winner for his grapes at Trail’s first Fruit Fair in 1911,” she continued. “He was a New York photographer who came out west for gold fever.”
Mr. Fredericks was also a caretaker as well as a photographer.
However, he made his income in a more steadfast way.
Austin discovered Mr. Fredericks was paid to control the water rights on the Pend d’Oreille River by none other than the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company. (which later became Cominco then Teck Trail)
“He was paid $1 a day for a long, long time,” she said. “And he was also a watchman at a hotel at Seven Mile.”
Fredericks died in 1933 and is buried in the Pend d’Oreille Cemetery.
Austin gathered this information from a history of Beaver Valley and the Pend d’Oreille 1892-1945, by the Beaver Valley and Pend d’Oreille Historical Society 1997.
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