Brenda Wade Schmidt
Enterprise

No one alive today would have met Frederic Carl Schroeder.
But the World War I veteran who died in action 100 years ago this week is honored through Egan’s Frederic Carl Schroeder Legion Post, named for the man who started a hardware business in town with his brother, left for Camp Lewis on May 25, 1918, and died at Flanders Field on Sept. 30, 1918.

Private Schroeder was 22 when he was killed while serving with the 361st Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army. He is buried in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France.
He is one of 11 Moody County residents killed in World War I.
Schroeder and his brother, Henry, started a hardware business in Egan, but when Frederic Schroeder was killed, Joyce Schroeder’s father-in-law, Louie, went into business with Henry Schroeder, she said. Frederic Schroeder was her husband, Virtus’, uncle.
Joyce Schroeder, 92, lives south of Flandreau in the house she has lived in her entire life. Nobody in the family talked much about Frederic Schroeder over the years nor did they know much more about him than what was in his obituary. More recently, her great nephew has shown an interest in researching more information, she said.
“That was so far back before us. We don’t think of it too much,” she said.
According to history collected about Frederic Schroeder, when he left with the Moody County contingent, he said, “I’m going to give them the best I have in me.”
He was born Nov. 23, 1895, in Crawford County, Iowa, attended country school and was a Lutheran. He moved to an Egan area farm with his brothers in 1914.
He and his brother, Henry, farmed together for three years and in 1917 bought the McWilliams hardware stock.
He was survived by his parents, five brothers and three sisters.