Series 1: Correspondence of Chester Fritz, 1899-1977 and Kathrine B. Tiffany, 1923-1977

Series 2: Personal material of Chester Fritz and Kathrine B. Tiffany

Series 3: Newspaper clippings and miscellaneous materials

Series 4: Scrapbooks and Photograph Albums

Series 5: Photographs

Series 6: Clothing

Series 7: Oversize Materials

Series 8: Biography

Series 9: Oral History Interviews

Series 10: Memorabilia and Artifacts

Series 11: Separated Materials

Chester Fritz was born March 25, 1892, in Buxton, North Dakota. He was the first and only surviving child of Charles and Anne (Belanger) Fritz. The family moved to Fargo, North Dakota, in 1898, where Charles worked intermittently. A farming accident in 1902 that left Charles permanently disabled forced Anne to take on work as a clerk and bookkeeper, and circumstances for the family were meager. In January 1903, when the Fargo Carnegie Public Library opened, Chester Fritz began visiting daily, reading history and war novels, but also the novels of Horatio Alger. These tales of success attained through self-discipline and virtue instilled a belief that he could be prosperous through his own determination, despite undesirable living conditions or circumstances.

Anne Fritz left the family in February 1905 and was never seen nor heard from again. This prompted Chester Fritz to move to Lidgerwood, North Dakota, to live with his mother's sister, Kathrine (Belanger) Macdonald, who was Principal of Lidgerwood High School, and her husband Neil C. Macdonald, who was Superintendent of Schools in Lidgerwood. They provided an active and scholastic environment for Chester. While in Lidgerwood, he paid $8 a month for board and worked odd jobs as well as attending school. During summers he went to Chaffee, North Dakota to visit his father. Chester Fritz worked on the Pagel farm west of town, earning $1 a day. In his biography, he states, "I have been self-supporting since I was 12 years old."

Fritz credited his intellectual and competitive spirit to the influence of the Macdonalds. In May 1908, Fritz won the fifth annual Lidgerwood High School Declamatory Contest, which qualified him to represent the town in the statewide contest, held at the University of North Dakota. He won this contest as well, which carried a prize of $12. Fritz graduated as valedictorian of his class at Lidgerwood High School in June 1908 and enrolled at UND that fall.

While at the University, Fritz practiced declamation and debate with the Ad Altoria Literary Society and pledged the Varsity Bachelor's Club. Following his freshman year, he jumped a freight train to Billings, Montana and worked at the Grand Hotel in exchange for his board. He made extra income selling tourist-tickets to Wyoming for commission. He was successful in Billings, and this experience gave him confidence and a desire to travel more. He returned for his sophomore year at UND in 1909, and played an integral role in the Sock and Buskin Club's production of Twelfth Night. On July 2, 1910, he traveled to St. Paul and boarded a train to Seattle. He would not return to North Dakota for more than 40 years.

Fritz was unable to gain steady employment and did not enroll at the University of Washington in fall 1910, as he had hoped, because of financial restrictions. Most of this year was spent working in the order department of a wholesale plumbing, heating and hardware firm in Vancouver, British Columbia. Returning to Seattle in the summer of 1911, he was hired at the cigar counter at the Owl Drug Company, where he worked throughout his enrollment at Washington. He found little time for social activities as he worked six days a week, but was initiated into Delta Tau Delta and was a member of the drama club. He graduated with a B.A. in Economics in June 1914.

Immediately upon his graduation, Fritz was employed by the Fisher Flouring Mills Company in Seattle. After work in the testing laboratory and then the main office, the company sent him to work in Hong Kong as an exporter in the spring of 1915. He worked under the guidance of Charles E. Richardson, a very successful foreign trader. Fritz found acceptance in the Hong Kong Club, an association of British and a few American émigrés. Business assignments took him across Southeast Asia, and accounts of his success appeared stateside in the The Washington Alumnus and two flour trade magazines. Business was seriously undermined by the outbreak of World War I, however, when the United States prohibited flour sales to China because of demands elsewhere. Determined not to retrace his steps back to the United States, his confidence bolstered by his success in China thus far, and with no immediate work in which to engage, Fritz embarked on a six-month tour of China in February 1917.

The tour ended in August 1917, after which Fritz rejoined Charles Richardson in Hong Kong. Fritz served as his junior partner and assistant in several failed operations, including large-scale strip mining and tungsten exportation to the United States. Results of World War I made the international economy-and especially the metal trade-unstable. Fritz traveled to the United States in 1919 to settle details of his and Richardson's recent tungsten shipments. He went to New York to visit with Harold Hochschild of the American Metal Company Ltd., and to Washington D.C. to speak with Congressman Charles Timberlake in regards to a proposed bill to raise tungsten prices to $7 a pound. All efforts were immediately fruitless, however, and Fritz's relationship with Richardson became increasingly strained. In 1921, he ended this affiliation by letter, thanking Richardson for the opportunities and the kindness. Fritz then accepted a position with the New York-based American Metal Company and moved to Shanghai.

Fritz worked in the American-Chinese silver trade for American Metal, brokering trades and overseeing trans-Pacific shipments. During this time he earned a healthy income and lived in comfortable circumstances. With experience in the metal trade and international finance, Fritz was successful in overseeing American Metal's China operations. In 1928, he approached the brokerage firm of Swan, Culbertson & Company, which traded New York stocks and bonds and Chinese government bonds, and proposed inclusion for equal partnership. His proposal was accepted. Fritz transferred the business of American Metals to his new firm, effectively closing the company's Shanghai office.

The knowledge in foreign exchange, precious metals and commodities which Fritz possessed was one of several reasons that he was asked to join the firm. Eventually Swan, Culbertson & Fritz became one of the most successful investment firms in the Far East. Based in Shanghai, it held branch offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila and, eventually, South America. The firm halted its operations at the outset of World War II in 1941. It never fully recovered.

During these years, Fritz became a notable Shanghai sportsman in the expatriate circle. He owned and maintained a stable of ponies with which he competed in paper chases and polo matches. Though he rode horse only a few times in his youth in North Dakota, he proved a natural when he began in earnest in 1925, at the age of thirty-two. Within two years, he won his first paper hunt, which is a form of horse race in which the course is marked by various colored papers which the riders must follow. In his riding career, which lasted until the beginning of World War II, Fritz won or placed in 22 events. With his horse Tempest, which he acquired in 1936, he became a respected and feared competitor in the paper hunts, making headlines even when he failed to win. He also took to polo, in which he was among the best American players in Shanghai. During these years between the World Wars he also traveled to Japan each summer, the most memorable journey being in 1936 when he climbed Mt. Fuji.

On June 18, 1929, Chester Fritz married Bernadine Szold, whom he had met during her two week stay in Shanghai earlier that year while traveling around the world. When she returned to Paris following the end of her trip, Fritz cabled a proposal of marriage, which she accepted via the same means. The two were married at the American Consulate in Darien, Manchuria. It was her fourth marriage, and his first.

Due to advancing Japanese military presence in China, Bernadine fled to the U.S. in August 1936. Fritz purchased for her a home in Hollywood, but was unable to visit until early 1940, when he stayed at their home and traveled through Mexico and Guatemala for two months. In October, however, business engagements required him to return to Shanghai although World War II was increasing in its scope and danger. Japan began seizing parts of China, but Shanghai-and especially the international enclave in which Fritz worked and lived-continued operations with few restrictions. Shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and brought the U.S. into the war, they also seized the International Settlement in Shanghai. Foreigners, including Fritz, were required to wear armbands identifying their nationalities, yet business and daily life continued mostly unchanged. In August 1942 Fritz was placed in an internment camp in Chaipei, where 1,500 Westerners were held until an exchange was brokered by the International Red Cross for Japanese civilians and government officials being held in the U.S. After 14 months in the internment camps and an additional 72 days in transit, Fritz docked in New York.

He returned to Hollywood to find he had little in common with Bernadine, who was being hailed in newspapers as a "socialite." He stayed at their home for three months; they separated in March 1944 and divorced in September 1946. Following their divorce, Fritz paid for a home for Bernadine in Beverly Hills, assumed her medical expenses, and voluntarily increased his alimony payments. Bernadine Fritz never remarried, and died on February 15, 1982.

Following the end of World War II, Chester Fritz returned to Shanghai. In 1947, he relocated to Hong Kong. During these years silver trading no longer proved to be profitable, as China had since converted to a gold-based economy and developed a fully-managed currency. Fritz shifted his focus to the trading of gold, using as a base of operations Hong Kong, since the mainland of China was no longer viable for international business after the Communist revolution of 1949. He dealt with gold going into India, which was lucrative as he was the first to engineer these imports. With the changing economic and political landscape of China making international trade difficult, Fritz left permanently in 1950. Also during the post-World War II years, a former junior partner of Swan, Culbertson & Fritz had set up insurance, underwriting and construction operations in Argentina and Uruguay. This extension of resources was profitable for Fritz, though he did not directly broker any of the business in South America.

After attending a UND alumni dinner in New York City in November 1950, Fritz sent a check for $10,000 to the University of North Dakota Development Fund. This was the first action in which Fritz would, in his own words, "repay the state of North Dakota" for what it had given him. He returned to the University in June 1951 to accept an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. It was the first time he had returned to North Dakota since he left in 1910. Fritz found even greater financial success during these years operating as an independent trader. He invested in precious metals to protect against inflation, and he also invested in IBM and certain Japanese government bonds, which paid large dividends.

Between 1950 and 1953, Fritz traveled restlessly, searching for a new place of residence. He lived in New York for a short time, but settled in Rome. There he met Vera Kachalina, a Moscow-born world traveler, through a mutual friend. Finding that she too had lived in China and they had much in common through their travels, they were married on March 21, 1954, in Zurich, Switzerland. They remained in Italy until 1957, when they moved to Switzerland. In 1959, the Fritzes built a twelve-room chalet, Chalet Vera, in Gstaad, Switzerland. In 1972, they moved to Monte Carlo. Fritz spent the remainder of his life in Monte Carlo and Lausanne, Switzerland.

Between and 1950 and 1969, he donated more than $2.25 million to UND. These donations helped to finance the Chester Fritz Scholarship Fund (1956), the Chester Fritz Library (1958), the Chester Fritz Auditorium (1965) and the Kathrine B. Tiffany Scholarship Fund (1969). The scholarship funds are still active today, and the library and auditorium are still in use. Fritz considered his return to UND in 1961 for the dedication of the library his "finest hour." In his remarks at the dedication (October 13, 1961), he stated he preferred to donate while he was still alive, or "with a warm hand."

In 1957, Fritz also donated $25,000 to the Chester Fritz Scholarship Fund at the University of Washington, then an additional $1 million in 1973; these donations were given with the intention of fostering a Chinese studies program. In 1971, he donated $40,000 to the Lidgerwood School District for scholarships for graduating seniors. He also memorialized Harold Hochschild of the American Metal Company with a $50,000 donation to the Adirondack Museum in upstate New York (1977).

Chester Fritz died July 28, 1983. He is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Grand Forks. Vera Fritz died November 2, 2005 in Monte Carlo.

Source: Ever Westward to the Far East: The Story of Chester Fritz by Chester Fritz and Dan Rylance.