Frank William Abend

May 21, 1879 to May 30, 1964

According to a 1948 article in The Post-Standard celebrating long-time employees from Syracuse’s manufacturing sector, Frank Abend began his employment for the Gustave Stickley Company in 1898. Born on May 21, 1879, Abend was recorded in the General Ledger of Stickley’s business as an employee in 1900 and appeared in the Federal Census for that year as an upholsterer. While he does not been located in the Syracuse directories prior to 1902, he was still living with his parents Conrad and Mary as late as 1900. He married in 1901, and that was likely the impetus to move into his own house and begin listing himself in the city directories the following year.

Like many of Stickley’s employees, Abend was the children of immigrants who came to the United States following the Civil War. While Stickley frequently took pains to describe the immigrant labor of his factory as possessing the type of old-world skills and knowledge that were rapidly disappearing in the United States, Abend did not really fit this narrative as his father worked as a mason and a plasterer and had no discernable connection to the furniture trade.

Abend worked as an upholsterer and later foreman for Stickley, and was one of the employees who continued to work past the reorganization of the firm in 1917 to the Stickley Manufacturing Company. Although he was 62 years old when the United States entered World War II, he was required to register for the draft and was still employed at the Stickley Factory on Burnet Avenue in Syracuse.