Immigrant Stories: The Eccentric Fritz Pries

The Danish term ‘ en original’ refers to a person who marches to a different drumbeat than most of us, and Fritz Pries certainly seems to have fit this description. Born Frederik Christian Pries in Viby, outside the city of Århus, in 1845, Fritz appears to have received an exceptional education for a forester’s son and remained a reader and thinker throughout his life.

He immigrated to America with his brother Adolphus around 1866, settling on 80 acres of government land in the Florence area near Omaha, where he proceeded to dam up an old river bed to make a lake, build a seven-room dwelling (in seven stories), farm and dream of flying. While Pries patented numerous devices and toys over his career, flying was his obsession. In 1881, Pries designed and built his version of a human powered-‘flying machine.’ This sketch of his device, later reproduced in the Omaha Bee in 1918, was initially displayed in the window of a downtown Omaha jewelry store for passersby to marvel at.

After building his machine, which used human arms and legs to flap various ‘wings,’ he called upon Adolphus to make the trial flight. The flight resulted in a broken leg for his brother; a subsequent attempt dumped Fritz into his lake, but he didn’t give up tinkering with this and other ideas. Word got around, and a certain notoriety built up around Pries Lake.

In 1888, Fritz accidentally killed his brother while cleaning his gun. Devastated, Fritz buried him in a particularly fine casket on his property. A decade later, his sister also passed away, but times had gotten harder and Fritz could not afford a casket. Recalling the one used for his brother, he dug it up, wrapped his brother’s bones in a quilt, and reburied them. He then reused the casket for his sister! This attracted public attention and outrage both locally and nationally, but the eccentric Dane expressed great surprise that anyone would care.

Fritz Pries died in December, 1910, just a few years before flying machines were used in The Great War, fulfilling his prediction that such devices would become useful both commercially and for pleasure. He was buried in Springwell Cemetery in Omaha. Pries Lake remained in use for many years, though. Advertised as “Omaha’s Delightful Outing Resort,” the lake regularly advertised music, boating and fishing, all for $.25 a day. The well-shaded and forested lake provided a great site for picnics and water sports, including canoeing, swimming and more. The lake no longer exists, and does not appear any more on local maps.