St. John's Cemetery Individual Record

Fredrick Swan Mellen

Fredrick Swan Mellen
( , 1871 -- , 1944)

Section: 53
Space: 1
Lot: 5
Spouse: Mary "Mollie" Churchill
Place of Birth: Winnebago, IL
Occupation: Business

Frederick Swan Mellen was born in Winnebago, Illinois in 1871. He grew up in Illinois and Wisconsin and graduated from Lake Forest University in 1895. After teaching in Wisconsin for a brief time, he moved to Pensacola in 1900.

The Mellens had been farmers in Illinois in the late 1800s but because of their father’s ill health the family had begun coming to Pensacola in the winters.  How they chose Pensacola no one in the family knows. By 1900 Fred, as he was called, joined his family in Pensacola and established a home there. Shortly after his arrival, the woman he said he had fallen “grandly and completely in love with,” Mary Churchill, joined him and they were married in the First Presbyterian Church in Pensacola in 1900.

He once joked that the only things he knew anything about at that time were farming and Greek and Latin (actually his degree had been in English) and he knew he didn’t want to earn a living with any of those so he opened what became F.S. Mellen & Co. Feed and Seed.  The  business, located on Garden Street in downtown Pensacola, served West Florida for more than a quarter of a century.

Fred and Mary(Mollie) Mellen remained active in the First Presbyterian Church for over 40 years. Fred served as an elder in the church and in numerous other capacities.  He was also active in the Rotary Club and in other civic affairs.

The couple, who lived on North Hill for most of their married lives, were the parents of two sons, Frederick Churchill Mellen (b.1907), a Pensacola attorney, and Noel Clark Mellen (b.1909) a Pensacola physician.