Page 588-589 - Charles L. Frost has been actively identified with business interests in Grand Rapids during a period of more than forty years and is now the senior member of the firm of C. L. Frost & Son, manufacturers of high grade hardware specialties for use by builders and furniture manufacturers. At the time of this writing, in the summer of 1925, the headquarters of the firm are at 30 Ionia street, southwest, and the concern has under construction a modern factory plant on Summer street, where is being erected for its use a building 60 by 100 feet in dimensions and two stories in height. In this modern factory, with the best of mechanical equipment and facilities, it will be possible to increase the output to such degree as to meet the demands of the large and constantly expanding business. Mr. Frost is a scion of a family that was founded in Michigan in the territorial period, about five years prior to the admission of the state to the Union. His father, Alonzo P. Frost, came from his native state of New York in 1832 and became one of the pioneer settlers near the present city of Pontiac, Oakland county, where he obtained government land and reclaimed a productive farm from the forest wilds, besides which he conducted one of the early general stores in that county, in the village of Troy. He was one of the substantial and influential citizens of Oakland county and there continued to reside until 1880 when he moved to Cheboygan, Michigan, and remained there until his death, at an advanced age, his wife, whose maiden name was Nellie Voorhies, having been one of the venerable and loved pioneer women of Oakland county. On the old homestead farm in Oakland county, Charles L. Frost was born May 25, 1859, and his boyhood and youth gave him a due quota of experience in the work of the farm, the while he continued his studies in the public schools until he had completed a course in the high school of the locality and period. Through his own study he learned bookkeeping, and as a youth he became bookkeeper in a lumber office and iron works at Cadillac, where he remained three years. In 1882 he came to Grand Rapids and secured a position as bookkeeper in the office of the old Michigan Iron Works, and later he gave similar service in turn for Powers & Son, the Grand Rapids Brush Company, and the wholesale grocery house of Lemon, Hoops & Peters, with which last mentioned concern he continued his association until 1892. In that year he associated himself with Julius Berkey, who had a number of inventions that he wished to place on the market, and who established a brokerage business in furniture hardware, with offices in the Hermitage building. Mr. Frost continued this alliance a short time, and in 1899 he initiated the manufacturing of certain types of furniture hardware, the business at the start having been of very modest order. Under his vigorous and progressive policies, as combined with the excellence of products, the enterprise had so expanded that in 1907 commercial expediency led to its incorporation. In 1915 the company sold its substantial and prosperous business to the National Brass Company of Grand Rapids, and in the same year Mr. Frost and his son Horace E. formed the firm of C. L. Frost & Son and engaged in the manufacturing of hardware specialties for the furniture and building trade. The enterprise has been very successful, and the trade extends throughout the United States and into the Canadian provinces, besides which has been developed a very substantial export trade. The concern is thus contributing definitely to the industrial and commercial precedence of Grand Rapids, where Mr. Frost has long been known as a loyal, reliable and progressive business man and public spirited citizen well worthy of the unqualified esteem in which he is held in this community.