The death notice for Frederick in the Princeton Alumni Weekly says he was chair of the religion department of Washington and Jefferson College and the college's pastor. He was educated at Davidson College, Princeton, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Tübingen U. He married the former Frances Gordon, who died in 1986. They had three children; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. "The great love of his life, apart from work and family, was Grand Manan Island in Canada off the Maine coast, where he and his family vacationed, and where he maintained a library of thousands of books."