[1] Schmitz was born in Hamm, Province of Westphalia in Prussia on December 25, 1820, to a "well-situated" family.
The Schmitz brothers, all musically trained, joined the orchestra of an itinerant theatre company and travelled throughout the United States.
They came to Wisconsin in 1848 and settled in Northeim, a hamlet in the Town of Newton in Manitowoc County, where they bought neighboring tracts of land and became farmers.
In addition to founding the county's first musical group,[2] at one point Fred served as a teacher in the town's school.
In 1874 he was elected to the first Manitowoc County Assembly district (the Towns of Centerville, Eaton, Liberty, Meeme, Newton, Schleswig and Rockland) as a member of the Reform Party (a short-lived coalition of Democrats, reform and Liberal Republicans, and Grangers formed in 1873), with 922 votes against 495 for regular Republican John Voss (Democratic incumbent Charles Rudolph Zorn was not a candidate).