Joshua Fry
Joshua Fry | |
---|---|
Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses representing Albemarle County | |
In office February 1746 – 1754 Serving with Charles Lynch, Allen Howard | |
Preceded by | n/a |
Succeeded by | Peter Jefferson |
Personal details | |
Born | 1699 Oxford University |
Profession | Surveyor, professor, planter, politician |
Colonel Joshua Fry (1699–1754) was an English-born American adventurer who became a professor, then real estate investor and local official in the colony of Virginia. Although he served several terms in the House of Burgesses, he may be best known as a surveyor and cartographer who collaborated with Peter Jefferson, the father of future U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. After Fry’s death on a military expedition, George Washington became commanding officer of the Virginia Regiment, a key unit in what became the French and Indian War.[1][2]
Early and family life
Born in
In 1736 or 1737, he married the wealthy young widow Mary Micou Hill (1716-1772), who would survive him by nearly two decades.[3] They had five children who grew to adulthood: John, Henry, Martha, William, and Margaret. John and Henry would briefly succeed their father representing Albemarle County in the House of Burgesses (1761-1765) and Henry may have also represented Culpeper County in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1785-1786 and introduced an unsuccessful Emancipation resolution before the creation of Madison County.[4]
From emigrant to planter
Fry emigrated from England to the Virginia Colony about 1726. By 1739, he established a grammar school for sons of the local gentry, affiliated with the
When he married the widow of a local planter in Essex County, Fry resigned his teaching position and began operating what had been her plantation and its slaves. Fry also became a justice of the peace, as well as sheriff and coroner in that county. Although some Virginia planters supported their families by selling products from their plantations, Fry mostly surveyed, bought and sold real estate.[citation needed]
Albemarle county planter and official
Sometime before 1743 Fry and his growing family moved westward from Virginia's
Albemarle County voters elected Fry to represent Albemarle County in the House of Burgesses several times between 1745 and his death in 1754.[7] Fry also became the county's first lieutenant (colonel of the local militia). In addition, Fry continued to involve himself with affairs of the colony, with his surveys described below possibly securing his appointment a member of the governor's council in 1750.[8][9]
Meanwhile, various Virginia real estate speculators wanted the western lands surveyed, and in 1738 Fry and fellow surveyor Robert Brooke began petitioning the Virginia General Assembly to pay for surveys. The proposals went to committees, and were only formally rejected in 1744, when the legislators created Albemarle County, although they also agreed to pay Fry for a survey of the dividing line with the now-smaller Goochland County. In 1746, lieutenant governor William Gooch commissioned Fry and Peter Jefferson to survey the lands of Lord Fairfax in the Piedmont region. In 1749, the pair received another commission, to establish the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia. Beginning in 1749, Fry also became involved with the Loyal Company of Virginia, which received grants across the Appalachian Mountains conditioned upon surveys being made (on less strict terms than imposed on the rival Ohio Company, possibly because of investments of multiple burgesses in the venture).[10]
In 1750, the English
In 1752 Fry accepted an appointment from Lieutenant Governor
Death and legacy
In the early days of the what became
Joshua Fry is buried in an unmarked grave within the Rose Hill Cemetery in Cumberland, Maryland. His widow would live her final years with their middle son Rev. Henry M. Fry and be buried at the Locust Hill graveyard in Madison County, Virginia. Peter Jefferson, to whom Fry bequeathed his surveying instruments, became the executor of his will and guardian of his youngest children. Several of Fry's sons and grandsons fought as patriots in the American Revolutionary War and continued westward into what became Kentucky and West Virginia. Philip Slaughter wrote a biography of Fry, which is available online.[16] Viewmont, which Fry sold to his fellow burgess and Loyal Company surveyor, Dr. Thomas Walker and which Gov. Edmund Randolph later owned, was eventually abandoned and burned down in 1800 and 1940, but a new house was built with the same name of the site, incorporating massive chimneys which survived the fire.[17] A historical marker honoring Joshua Fry was erected at the site in 1963.[18]
See also
References
- ^ Cassandra Britt Farrell, Fry, Joshua (ca. 1700–31 May 1754) available at http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fry_Joshua_ca_1700-May_31_1754
- ^ Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. which in turn cites his life by Philip Slaughter (New York, 1880).
- ^ Sons of the American Revolution application of Jesse Lewis Fry III available on ancestry.com
- ^ Cynthia Miller Leonard, The Virginia General Assembly (Richmond: Virginia State Library 1978) pp. 91, 156
- ^ encyclopediavirginia
- ^ "Untitled Document".
- ^ Leonard pp. 78, 81, 83
- ^ encyclopediavirginia
- ^ http://www.scottsvillemuseum.com/portraits/joshuafry/home [dead link]
- ^ encyclopediavirginia
- ^ encyclopediavirginia
- ^ encyclopediavirginia
- ^ "Logstown Treaty".
- ^ encyclopediavirginia
- ^ Innes article cites article in Vol. III of Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, not available online
- ^ "Memoir of Col. Joshua Fry, sometime professor in William and Mary College, Virginia, and Washington's senior in command of Virginia forces, 1754, etc., etc., with an autobiography of his son, Rev. Henry Fry, and a census of their descendants". [Richmond, Va., Randolph & English. 1880.
- ^ "Untitled Document".
- ^ Allen Browne, Landmarks: Lottie Moon and Joshua Fry, available at http://allenbrowne.blogspot.com/2012/08/lottie-moon-and-joshua-fry.html