Background
He came from London to Boston in 1731.
He came from London to Boston in 1731.
He came from London to Boston in 1731, under agreement with Samuel Waldo, a wealthy New England merchant, to manufacture paper (New-England Historical and Genealogical Register, April 1875, p. 159). For three years he waited for the mill, which according to Waldo's contract was to have been ready within ten months.
During this period he sold stationers' supplies and printed and distributed 1, 200 copies of the poems of Stephen Duck (Isaiah Thomas, History of Printing in America, 1874, II, 224).
He also formulated an ambitious project for reprinting the Spectator, provided orders for 300 sets could be obtained. "Stationer, bookseller, paper maker, and rag merchant, " was his own description of himself at this time.
In 1734 Waldo leased to him a mill on the Stroudwater, not far from Portland, and here he went with his family and began making paper. Within two years he was in financial difficulties which led to protracted litigation. The first case brought against him was for 70 arrears in rent.
For this sum Waldo seized his paper-making machinery, which was already mortgaged. He was thus rendered unable to manufacture more paper, his sole means of support, and was plunged into trouble with the mortgagee.
He was probably in Boston jail by the end of 1736 or the beginning of 1737, and from there he appealed one case after another for five years (court files of Suffolk County, Massachussets).
Discussions of currency were engrossing the attention of Boston merchants at this time, and Fry, during his incarceration, wrote a treatise on currency for the consideration of the General Court (1739).
While in prison Fry also signed, and in all likelihood formulated, two vigorous petitions to the General Court, asking for better treatment of prisoners, and sent to that body a communication charging one of the keepers with circulating bills of the land bank.
His death occurred before August 1745, for in that month his widow, Martha Brook Fry, petitioned to be made administrator of his estate. It is possible to think of him as a "scheming adventurer" (A. McFarland Davis, Colonial Currency Reprints, 1911, III, 282), with a delusion of persecution, but the meager facts lend themselves equally well to a more favorable interpretation.
His scheme was of greater interest than the usual land-bank project of the time, since it involved the creation of a chain of factories which should provide New England with a wide variety of products. Indeed, it probably had more value as a suggestion for the industrial development of the colonies than as a solution of the monetary difficulties of Massachusetts.
He was a man of great energy and of active and ingenious mind, who, given a little more capital or creditors with greater patience, might have become a New England entrepreneur of wealth and position.
He was married to Martha Brook Fry.
