Fry, Edward Carey (Henry Fry & Co., of Quebec) was born in Bristol, the commercial capital of the west of England, on the 24th June, 1842. Although, like many others of our prominent men in the various walks of life, the subject of our sketch was not born in Canada, he is, nevertheless, by commercial training, more than thirty years’ residence in the country, and also by marriage, a typical Anglo-Canadian. He is one of the leading members of Quebec commercial society. His parents were of the middle class in life, but still possessed of sufficient means to give their numerous family the elements of a good sound English commercial education. His surname at once suggests some connection with the Society of Friends commonly known as “Quakers,” and with good reason, for his immediate ancestors were certainly of that denomination, while there is little doubt that those more remote were of the band who left England for these shores to avoid religious persecution, and who appear to have settled in New Brunswick, as the name is well known around St. Stephen’s to this day. In fact, when Mr. Fry’s elder brother, Henry, first landed there in 1853, the first person to address him bore exactly the same name as himself, and with little difficulty they traced their descent to a common ancestor. A Peter Fry left New Brunswick and settled in the county of Somerset, England, where he became the founder of that branch of the family, and numerous are the mural tablets in the picturesque village churches of that county to the memory of different members of this family, who seem to have been held in the highest respect, as was its founder, of whom the following is recorded in marble in the parish church of Axbridge, Somerset: —
“To the Memory of
PETER FRY,
Who resigned his spirit
into the hands of his
Redeemer, 21st September, 1787,
Aged 52 years.
That his example may be
a light to others