My Genealogy Hound

J. H. FRY. Marked progress has been made in business methods along the various lines in which men find opportunity to exercise their talents, and agriculture has kept pace with the general advancement. Among the progressive practical farmers and stock-raisers of Woodson county who have won success is J. H. Fry, who was born in Warsaw, Illinois, on the 19th of December, 1849. His father, Solomon Fry, was a native of Pennsylvania and during his boyhood accompanied his parents on their removal to the Prairie state where he learned the mason’s trade which he followed for some time. He was married to Miss Sarah E. House, a native of Connecticut, and resided in Hancock county, Illinois, until after the sectional differences between the north and south involved the country in Civil war. He then joined the great army which was formed for the preservation of the Union, enlisting as a private with Company D, Seventy-eighth Illinois Infantry, with which he served for three years, participating in all the battles in which his regiment engaged. He was very fortunate in that he was never wounded nor captured and was never absent from duty for a single day. After his return from the army he removed to Kansas in 1869, locating on a farm in Linn county, where he made his home until 1886 when he became a resident of Carthage, Missouri, where he still resides. His wife died many years ago.

J. H. Fry was the eldest of their four children and was reared in Hancock county, Illinois spending his youth upon the homestead farm He acquired an academic education and afterward prepared for the practical duties of business life by learning the mason’s trade with his father. When the war broke out he was left to care for the three younger children and supported them by his work. He has ever been a man of marked industry and his diligence and perseverance formed an example well worthy of emulation. On the 23d of January, 1873, he was united in marriage to Miss Sarah E. Buckley, a native of New Jersey, who had removed to Illinois with her parents, Joel T. and Salinda (Wilson) Buckley. Her father was an attorney at law and at one time a nominee for governor of Illinois on the prohibition ticket.

After his marriage, Mr. Fry rented a farm in La Salle county and began dealing in stock. Success attended his efforts, and in seven years time he was able to buy a good farm, owning two hundred and eighty acres of well improved land on which he raised cattle, shipping them to the city market. He lived upon his farm until 1897 and then sold the property for seventy-five dollars per acre, after which he came to Kansas and purchased two hundred and eighty-eight acres in Allen county, three and one-half miles southwest of Neosho Falls. Here he has engaged in general farming and stock-raising and has at the present time about two hundred head of cattle, and feeding about one hundred head each winter. In 1900 he received nineteen, hundred dollars for hogs of his own raising. In the fall of 1899, in accordance with the advice of his physician, he removed to Neosho Falls and to some extent has laid aside business cares, but drives back and forth to the farm in order to superintend its management.

Unto our subject and his wife have been born three children: R. Thurston, now twenty-five years of age; Ora L., an estimable young lady at home, and Adisa V., the wife of Jesse Everett, now of Streator, Illinois, Mr. Fry is a member of the Masonic fraternity, belonging to the lodge at Neosho Falls and to the Royal Arch chapter at Yates Center. He also belongs to Neosho Falls camp No. 3383, M. W. A., and to the order of the Red Men and Elks at Iola. He has been an active worker in the ranks of the republican party since attaining his majority and is unfaltering in his support of its principles. In the spring of 1900 he was elected mayor of Neosho Falls and has filled minor offices in the county in which he lived in Illinois. He is now discharging his duties in a manner highly commendatory, his administration being business-like and progressive. He exercises his official prerogatives in support of the public good and has secured a number of needed reforms and improvements. He is a popular citizen, esteemed for his fidelity to duty as well as for his social qualities and for his business success. He is a man of forceful character, strong individuality and genuine worth, and as one of the leading men of Woodson county he is numbered.