Joshua Fry

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The Fry-Jefferson map

Colonel Joshua Fry (1699-1754) was a surveyor, adventurer, mapmaker, member of the House of Burgesses, and soldier. Born in Crewkerne, Somersetshire, England, he moved to Essex County, Virginia as a young man to marry the wealthy widow Mary Micou Hill, who bore him five children who grew to adulthood, viz., John, Henry, Martha, William, and Margaret. In 1743-1744 Fry and his family moved to the not-yet-established Albemarle County, Virginia to claim unclaimed plots of land and take advantage of surveying opportunities. There he built a house called Viewmont that sat on a 800-acre plantation bordering the Hardware River. Fry, along with fellow member of the Loyal Land Company, Peter Jefferson, created the famous Maryland-Virginia Fry-Jefferson Map in 1752. In the early days of the Seven Years War, Fry was named head of the Virginia Regiment, but on May 31, 1754, en route to Fort Monangahela, Fry suddenly fell off his horse, dying from his injuries, and putting George Washington in charge. He is buried somewhere in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Cumberland, Maryland.