Joshua Fry

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.

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.

By 1739, he established a grammar school for sons of the local gentry, affiliated with the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, which had received a royal charter in 1722.

By 1732, Fry became the college's professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, and soon began a public career as justice of the peace of James City County.

[5] 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.

He became its judge (supervising the justices of the peace as well as in effect the chief executive officer), as well as its official surveyor, and so often visited the new county seat at the horseshoe bend of the James River, later called Scottsville.

In 1746, lieutenant governor William Gooch commissioned Fry and Peter Jefferson to survey the lands of Lord Fairfax in the Piedmont region.

[12][13] In the early days of the what became French and Indian War, Fry was named the Commander-in-Chief of colonial forces, and given command of the Virginia Regiment, with orders to capture Fort Duquesne.

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.