Collection of 288 letters, 699 manuscript pages, plus 4 postcards, and ephemera, both manuscript and typescript, most mailing envelopes retained, in very good, clean and legible condition, dated 1888-1946. Collection of letters from Earl C. Fry, minister of the American Christian Convention, and, for forty years one of its missionaries to Japan, to his brother Richard A. Fry, of Oregon, and later, San Jose, California. The Fry family were descendants of early Puritan settlers, raised in rural western Rhode Island, near Greene, Rhode Island. The family then moved West to Oregon. Earl Fry began preaching in the 1880's, he studied divinity at the Christian Bible Institute, in Stanfordville, New York. (CBI was founded by the American Christian Convention in Marshall, Michigan, in 1866, it moved to Stanfordville in 1872, and then relocated to Defiance College, in Defiance, Ohio in 1907). Fry then studied for half a year at Harvard, and for 2 ½ years in Union Theological Seminary, and studied the Japanese language with Methodist missionaries. Fry was ordained in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1890. He was next sent to Woodstock, Vermont, where he preached for several years before being appointed as a missionary to Japan.

1 Linear Feet (2 manuscript storage boxes and 1 half manuscript storage box)

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