Mr and Mrs Richard Fry (née Agnes McLeod)

Richard Fry, a carpenter, was born near Bristol in England on Christmas Eve 1816.  He was educated at Rockhouse Academy in Yatton, near Bristol, and after finishing school served a carpentry apprenticeship in the same town. Once his apprenticeship was completed he settled in Bristol, remaining there for four years before booking passage to New Zealand on the John Wickliffe, arriving in Port Chalmers in 1848.  Agnes McLeod was born ten years after Richard, in Edinburgh, but emigrated to New Zealand in the same year, on the Mary.

The couple were married in Dunedin in 1850 by the Reverend Thomas Burns, and went on to have four sons and four daughters, though two of their children died in infancy.  Richard found work in Waikouaiti and the family settled there. Their house was on an old track to Oamaru, and Agnes became famous for her ready hospitality and kindness to all travellers between the two towns. Richard built a number of houses on John Jones’s agricultural estates and he remained in his employ for 17 or 18 years.

Richard’s health deteriorated in later years while Agnes became exceedingly deaf. In 1894 Agnes was on a trip into Dunedin to pick up medicine for Richard but while crossing Princes Street she stepped out in front of a tram and was dragged along by it for several metres before the tram could come to a standstill.  The accident was attributed primarily to her deafness and she died in Dunedin Hospital several hours later, aged 68. Richard died five years later, on 9 April 1899, aged 82.