Charles William Fry

Charles William Fry was an English builder, Wesleyan Methodist local preacher, musician, and early Salvation Army bandmaster. Born at Alderbury, Wiltshire, on 30 May 1838, he was registered at birth as William Charles Fry but later used Charles William Fry. He followed his father into the building trade and became a skilled multi-instrumentalist, playing violin, cello, piano, cornet, and harmonium while leading music at the Wesleyan chapel in Alderbury.

In 1878 Fry and three of his sons began providing brass music for Salvation Army open-air work in Salisbury. Salvation Army historical sources identify their family group as the movement’s first brass ensemble, and the success of this experiment helped make brass bands a characteristic feature of Salvation Army evangelism. Fry subsequently traveled with William Booth’s campaigns and became the Army’s first national bandmaster.

Fry wrote “The Lily of the Valley” in 1881. Baptist hymnologist William J. Reynolds reported that a note preserved with the manuscript placed its composition at the home of a Mr. Wilkinson in Lincoln in June of that year. Fry died at Polmont, near Falkirk, Scotland, on 24 August 1882, only a year after the song’s first publication.