Fryer
The Fryer family of early Albany is descended from English weaver Isaac Fryer who settled in Albany about 1720. He died in 1755, leaving a widow and four living children. The Fryers would live along South Pearl Street for several generations.
Isaac Fryer's eldest son, William, was a baker who raised a small family near his boyhood home before an untimely death while still in his forties. Captain John Fryer was an Albany mainstay for much of the mid-eighteenth century. His daughter, Lydia, married Revolutionary stalwart Matthew Visscher. Brother Isaac I. Fryer followed his father in the weaver's craft and later operated a Southside brickyard. Their sister, Catherine Fryer, (1731-91) never married but was known as a sometime householder.
By 1790, two Fryer-named households were listed in the city of Albany. Five more were identified on the census for surrounding Watervliet.
In 1800, three "Fryar" named households were configured on the city census for the first ward.
In 1813, four Fryer households were listed in the first city directory. By 1830, five Fryer addresses remained in the annual directory.
Generally speaking, the earliest Albany Fryers were tradesmen and transporters who intermarried with their neighbors in the first ward.
Sources: This outline for the Fryer family is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. The Albany Fryers are distinct from the Huguenot "Freers" who settled in the lower Hudson Valley during the seventeenth century. Traditional sources hold that perhaps a different Fryer family emerged during the second half of the eighteenth century and inhabited the countryside west of Albany.
Online resources: PFS; Family genealogical material via Linkpendium is overly broad. At this point, we have found no comprehensive Internet-based source for the Fryers of Albany.