Colección T-MIN/12 - Photographs of occupation of Mashonaland

William Ellerton Fry was born in Somerset in 1846. He emigrated to South Africa in 1872, where he became a prospector, farmer and trader. From 1872 to 1890, he was Secretary and Computer at the Royal Observatory, Cape Town. In 1890, he accompanied the Pioneer Column, a force raised by Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of South Africa, and the British South Africa Company, to occupy the territory of Mashonaland (later renamed Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe). Fry was Chief of the Survey Department and Official Photographer of the expeditionary force. He published an album of his photographs of the occupation of Mashonaland in 1891. In later life Fry was a surveyor, diamond prospector and farmer in Rhodesia and South Africa. He died in Mowbray, Cape Town in 1930.