Reverend Benjamin St. James Fry (or Frey) was born on June 16, 1824, in Rutledge, Tennessee. He was educated at Woodward College, Cincinnati, began to contribute to the Cincinnati "Times" in 1840, and in 1844 was joint editor and publisher of the "Western Rambler." He became a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1847, was president of Worthington College for young women from 1856 to 1860. From 1861 to 1864 he was chaplain of the 22nd and 63rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiments, serving in the Civil War. In 1865, he was placed in charge of the Methodist Book Concern at St. Louis and conducted its business until he was elected editor of the Central Christian Advocate in 1872; he was so successful that he was re-elected for the next twenty years, and also served as a delegate to the general conferences of 1876, 1880, 1884, and 1888. In the last-named year he was a member of the Methodist ecumenical conference in London, England, and of the Baltimore Centennial conference, before which he read an essay on the "Methodist Press." Quincy College, Illinois, gave him the degree of D.D. in 1871.

Dr. Fry contributed to various periodicals, and published several Sunday School books, including sketches on the lives of various bishops; he also wrote a prize essay, "Property Consecrated," in 1856. He married Elizabeth Nixon Baldwin on September 16, 1852, in Hamilton, Ohio. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 3 daughters: Frances Rhodes (1853-1937), Robert Augustus (1854-at least 1880), Caroline Baldwin (1856-1922), Eliabeth Tribbey (1861-1863), and Emma Louise (1864-1866). He died of erysipelas and epidemic influenza on February 5, 1892, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.