John Henry Fry was born around February 1836 in Pennsylvania to Samuel Fry. By the early 1860s, he was probably living in Ohio.
He enlisted in the Union army on August 8, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company F of the 115th Ohio Infantry on September 18. Confederate forces captured him near Nashville, Tennessee, in December 1864. He mustered out on June 10, 1865.
He settled in Volinia, Michigan, after the war, and he married a woman named Laura around 1867. They had at least four children: Coraline, born around 1868; Frank, born around 1870; Bertha, born around 1876; and Charles, born around 1880. He worked as a carpenter, and by 1870, he owned $1,700 of personal property. They moved to Paw Paw, Michigan, in the 1870s and then to Decatur, Michigan, in the late 1800s. He died there of stomach cancer on October 24, 1912.