This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Fryer/Friar/Frier Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/gUX.2ACEB/26.28.51.54.62.1 Message Board Post: I have seen these postings for a year or so, and thought it appropriate to write on this St. Patrick's Day. My MO line appeared in Franklin County, MO, no later than the 1820s. I am trying to determine where they came from before that, and it appears to be KY, NC, and/or VA. I suspect they immigrated from Northern Ireland sometime in the 1600s or 1700s. There are several Fryers in VA in the 1600s and many in the Carolinas and Continental Army in the 1700s. According to the genealogy books I read, this early migration, and from Northern Ireland, would almost certainly make them Scotch-Irish, rather than the Irish who were Roman Catholic and largely immigrated to cities in the 1840s. That is, the Scotch-Irish immigrated into Northern Ireland from Scotland, beginning around 1600, they stayed there for one or several generations, and then immigrated to the Colonies. Thus, I believe, the Fryer name is originally Scottish, but from the lowlands.