Former Allotment No. 10 (now Lot 66) was purchased by Isaac Duance, a labourer, in 1855. Storekeeper Richard Lathlean who already owned shops and residences on Lot 38 became the new owner in November 1869. In 1872 the same year that the Mintaro Primary School was opened teacher James Fry acquired Lot 10 and four years later also the adjoining Allotment 22 (now Lots 63, 64, 65). This building indicates several construction stages progressing from the western round chimney to the projecting 1870s villa front.[1]
Isaac & Mary Duance, both from Cornwall, the newlyweds arrived SA 13 Aug 1852 on the Gloucester by assisted passage.[2] They arrived in Mintaro about 1853/54.
When Isaac Duance and family left Mintaro in 1869 the property was purchased by Richard Lathlean, Secretary to the School Committee in Mintaro. He had advertised less than two years earlier for a schoolmaster for the town[3] and was possibly securing it for the schoolmaster’s accommodation. By March the following year, 1870, James Fry and his wife had been appointed ‘conductors of the Mintaro School’ and were advertising that ‘in a short time be prepared to take a limited number of Boarders.’[4]
Lathlean and Fry were both devout Wesleyan Methodists and members of a local Board of Trustees which was established to secure the adjoining properties (lots 11 & 12) and advocate for the building of a public school. This was approved by the Board of Education on the 2nd of October 1871.[5]
Shortly after the new school was completed, in May 1872, James Fry became the owner of Lot 10. He then purchased the old Primitive Methodist Chapel (lot 22), next door, in 1876.[6] Fry continued as the headmaster until his retirement in 1902 and passed away at Mintaro in 1909, aged 77. The building had many changes over this time. The property transferred on his death to his third wife Lucy Stewart Fry and son-in-law Albert Clayer and then after Lucy died (1929) it was sold in 1933 to Ruby May Grace, married daughter of John George Midwinter and Mary Ann Dew. The property had been in the Fry family for over 60 years.
It is suggested that the building became a rental property during the mid 1930s through to the 1980s by which time it had been transferred to Ruby’s daughter Lois May Hobbs.
In 1990 Ian McDermid, in partnership with Luis Mendoza, obtained the property and set about restoring it to its original condition, while also installing a bore, electricity and an effluent system as well as developing the garden.[7]