On March 10th, 1863, John A. Frye opened the doors of a small shop on Elm Street in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The shoes he made weren’t icons of fashion or fanciful in style. They served a simple purpose: to ease the daily working lives of the hundreds of factory workers in that small New England town.
The individuals who wore the first Frye shoes were just like us: people who valiantly labored, honing skill and craft, supporting their families and community. When homesteading sparked adventurous New England families to head west in the mid and late 1800s, many of those pioneers wore Frye boots along the journey.
In time, John Frye’s family would grow and, along with it, The Frye Company would expand. Each generation of Frye men dedicated themselves to the art and craft of shoemaking, creating new patterns, discovering new materials, and even inventing shoe-making machinery. Their fervor for the process of crafting footwear as durable as it is beautiful has been our company’s benchmark, ever since. And this dedication has helped us craft footwear with a long and illustrious history. Frye’s Harness boot is rooted in this tradition and continues to draw inspiration from the American Cavalry.
