Henry Bry (1781–1858), farmer and public official, was born in Geneva, Switzerland. By 1807 he had established himself in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, where he was a parish judge. In 1810 Bry was one of ten persons nominated but was not chosen to sit on the five-member territorial council. He was receiver of public moneys for the Ouachita district from at least 1821 until his removal in 1830. Bry was interested in experimental agriculture, promoted sericulture in the region, and authored a geographical and cultural sketch of Ouachita published in 1847. In 1850 Bry owned twenty-nine slaves in addition to real estate valued at $59,450 (Bry to James Madison, 1 Sept. 1807 [DNA: RG 107, LRSW]; Dunbar Rowland, ed., Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801–1816 [1917], 4:221, 327, 6:4; DNA: RG 29, CS, La., Ouachita Parish, 1810, 1850, 1850 slave schedules; Madison, Papers, Pres. Ser., 2:260–2; Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 9:896; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 3:251, 253, 437, 443, 4:9, 130 [28 Feb., 2 Mar. 1821, 5, 7 Mar. 1825, 9 Mar. 1829, 16 Dec. 1830]; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 12 July 1827; Journal of the Rev. Timothy Flint, from the Red River, to the Ouachitta or Washita, in Louisiana, in 1835 [1835], 21–2; Bry, “The Louisiana Ouachita Region,” Commercial Review of the South and West 3 [1847]: 225–30, 324–5, 407–11; gravestone inscription in Bry Cemetery, Monroe, Ouachita Parish).