Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: October 1990 Volume 28 Number 4, Page 161

In Memoriam : Frederick J. Roye

Page 161

The Club lost another member this past summer when Fred Roye died on August 19, 1990.

Born in Malvern, he was the son of Frederick J. and Louise Lyons Roye.

After graduation from Tredyffrin Easttown High School in the Class of 1935, he attended the University of Pennsylvania and the Julliard School of Music. He also studied music under Carl Weinrich of Princeton University, and with the noted local organist Robert Elmore.

For many years he was the organist and music director at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, where he also started an annual Bach festival and served as its director. He also taught piano and organ for a limited number of students in his studio in Berwyn.

His home in Berwyn, to which he moved in 1947, was one of the half dozen or so remaining early log houses in the area, dating back perhaps to as early as 1714 and built by a Mordecai Moore. Both the north and south walls are made of white pin oak logs, now hard as a rock, with the lower sections of the east and west walls built of native field stone. In the late 1960s he converted one of the outbuildings, formerly a garage, into his studio; in it is a large 1890s Roosevelt organ which he personally reassembled and restored after it was moved from the Universalist Church of the Messiah in Philadelphia.

Many Club members remember fondly and with delight his playing it for them during the annual Club picnic, for which he was host for several years.

He is survived by a sister, Jeanette A. White of Downingtown, and by several nephews and nieces.