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F R Y, of Weymouth, Massachusetts

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rockne Johnson for sending information on Thomasine (Fry) Meigs, and David H. Williams for sending information on Elizabeth (Meigs) Hubbell. The well-known genealogist Douglas Richardson informs us that he is directly descended from Thomasine (Fry) Meigs.

Introduction

The four Fry siblings who follow do not appear to have been in New England before 1635, but all were certainly there by 1642. All four are treated in Chamberlain’s History of Weymouth.[1] There is no reason for believing they were related to George Fry(e), of Weymouth, who d. in 1676.[2] It has been recently suggested that Mary may have been from Axminster, Devon.[3] Unfortunately, we have not had access to the best and most recent account of the family, incorporating research in English sources by Douglas Richardson, which appeared in Burton W. Spear, Search for the Passengers of the Mary and John, 1630, v. 16 (199_), the volume being now out of print and practically unprocurable.

The 1901 Meigs genealogy states that Thomasine Fry(e) was a daughter of William Fry(e), of Weymouth, Dorset.[4] The statement has been widely repeated,[5] and the IGI contains a number of entries from patrons’ submission record giving her birthdate (sic) as 29 Feb. 1612. The author of the Meigs genealogy appears to have been imposed upon by one of his informants, who passed on to him a garbled version of an account — unobjectionable in itself — of the family of William Frye, of Lyme Regis (not Weymouth), Dorset, which had been published about six years earlier by H.F. Waters in NEHGR 49 (1895): 495. The children of the William Frye treated by Waters are referred to in the 1620 will of their maternal grandfather as “my daughter Sarah Fry … her three children, Tristram, William and Mary.” This cannot be a reference to the Frye siblings of New England unless Waters’ reading of the name “Tristram” is cast aside, and it is assumed, against all probability, that Hannah/Anna Fry had not yet been born. Thus, it would appear that our subjects were forcibly attached to a family of high social status who happened to live in the same general vicinity as the Meigs family of Thomasine Fry’s husband. The subsequent connection of the Fry family with Weymouth, Massachusetts, may have contributed to acceptance of the very dubious proposition that they were from Weymouth, Dorset.

We continue with a brief outline of what is actually known respecting the four Fry siblings of Massachusetts, more detail generally being available in the sources cited.

  1. Mary Fry, b. say 1604, d. (testate) 24 Jan. 1655/6 at New London. She m. by 1621 (in November of which year their first child was born), Walter Harris, of New London, Connecticut. Her identity is proven by the 1643 will of her brother William Fry, which mentions her son Thomas Harris, and by her own will, dated 19 Jan. 1655/6 and attested by mark rather than by signature, in which she named several collateral relatives including “my sister Migges,” “my sister Hannah Rawlin,” “my cosen [i.e. nephew] Calib Rawlyns,” “my two cosens Mary and Elizabeth Fry [the daughters of her brother William],” and “my two kinswomen Elizabeth Hubbard [i.e. Hubbell] and Mary Steevens [daughters of her sister Thomasine].”[6] They were the great-grandparents of Joseph Harris, of Poughkeepsie, New York, our ancestor.
  2. William Fry, of Weymouth, Mass., b. say 1608, d. shortly before 26 Oct. 1642 (the date of his burial), “being sicke & weake in body.” His name appears in a list of the residents of Weymouth made in 1636.[7] He m. (as her first husband) Elizabeth (Foster?), probably a daughter of Elizabeth (Seamer?) Foster and stepdaughter of Jonas Humphrey (which Jonas Humphrey refers in his will to his “granddaughter Elizabeth Frie”).[8] His will, undated but certainly written before 2 Dec. 1642,[9] and proved 4 Dec. (10th month) 1643, mentions his wife (to whom he leaves the majority of his estate), his “two daughters, Elizabeth & Mary,” and bequeaths “to Thomas Harris, Thomas Rawlens & John Meggs, his three sisters youngest children, each of them a kid.”[10] his widow afterward married secondly, Thomas Daggett. Known issue (per Weymouth VR):[11]
    1. Elizabeth Fry, b. 20 Dec. (10th month) 1639. She m. Nathan Fiske, Jr., son of Nathan Fiske, of Watertown, Mass.
    2. Mary Fry, b. 9 Jan. (11th month) 1641[/2], d. 22 March 1704, and buried in Dorchester Cemetery. She m. Thomas Pierce, and had issue.[12]
  3. Thomasine Fry, b. say 1614,[13] said to have d. 4 Jan. 1671/2 at Killingsworth, Connecticut (but she is not mentioned in the town vital records). She m. by 1641 (possibly in 1632), John Meigs, of Weymouth, Hartford, and Guilford, said to have been b. 1612, d. 4 Jan. 1671/2 at Killingsworth.[14] John Meigs made a will dated 28 Aug. 1671 and proved 4 June 1672, naming his wife as executrix.[15] The 1683 will of Gov. William Leete, of Hartford and Guilford, mentions “land … I bought at Homonoscitt of John Meggs,” though this might equally well be a reference to his son, or some other man of the same name.[16] Her “youngest child” John Meggs is mentioned in the will (proved 1643) of her brother, William Fry. Known issue (order partly inferential):
    1. Mary Meigs, said in the Meigs genealogy to have been b. 1633, d. 30 April 1702 at Guilford. She m. (as his first wife) 3 March 1652/3, William Stevens (or Stephens), of Guilford and Killingworth, b. 1630, d. 26 Feb. 1704 at Guilford, son of John Stevens. She is “my kinswoman Mary Steevens” in the 1656 will of her aunt, Mary (Fry) Harris. They had six, and possibly seven, children.[17]
    2. Elizabeth Meigs, said in the Meigs genealogy to have been b. 1635, d. in 1664-5, at Pequonnock. She m. (as his first wife) in 1650-51 at New Haven, Richard Hubbell, of New Haven, Guilford, and Fairfield, d. 23 Oct. 1699 at Stratford.[18] She is mentioned as “my kinswoman Elizabeth Hubbard” in the 1656 will of her aunt, Mary (Fry) Harris.
    3. Concurrence Meigs, b. say 1637, d. 9 Oct. 1708. She m. (Capt.) Henry Crane, b. 1635, said to have been an immigrant from Suffolk. He was one of the original proprietors of Killingworth. They had eight children.[19]
    4. (Deacon) John Meigs, Jr., b. 29 [sic] Feb. (12th month) 1641[/2], d. 9 Nov. 1713 “in his 48th year,” and buried in the West Cemetery, Madison, New Haven Co., Conn.[20] He m. (1) Sarah Wilcox, d. 24 Nov. 1691, “æ. about 42 years,” who as “Sarah, wife of Dea. John Meigs, was buried with her husband”; daughter of William Wilcox, of Stratford, by his wife Margaret ____. He m. (2) Lydia (____) Crittenden, widow of Isaac Crittenden. The Meigs genealogy lists eight children for him.[21]
    5. Trial Meigs, said to have been b. 1646 at New Haven, d. 1690 at Killingworth. She m. in 1668 at Guilford, Andrew Ward, Jr., b. 1645 at Stamford, d. 1691 (?) at Killingworth, son of Andrew Ward and Esther Sherman, and had nine children.[22] Through their son Andrew (III) they were ancestors, in two different lines, of the Rev. Henry Ward Beech (1813-1887), the noted divine, and of his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.[23] Through their son William they were ancestors of Emma Hale, the principal wife of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet.[24]
  4. Hannah/Anna Fry, b. say 1616, will proved 29 April 1692. She m. before 1642, Thomas Rawlins, of Weymouth and Boston, who d. (intestate) before 28 May 1670.[25] The 1874 Rawlins genealogy states of this Thomas Rawlins that his “mother was a sister of William Fry.”[26] Chamberlain’s History of Weymouth, p. 562, exhibits the same confusion, calling him “a son of a sister of William Frye,” and neglecting to assign him the son Thomas mentioned in Frye’s will. Why these authors should have placed him a generation too late is inexplicable, unless it was merely that he and his wife outlived her brother by a generation. It is unlikely to have resulted from a simple misinterpretation of the reference to his son Caleb as “my cosen” in the will of William Fry’s sister, Mary (Fry) Harris, for had these authors assumed (in ignorance of seventeenth-century usage) that Caleb and Mary were of the same generation, they would have placed Thomas Rawlins a generation too early. Yet their reconstruction implies that the testator was actually referring to a grandnephew, a somewhat distant relation to be remembered in the will of a woman with children of her own. In any case, his dates forbid him being anything other than Hannah’s husband. As their son Thomas must have been born before 1642 and all their other known children were younger, it leaves open the possibility that they had older children, including possibly the Benjamin and Abigail named in Chamberlain’s Weymouth as “unrecorded” in the town records. Known issue:
    1. Benjamin Rawlins (unplaced).
    2. Abigail Rawlins (unplaced).
    3. Thomas Rawlins (missed in Chamberlain’s Weymouth), called the “youngest child” in the 1642 will of his uncle, William Fry, so b. say 1640.
    4. Joshua Rawlins, of Boston, mariner, b. 2 Dec. (10th month) 1642 at Weymouth. He married, and had at least one child.
    5. Caleb Rawlins, of Boston, housewright, b. 8 March (1st month) 1645 at Boston, mentioned in the will of his aunt, Mary (Fry) Harris. He m. Elizabeth Wilmot, daughter of Nicholas Wilmot, and they had eight children, for whom see the 1874 Rawlins genealogy.
    6. Joseph Rawlins, bapt. 25 June 1648, aged about 11 days, at Boston.
    7. Mary Rawlins, b. 24 Nov. 1652 at Boston.
    8. Samuel Rawlins, b. 1 Sept. 1655.

Notes

1. George Walter Chamberlain, History of Weymouth, Massachusetts, 4 vols. (Weymouth, 1923), 3:244 (Frye), 255-6 (Harris), 416 (Meigs), 4:562 (Rawlens).
2. Charles Henry Pope, The Pioneers of Massachusetts; a descriptive list, drawn from records of the Colonies, Towns, and Churches, and other contemporaneous documents (Boston, 1900), 177; Chamberlain’s Weymouth, 3:243-4; Donald Lines Jacobus, The Granberry Family (Hartford, Connecticut, 1945), 220.
3. Gale Ion Harris, “Walter and Mary (Fry) Harris of New London, Connecticut,” NEHGR 156 (2002), 145-58, 262-79, 357-72, 392 (correction), at p. 146, citing Burton W. Spear, Search for the Passengers of the Mary and John, 1630, v. 16 (199_): 39.
4. Henry Benjamin Meigs, Record of the descendants of Vincent Meigs who came from Dorsetshire, England, to America about 1635 (Baltimore, 1901), pp. 8, 166, 174, citing the Genealogical Department of the Boston Transcript, 22 Aug. 1900, and information from a “Miss C.L. Sands” and “Fayette M. Meigs, of California.”
5. Notably in H. Minot Pitman & Donald Lines Jacobus, Comstock-Thomas Ancestry of Richard Wilmot Comstock (1964), 182. The claim that Thomasine Fry(e) was from Weymouth (but without any statement concerning her parentage) is repeated in the obituary of John Meigs, NEHGR 84 (1930): 318, and in many other secondary works.
6. As pointed out in Frances Manwaring Caulkins, History of New London, Connecticut (New London, 1852), p. 269 n. 2.
7. Charles Harris, Walter Harris and some of his descendants (Cleveland, Ohio, 1922), 4.
8. Her identity is considered in Frederick J. Nicholson, “The Family of Jonas1 Humfrey of Dorchester, Massachusetts…,” The American Genealogist 68 (1993): 14-22, especially 17-18.
9. Since it implies that his sister Hannah (Fry) Rawlins’ youngest child was her son Thomas, and on 2 Dec. 1642 she gave birth to a younger son, Joshua, who certainly survived.
10. This will is printed in NEHGR 2(1848):385.
11. Evidence for the marriages of both daughters comes from William B. Trask, “Thomas Pierce, of Dorchester, and wife Mary,” NEHGR 39 (1885): 230-31.
12. Trask, op. cit., refutes earlier statements that this man m. Mary, daughter of George Proctor.
13. A large number of entries for Thomasine Fry in the IGI and in the LDS Pedigree Resource File claim without citation of record evidence that she was baptized (some say “born”) 29 Feb. 1612 at Weymouth. Another entry for Thomasine Fry in the LDS Pedigree Resource File seems to claim that she was bapt. 9 Feb 1613/4 at Axminster, Devon.
14. Henry Benjamin Meigs, Record of the descendants of Vincent Meigs who came from Dorsetshire, England, to America about 1635 (Baltimore, 1901), 8, 11, 172-76; there is also a second edition of this work, revised by Return Jonathan Meigs IX (Westfield, N.J., 1935).
15. Information from Rockne Johnson.
16. Charles William Manwaring, A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records, 3 (?) vols. (Hartford, 1904–), 1:330.
17. The Hon. R.D. Smith, “John Stephens of Guilford (Conn.) and his Descendants,” NEHGR 56 (1902): 356-61, at pp. 358 ff.; Clarence Etienne Leonard, The Fulton-Hayden-Warner Ancestry in America (New York, 1923), 66; Obituary of Mrs. Sarah Frances (Stevens) Dearborn, NEHGR 84 (1930): 222; Ruth Lee Griswold, A Narrative of the Griswold Family [descended] from Thomas Griwold, Esq.re, of Weathersfield and Guilford, 1695 (Rutland, Vermont, 1931), 16, 17.
18. Rebecca Donaldson Beach & Rebecca Donaldson Gibbons, The Reverend John Beach and his Descendants (New Haven, 1898), 185-6; Walter Hubbell, History of the Hubbell family; containing genealogical records of the ancestors and descendants of Richard Hubbell from A.D. 1086 to A.D. 1915, 2nd ed. (New York, 1915), 195; various lines of descent are treated briefly in An American Family: Botsford-Marble Ancestral Lines, compiled for Otis Marble Botsford by Donald Lines Jacobus (New Haven, Conn., 1933), and in the obituary of James Floyd Hubbell, NEHGR 103 (1949): 226.
19. The Rev. Jonathan Crane, “The Crane Family,” NEHGR 27 (1873): 76-78, at p. 77; Ruth Lee Griswold, A Narrative of the Griswold Family, 101, 102-3.
20. Cemetery Transcriptions from the NEHGS Manuscript Collections.
21. In addition to the Meigs genealogy, see Ruth Lee Griswold, A Narrative of the Griswold Family, 42.
22. Obituary of Col. James Ward, NEHGR 11 (1857): 94-5; George K. Ward, Andrew Warde and his descendants, 1597-1910 (New York, 1910), 30 ff.; Clarence Etienne Leonard, The Fulton-Hayden-Warner Ancestry in America, 552.
23. Josephine C. Frost, Ancestors of Henry Ward Beecher and his wife Eunice White Bullard (1927), 70-72; Notable Kin: an anthology of columns first published in the NEHGS NEXUS, comp. Gary Boyd Roberts, 2 vols. (Santa Clarita, California: Carl Boyer, 1998, 1999), 1:175.
24. This line is shown in the LDS Ancestral file (albeit with false ancestry for the mother of Trial Meigs). This descent, and the Meigs family in general, is treated in Mary Audentia Smith Anderson, Ancestry and Posterity of Joseph Smith and Emma Hale (Independence, Missouri, 1929), but we have not had access to a copy of that work.
25. As he did not survive his wife Anna, he could not have married secondly the widow Sarah (____) Murdock, as claimed in the sketchy account of this family in Samuel Deane, History of Scituate, Massachusetts (1831), 330.
26. John R. Rollins, Records of Families of the name Rawlins or Rollins in the United States (Lawrence, Mass., 1874), 275-76, at p. 275.

Some Sites of Related Interest

  • The Frye Family, by Michael J. Roman [treats only the family of William Frye, one of the four siblings]
    <http://webpages.charter.net/mroman/frye.htm>

From the Genealogy Page of John Blythe Dobson
URL = cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/people/Dobson/genealogy/ff/Fry.cfm
This page first appeared 26 December 2002
Last revised 20 March 2007