meadows frost + mary wood
Meadows was the only son of Meadows Frost and his wife Alice Gibbons. He was most likely born in Great Yarmouth in the mid 1750s but his baptism record has not been found to confirm this. Little is know of him but in The history and antiquities of the ancient burgh of Great Yarmouth in the county of Norfolk published by Henry Swinden in 1772, one of the subscribers is listed as Mr Meadows Frost, junior surgeon. Both of Meadows’ grandfathers, Edmund Frost and Thomas Gibbons, were physicians so it is not surprising that he too trained in this field.
He married for the first time to Mary Wood in Great Yarmouth on 18 February 1773 but there is no record of them having any children or at least any children that survived to adulthood. The marriage certificate lists both the bride and groom as 21 years but this is not necessarily accurate as this age was often recorded as a way of confirming that both parties were simply of legal age to marry. Mary Wood was the daughter of the Reverend Samuel Wood, an Independent minister at Framlingham in Suffolk. She died in June 1780 and was buried at St Nicholas in Great Yarmouth.
anne willis
Meadows remarried in February 1783 to Anne Willis and two marriage records with contradictory dates and locations have been found. The first, on 23 February, appears in the International Genealogical Index for Norwich and the second, on 26 February, was transcribed from the parish records of St Peter, Ipswich. Meadows’ age in the second record was listed as 25 years putting his birth year at 1758.
Meadows and Anne had four sons and their first, also named Meadows, was baptised in Ipswich on 22 June 1783 in a non-conformist chapel. He was born only 6 months after his parent’s marriage which may explain why they moved to Ipswich. But by 1789, the family had moved to Castle Rising — a small village located 8 kms west of the town of King’s Lynn near the north coast of Norfolk; it is still a popular tourist destination due to the 12th century castle that gave the village its name. Their second son, Thomas Gibbons, was baptised at Castle Rising on 12 March 1789 followed by Francis Aylmer on 22 March 1792 and James Garrett on 26 February 1796.
The Perlustration of Great Yarmouth (1874) also includes information on Meadows: ‘this Meadows Frost, called of Castle Rising, lived the greater part of his life in Great Yarmouth and was buried here.’ Meadows died on 14 December 1802 and was buried at St Nicholas on 20 December. An entry in the Gentleman's Magazine from 1802 also notes his death: ‘Aged 56, Mr Meadows Frost, a respectable farmer, of Rasing Lodge, Lynn.’
The Perlustration also notes details related to Meadows’ legacy to his sons:
At the south-west corner of Row No. 103 is a dwelling house, which in 1773 was devised by Mary Gibbons of Yarmouth, spinster, with estates at Ludham and Catfield in Norfolk, to her nephew, Meadows Frost of Castle Rising, Norfolk (son of Meadows Frost, who died in 1782, aged 74), who by his will made in 1794 gave the same to his children, Meadows Frost of Gibraltar, ‘sea-merchant’, Thomas Gibbons Frost, Francis Aylmer Frost and James Garrett Frost of Warrington.
Anne Willis died in Banham, Norfolk on 1 February 1811 and was buried there rather than with her husband in Yarmouth. Banham lies in the south of the county only 8 kms from the village of Diss in Suffolk. When Meadows died, his sons were relatively young with the oldest, Meadows, aged 19 and the youngest, James, only 7 so it is possible that Anne moved to Banham to be closer to her family and some much needed support to raise her young children alone.
The Perlustration also contains a summary of the descendants of Meadows of Castle Rising and it suggests that the information on the family was supplied to the author by Meadows Frost of Chester and not taken from original sources such as Parish records:
Meadows Frost, his eldest son, died without male issue. Thomas Gibbons Frost, the second son, died unmarried. Francis Aylmer Frost was the third son. The eldest son of the latter is Meadows Frost of St John’s House, Chester and Meadowslea in Flintshire. He now represents this ancient family.
Their eldest son, Meadows, later joined the Royal Navy and was stationed at Gibraltar where he met and married Mary Fitzgerald and had one son, John Meadows, who was born about 1818. Meadows died in Gibraltar in 1828, his wife in 1840 and his son in Malaga on 9 April 1842; John Meadows was buried at the British Cemetery in Malaga.
Thomas and his family remained in Castle Rising following his father’s death in 1802 but by 1814, he had moved east to Lancashire to open a mill with his brothers Francis and James. Thomas lived in Great Boughton area of Chester for many years. He never married and in 1841, he was recorded in the census living on Foregate Street in Great Boughton and working as a Corn Merchant. By 1851, he had retired and moved to Seller Street in Chester where he lived with only one household servant, Elizabeth Griffith. Thomas died in Chester on 6 December 1856, aged 67 years, and was buried at the Overleigh Cemetery on 11 December. He left several small legacies, including £500 to his servant Elizabeth Griffiths, but remainder of the estate was left to his three nephews, James Garrett, John Whitley and Charles Wardell, the sons of his late brother James Garrett.