Person:William Fry (6)

p 9 William Fry ( - 1642) of Weymouth, MA. William Fry and his sisters Thomasine (wife of John Meigs), Mary (wife of Walter Harris) and Hannah (wife of Thomas Rawlins) have been called children of William Fry and Sarah Hill, brother of William Hill of Lyme Regis, Dorset and Fairfield, CT. This is disproven by the will of William Fry, proved 25 Feb 1625/6 (PCC HELE 20). The parents of the above children of Axminster, Devon are not known.

p 39 Recap of above plus possibly from Axminster, Devon (5 mi N of Lyme Regis). Walter Harris and Mary Fry lived in Honiton, Devon (1621-1636).

p 44 Walter Harris documents the bp of seven children in Honiton, Devon between 1621-1636 and recaps the four Fry siblings.

p 58 Vincent Miegs 1583 - 1658 suggested son of Lawrence Meggs and Anne Wood of Bradford Peverell, Dorset, wife Em ___, children bp in Chardstock, Devon (3 mi. S of Chard): Mary bp 16 Apr 1610, John bp 29 Jan 1612/13 (m Thomasine Fry), Marke bp 25 Aug 1616 (m Avis), Vincent. Brother John of Axminster, Devon will 1632 overseers Vincent Maggs and Thomas Loring, probably the Thomas Loring of Hingham, MA and Axminster in 1634.

p 67 William Rawlins of Weymouth m in England Hannah Fry came about 1633 with two sister Mary Fry and Walter Harris and Tamizine Fry and John Meigs and brother William Fry. So Thomas Fry.

p 137 English Origins of Vincent Meggs (or Meigs) (d. 1658) of Weymouth, Mass., New Haven and Guilford, Conn. by Douglas Richardson. Recap of above citation to TAG 53:92 Vincent Meggs and Thomas Loring witteses to will of John Meggs of Axminster. he found the will probated in 1614 in PCC of William Wyatt of Westwater, Devon (tything of Axminster) dated 9 Feb 1613/4 probated 27 May 1614 (Ref 40 Lawe) naming godchild Thomas ffrye. The Bishop's Transcripts of Chardstock, Dorset included bps for the children of Vincent Meggs. Also rec's for George Fry m to Ralina Dabinot (Jane Dabinot m Thomas Newberry of Windsor).

link well documented but see above because the team here as all volumes of Burton W. Spear's Search for the Passengers of the Mary and John, 1630 including volume 16.

"FRY, of Weymouth, Massachusetts" by John Blythe Dobson

The four Fry siblings [Mary, William, Thomasine, Hannah] ... 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. There is no reason for believing they were related to George Fry(e), of Weymouth, who d. in 1676. It has been recently suggested that Mary may have been from Axminster, Devon. The 1901 Meigs genealogy states that Thomasine Fry(e) was a daughter of William Fry(e), of Weymouth, Dorset [Note see source above this has been proven wrong]. The statement has been widely repeated, 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.