Elizabeth Fost/Frost Dill’s real last name, conclusion
These are my reasons as to who and why I think I have the correct parents. First of all, in the 1500s and 1600s in England when writing, you may sometimes see in either original or type transcripts a word that has a double first letter: i.e. Yyork. This was done so the person reading the word could pronounce the first letter by itself and then the rest of the word. In some parts of England, the first letter may have been dropped and the word shortened. This was their way of getting people to say the whole word. When you see a typed copy of old records the double letter at beginning of a word is not a mistake but an aid to pronouncing the word properly.
I had spent those last two months looking for proof that my 7th great-grandmother was a child of William Frost and his wife Mary Wakefield. I looked at all sources that I could find for William Frost. None of them had given me proof that Elizabeth was a daughter of William and Mary. I then looked at the Vital Records for the Town of York, Maine. There I found on pages 24 & 25 the children Elizabeth had with her two husbands.
By Daniel Dill, she had Mary, Dorothy, John, Daniel, Dorcas, and Joseph. By her second husband Henry Beedle, she had Sarah, Elizabeth, Ithmar, Eliezer, and Martha. The York records indicated that Daniel Dill’s wife was the daughter of John Foss. Looking at the naming pattern of Daniel & Elizabeth’s children gave hints as to her parents. It was customary up into the early 1800s to name your children first after both sets of grandparents.
Daniel & Elizabeth’s first four are named for a grandparent:
- Mary after Elizabeth’s mother Mary Chadbourne,
- Dorothy after Daniel’s mother Dorothy Moore Dill,
- John after Elizabeth’s father John Fost
- Daniel after both his father and grand-father Daniel Dill
Elizabeth never had a son called William.
In the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire on page 241, one finds the family of John Fost and his first wife Mary Chadbourne, and their children, Mary, Humphrey, William, Jemima, and Elizabeth who m. 8 Nov. 1698 Daniel Dill, then to Henry Beedle. The final record that settled the question of who Elizabeth’s parents were is found in her marriage record to Daniel in 1698.
Capt. Abraham Preble was the Majestic Justices for the District of York and Capt. Preble was an educated man. He could read and write. He had been granted the power to marry people and served as a justice of the peace. On page 113 of Vital Records of York, Maine there is listed 27 marriages for early York, Maine. The fifth one is the record of Daniel Dill to Elizabeth as such:
“Nouember ye: 8: 1698: Daniel Dill and Elisabeth Ffost were married”
Capt. Preble being educated would have known how to spell Elizabeth’s maiden name and he wrote Ffost, not Frost.
