Author: Greensted, Frances
Biography:
GREENSTED, Frances (1753-1829: findmypast.co.uk)
She was baptised 5 Jan. 1753 at St. John the Baptist, Wateringbury, Kent, the daughter of Edward Greensted, Clerk of the Parish and schoolmaster, and his wife Anne Hosmer. Various members of her family were surgeons in Wateringbury, West Malling, and Mereworth. Four of them subscribed to Frances Greensted’s Fugitive Pieces (1796), which she wrote to assist her 82-year-old father. She claimed to have been a servant in a Maidstone family for twenty years but this may not have been a lowly position, given the number of subscribers, her mother’s family, and her father’s status. He died 20 Mar. 1793, aged 83, with a memorial tablet later erected by parishioners. He wrote "An Account of the Late Dreadful Storm of Hail at Wateringbury" (GM, Sept. 1763, 444-5) and "A History of… Wateringbury to the Year 1781" (Ms. Maidstone Museum). In 1827 she was still in Wateringbury, in humble circumstances but widely respected. She was buried 5 Aug. 1829, aged 76. (findmypast.co.uk 6 Aug. 2020; Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London [1859] 4: 22; Jack Cronk in Archaeologia Cantiana 111 [1993]: 123-30; T. D. W. Dearn, An Historical, Topographical and Descriptive Account of the Weald of Kent [1814], 270; South Eastern Gazette [Maidstone] 20 Nov. 1827) AA