wife of Sir Charles Henry Frankland
She was born at Marblehead, Massachussets, the fourth of the eight children of Edward and Mary (Pierce) Surriage, and was baptized April 17, 1726. Her father was a poor fisherman, her mother a granddaughter of John Brown, an affluent London merchant, who settled at Pemaquid (now Bristol, Maine) in 1625 and bought a tract of land, later known as the Brown Right, from the Indians.
Agnes became a maid-of-all-work at the Fountain Inn in Marblehead, where in the summer of 1742 her black ringlets, black eyes, and smooth complexion aroused the interest of Charles Henry Frankland (May 10, 1716 - January 11, 1768) who from 1741 to 1757 was collector of the port of Boston. According to family tradition, Agnes was scrubbing the tavern floor when they first saw each other, and Frankland, noting the girl's scanty dress and bare feet, gave her a crown to buy her a pair of shoes.
Impressed by her beauty and intelligence, he persuaded her parents to let the girl be educated in Boston at his expense. In 1746, by the death of his uncle, Sir Thomas Frankland, Member of Parliament and a Lord of the Admiralty, he succeeded to the baronetcy of Thirsk in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
About this time Agnes Surriage became his mistress. The liaison created scandal; and Frankland, to shield the girl from insult, bought 480 acres at Hopkinton, built a mansion, and lived with her there until 1754, when Frankland returned to England to help settle a family lawsuit. His family did not welcome Miss Surriage. Frankland next took up his residence at Lisbon.
On November 1, 1755, the city was destroyed by an earthquake, "on which day, " Frankland recorded in his journal, "I was providentially saved. I was buried in ruins. .. . Hope my providential escape will have a lasting good effect upon my mind. " He thereupon married Agnes Surriage, who, according to the family story, had effected his rescue.
On their return to England she was received cordially by his family and friends. They lived in Massachusetts again from 1756 to 1758, their Boston house being the Clarke mansion on Garden Court Street and Bell Alley, described in Fenimore Cooper's Lionel Lincoln; and Lady Frankland became at once one of the leaders of Boston society.
Later they returned to Lisbon, where Frankland served as British consul-general. After her husband's death Lady Frankland came back to the Hopkinton estate, on which she lived until the outbreak of the Revolution forced her to remove to Boston and thence to England. Her estate, in spite of her Loyalist sympathies, was not confiscated.
She died the next year and was buried in St. Pancras' Church in Chichester. Her story has been told by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the ballad of "Agnes" in Songs in Many Keys (1861) and by Edwin Lassetter Bynner in a novel, Agnes Surriage (1886, 1923).
She was a woman of great charm and refinement. Not the least of her graces was the unfailing love and kindness that she showed to her family and to the friends of her girlhood.
In 1782 she married John Drew, a wealthy banker of Chichester.
