Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 5.djvu/667

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

in Massachusetts. This name, variously spelled, appears on the records of New Eng- land about the middle of the seventeenth centur\-. The immigrants of this name were all or nearly all of Scotch extraction. James Frissell was of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where a daughter I\Iary was born May i6, 1656. John Frissell, a native of Scotland. died in Braintree, Massachusetts, January 19, 1664; \\'illiam, also Scotchman, of Con- cord, married, November 28, 1667, Hannah Clarke. \'arious others of the name are mentioned later in the century. John and Joseph Frissell were of the original colony of thirty-five persons who received from Roxbury, Massachusetts, the grant of the town of Woodstock, Connecticut, as ap- pears by an ancient deed on file in the office of the town clerk. Joseph Frissell married Abigail Bartholomew, January 11, 1691. This is one of the earliest marriages recorded after the settlement of the town of Woodstock. John Frissell, son of Jo- seph Frissell, married, November 10, 1726, Abigail Morris. Lieutenant William Fris- sell, son of John Frissell, was baptized July 9, 1737, in Woodstock, and died in Peru, Massachusetts, December 25, 1824, aged eighty-six years. Sergeant William Frissell's name is on the Lexington alarm list from the town of Woodstock, term of service fifteen days ; he was ensign in Sev- enth Company, Third Regiment (Colonel Israel Putnam's), commissioned May i, dis- charged December 16, 1775, and re-entered the service in 1776. Two state battalions under Colonels' Mott and Swift, raised in June and July, 1776, reinforced the conti- nental troops in the northern department, at Fort Ticonderoga and vicinity, served under General Gates, and returned in November of the same year. The commission of first lieutenant given "William Fizle" under the hand of Jonathan Trumbull, Esq., captain general and commander-in-chief of the Eng- lish colony of Connecticut, New England, at Hartford, June 20. 1776, with the public seal of the colony attached, is now in pos- session of Francis \\'. Rockwell, of Pitts- field, Massachusetts. William Frissell moved from Woodstock, Connecticut, to Partridgefield (now Peru), Massachusetts, about 1784, and represented that town in the legislature in 1800 and for two years there- after. He married Judith Mason, of Wood- stock, Connecticut, who died in Peru, I\Ias-

sachusetts, August 15, 1831, aged ninety years. Children : Monica, Amasa, Wil- liam, Thomas, Sarah, Lemuel, Walter and John.

Amasa Frissell, son of Lieutenant Wil- liam Frissell, lived in Peru, and is described as "a typical Frissell, uniting perseverance with sagacity, and having with all an un- derlying vein of humor, appreciating a joke, even upon himself." When the discovery ot the electric telegraph was announced, he predicted that it would go around the world. By occupation a surveyor, he took great interest in his work, and was for many years a teacher in the Sunday school at Peru. He was married three times and the second wife was probably a Cogswell.

The only son of this marriage, Amasa Cogswell Frissell, became a Congregational clergyman, afterward affiliating with the Presbyterian church, and was a friend of Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher. He was a secre- tary of the American Tract Society, and active in divinity school work. He married Lavina Barker, granddaughter of Captain William Barker, a soldier of the revolution.

Their son, Algernon Sydney Frissell, is president of the Fifth Avenue Bank of New ^'ork City. He married Susan Brinkerhoflf Varick. Children : Lavina, deceased, be- came the wife of Jerome Kidder. Lewis Fo.x Frissell a successful physician of New York. Ezra Reed Frissell, a graduate of Philips' Andover Academ}^ married Eliza Dodd. Hollis liurke. receives further men- tion below. Collins, deceased. Leila Stiles, active in Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation work, lives in New York.

Hollis Burke Frissell, third son of Amasa Cogswell and Lavina (Barker) Frissell, was born July 14, 1851, in Dutchess county. New York, and attended school at College Hill, Poughkeepsie. He was afterward a student at Dr. Dwight's School on Twenty-sixth street. New York City, following which he attended Philips' Andover Academy, from which he graduated in 1869, and graduated from Yale University in 1874. After gradu- ation he was two years a teacher at De Garmo Institute, at Rhinebeck, Dutchess county. New York. From 1876 to 1879 he was a .student of Union Theological Semi- nary, from which he graduated in the latter year. He at once became assistant pastor of the Presbyterian Memorial Church, of New York City, where he continued one year