James Frost

Born	1640-04-09
Died	1711-08-12
Select Board
In Office	1698 - 1700 1705 - 1706
Deacon of the First Parish
In Office	1711 - 1711
Spouses	Rebecca Hamlet (m. 1664-12-07 ) Elizabeth Foster (m. 1667-01-22 )
Children	Abigail Mary James (b. 1666-07-07) Thomas (b. 1667-10-18) Samuel (b. 1670-02-28) Joseph (b. 1683-03-21) Benjamin (b. 1688-03-08)

Deacon James Frost (1640 to 1711) was an early settler of Billerica who served as a selectman in 1698, 1699 and 1705 and as a deacon of the church. He was born on April 9, 1640, a son of Deacon Edmund Frost of Cambridge. In January 1663/4 the town voted to "except of Samuel ffroste and his brother, James ffrost, as Inhabitants in this Towne, in case they can by or hire acomodations in the Towne to live vpon"; his brother was the physician Samuel Frost.

On December 7, 1664, he married Rebecca Hamlet, daughter of William Hamlet, and they made their home northeast of Bare Hill, between the Hamlets and Thomas Ross. Rebecca died on July 20, 1666, thirteen days after the birth of their son James. On January 22, 1666/7, he married Elizabeth Foster, daughter of Sergeant Thomas Foster, whose will named "James Frost, son-in-law." When King Philip's War came in August 1675, the town assigned the Frosts to Sergeant Foster's house, the garrison for the south end of the town.

In 1677, when the town was divided among tithing-men as the General Court ordered, his family was placed under the care of Joseph Tompson, and in 1682 he was himself named one of the tithing-men, charged with watching over the families of his neighborhood. The list of polls and estates of August 24, 1688, rated him for three persons and his estate. He was a selectman in 1698 and 1699, and on November 17, 1698, he signed, with Jonathan Danforth, John Lane, Joseph Tompson and Jonathan Hill, the town's petition to the General Court to confirm its western lands against the claims of Concord and Chelmsford, pleading that the town would "be left ten times worse, if taken from us, than if it had been never granted." He served on the board again in 1705, when the selectmen's list calls him "James Frost, sr." to distinguish him from his son.

In the division of the common lands made about 1707 he shared in the grants of the "Pond Squadron," which received "all the land upon Bare hill to Bacon's farme and between Nutten's pond and Oakes' farme," and the list of that division names him "Dea. James Frost." On May 16, 1711, "Deacon James Frost and Lt. Samuel Hill" were appointed to view a highway proposed to be exchanged near Bare Hill, perhaps the change by which the Woburn road came to go around the hill rather than over it. He died three months later, on August 12, 1711. His widow Elizabeth died in 1726.

His children were James (born July 7, 1666), by Rebecca; and by Elizabeth, Thomas (1667), John (1668), Samuel (1669/70), who died in Tewksbury in 1755, Elizabeth (1672), Edmond (1675), Mary (1676), who married John Walker, Sarah (1678), who married Nathaniel Howard, Hannah (1680/1), Joseph (1682/3), who died in Tewksbury in 1737, Abigail (1685), who married Ephraim Kidder, and Benjamin (1687/8), later Sergeant Frost.

James Frost

James Frost

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