Sarah Froud[e] 

Froud[e], Sarah ‘Sarissa’ (also spelled Frowd) (b. c. 1755) had two sisters, Mary (‘Amanda’, baptized in 1753) and Susan (1758-1837), and a brother (possibly a twin to Mary), the Revd John Thaine Froud (1753-1826), who served as vicar at Kemble for nearly fifty years. They were the children of James Froude of Sweetwell Farm, Sedgehill. He was the adopted son of Edward Froud (d. 1744) of Sedgehill, brother to Anne Froud Steele (1684-1720), the mother of Anne Steele. Thus, the Froud sisters were distant cousins of Mary Steele. Edward Froude, like his sister, was a Baptist, but his adopted son remained an Anglican, as did his children, by all accounts. Most likely James Froud was dead by the date of the above letter, his daughters living at East Knoyle with the Revd Russ, local Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Mary. The Russes had probably been designated guardians of Froud’s daughters in his will. Both Sarah and Mary appear on several occasions in Mary Steele’s poetry and letters. In fact, it was Sarah Froud’s copy of Mary Scott’s The Female Advocate (now at the Huntington Library, Los Angeles) that was used as the copy-text for Gae Holladay’s reprint of the poem in 1784. Both Sarah and her sister, Mary, remained unmarried. Susan, however, married Edward Pellew (1757-1833), who eventually became 1st Viscount Exmouth. William Steele owned property at Sedgehill, and in a letter to Mary Steele, 13 December 1777, told her he would be selling timber from his property at the Black Horse Inn at East Knoyle on 31 December 1777. During that week Mary stayed with her cousins in the home of the Russes, probably presenting the above poem to Sarah when she left. For more on the Frouds, see  Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3; Timothy Whelan, “Mary Scott, Sarah Froud, and the Steele Literary Circle: A Revealing Annotation to The Female Advocate.” Huntington Library Quarterly 77.4 (2015), 435-52; John Broome, A Bruised Reed: The Life and Times of Anne Steele. (Harpenden: Gospel Standard Trust Publications, 2007), 121; and Marjorie Reeves, Pursuing the Muses: Female Education and Nonconformist Culture 1700–1900 (London: University of Leicester Press, 1997; 2000), 3-10.