Born Agnes Surriage to Edward and Mary (Pierce) Surriage in the spring of 1726, the future Lady Frankland grew up in
Marblehead, Massachusetts with seven brothers and sisters. Because her family was too large for Edward, a fisherman, to support, Agnes found employment as a young teenager as a waiting girl of all work at the Fountain Inn, a Marblehead tavern. In the summer of 1742, when she was 16 years of age, she caught the eye of
Charles Henry ("Harry") Frankland (1716–1768), the 26-year-old Collector of the Port of Boston, in town for business. Frankland was a descendant of
Oliver Cromwell and came from one of the richest families in northern England. With her parents' permission, he became her benefactor, accompanied her to Boston, and arranged for her education. Four years later, in 1746, Agnes became Sir Harry's mistress, a relationship that was said to have shocked Boston society. Sir Harry rose to baronet of Thirsk in the
North Riding of Yorkshire on the death of his uncle,
Sir Thomas Frankland. Agnes, Sir Harry, and Frankland's son from a previous relationship, Henry Cromwell, then moved to rural
Hopkinton, Massachusetts. In 1754, Sir Harry had to return to England, accompanied by Agnes, to contest Sir Thomas Frankland's will, eventually losing the contested property to his uncle's widow. In 1757, they moved back to Lisbon on Sir Harry's appointment as consul general. In 1764, they retired to
Bath, England. Sir Harry died in 1768. Lady Frankland moved back to America to Hopkinton until the outbreak of the American Revolution. She had no children of her own, but returned to England with Sir Harry's son, Henry Cromwell, to live with the Frankland family. She remarried in 1781 to
John Drew, a banker in
Chichester. She died just two years later in 1783 of pneumonia and was buried in St. Pancras' Church in Chichester. ==Legacy==