Frederick Edmund Meredith - Family

Family

In 1903, Meredith married Anne Madeleine VanKoughnet (1863–1945), daughter of Mathew Robert VanKoughnet (1824–1874) of Toronto and Cornwall; Barrister and Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada. Her father practised law with his brother, The Hon. Philip Michael Matthew Scott VanKoughnet, later Chancellor of Upper Canada, and together they acquired the largest legal practice brought together in Upper Canada. Mrs Meredith's mother, Elizabeth Hagerman Macaulay (1826–1899), was a daughter of George Macaulay (1796-1828) of Bath, Upper Canada, and a niece of John Simcoe Macaulay, Sir James Buchanan Macaulay, Christopher Alexander Hagerman and John Solomon Cartwright. Mrs Meredith, a cousin of David Ross McCord, was the widow of Francis Wolferstan Thomas, by whom she had three children. Meredith and his wife 'mutually consented to separate' in 1913, leaving one son, William Campbell James Meredith. He lived at Pine Avenue in Montreal's Golden Square Mile and variously kept rooms at the Ritz Carlton and the University Club.

Mrs Meredith had served with Lady Vincent Meredith as a Governor of the Montreal Maternity Hospital. When she separated from her husband in 1913, she moved to England, living in Knightsbridge, London. During World War I she served with the Canadian Red Cross at the Moor Park Convalescent Home for Canadian Officers, in Devon. In 1942, Mrs Meredith went to stay with her daughter Shearme and her husband, Lt.-Col. John Lionel Philips, at their home Abbey Cwmhir Hall. During her stay she fell ill and three years later she died there, July 27, 1945. A funeral service was held for her at Penybont, where there is a bench in the churchyard to her memory. She was survived by her four children and two of her sisters, Mrs Frank Wolff May of Montreal and Lady Casimir Cartwright van Straubenzee of London.