In a 1989 deposition he gave his full name as “Frederick Meed Jessop,” and he said he was born on 20 April 1910 in Millville, Utah, in Cache Valley, the son of Joseph Smith Jessop and Martha Yates.1 Social Security records list him as Fred Meade Jessop, with the same birth date and place, and name his parents as Jos. S. Jessop and Martha M. Yeates.2 Published family histories of his father also list a son named Frederick Meade and spell his mother’s surname Yeates.3 This page uses the spelling Meade, which is the form in those official and compiled records; Yates is the spelling he gave for his mother on the record. Published family lists also name Martha Jessop as a sister.

He testified that he spent twenty-five years in Millville and that he finished high school at South Cache High School in Hyrum, Utah.4 A source has not yet been found that dates, in his own words or in a contemporaneous record, when he first met John Y. Barlow, or that names who ordained him. His father is described in published accounts as working with Barlow in the founding of Short Creek.5

In the same 1989 deposition he was identified as clerk of the town of Hildale and as a trustee — counsel in that proceeding also said he was appearing for him in that trustee role, and, when asked, as a bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.6 A later obituary of a tradesman who worked in the two towns recalled “working closely with his wonderful friend, Uncle Fred M Jessop, doing the plumbing in a lot of the homes in Hildale and Colorado City, as well as schools and community centers.”7 News accounts at the end of his life likewise said he was known as “Uncle Fred” to many in the community.8 Those same accounts place his later years in the period when Rulon T. Jeffs was regarded as presiding, and then, after Jeffs’s death in 2002, under Warren Jeffs.9

What happened in his last years is described differently in public reports, and this page states only what those sources support, as they said it. In August 2004, relatives filed a missing-person report and said he had not been seen since December; some said he had been sent away after Warren Jeffs took over. An attorney for the church, Rod Parker, said it did “a disservice to him to say that he had been kicked out of the church. He was not. He simply wasn’t the bishop any more,” and disputed that Jessop had been missing.10

He died on 15 March 2005 at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree, Colorado. A Douglas County, Colorado, coroner’s report, described in Associated Press dispatches, gave the causes as aortic stenosis, congestive heart failure, and renal failure, and called the death natural; no autopsy was performed.11 A memorial service and burial were held on Sunday, 20 March 2005, in Colorado City, Arizona.12 A report that the funeral was held at the meeting house has not yet been confirmed in the sources read for this page.

The 1998 restatement of the United Effort Plan recites that he became a trustee on 1 September 1984. He was a named plaintiff in Jeffs v. Stubbs and signed the 3 November 1998 restatement.