His birth was registered in the Bedminster district of Bristol in the fourth quarter of 1848, and the 1851 census shows the family living at 5 Wood Hill, Portishead.
[3] In 1868, he helped out members of the Brasenose rowing team under Walter Bradford Woodgate, who had practised for the Stewards' Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta without a cox.
Weatherly graduated with a degree in Classics in 1871, and in 1872 he married Anna Maria Hardwick (generally called "Minnie") of Axbridge in Somerset (d. 1920), with whom he had a son and two daughters.
Weatherly and his wife later lived apart,[2] and on the night of the 1881 census he is recorded as being on his own with his three young children and four servants at his house, Sevensprings, South Parks Road, Oxford.
Weatherly remained in Oxford, briefly working as a schoolmaster and then as a private tutor until 1887 when he qualified as a barrister, practising first in London and then in the west of England.
Some time after 1911, Frederic and Maude moved to Grosvenor Lodge (now St Christopher's) in Belmont Road, Combe Down, just outside Bath.
The Times wrote of his dual career, "His fertility was extraordinary, and though it is easy to be contemptuous of his drawing-room lyrics, sentimental, humorous and patriotic, which are said to number about 3,000 altogether, it is certain that no practising barrister has ever before provided so much innocent pleasure.
In addition to the above, they were: "Nancy Lee"; "The Midshipmite"; "Polly"; "They all love Jack"; "Jack's Yarn"; "The Old Brigade"; "The Deathless Army"; "To the Front"; "John Bull"; "Darby and Joan"; "When We are Old and Grey"; "Auntie"; "The Chimney Corner"; "The Children's Home"; "The Old Maids of Lee"; "The Men of Ware"; "The Devoted Apple"; "To-morrow will be Friday"; "Douglas Gordon"; "Sleeping Tide"; "The Star of Bethlehem"; "Beauty's Eyes"; "In Sweet September"; "Bid me Good-bye"; "The Last Watch"; "London Bridge"; "The King's Highway"; "Go to Sea"; "Veteran's Song"; "Up from Somerset"; "Beyond the Dawn"; "Nirvana"; "Mifanwy"; "Sergeant of the Line"; "Stone-cracker John"; "Ailsa Mine"; "Old Black Mare"; "Coolan Dhu"; "Three for Jack"; "Bhoy I Love"; "The Blue Dragoons"; "At Santa Barbara"; "The Grenadier"; "Reuben Ranzo"; "Dinder Courtship"; "Friend o'Mine"; "When You Come Home"; "Little Road Home"; "Greenhills of Somerset"; "Danny Boy"; "As you pass by"; "Ships of my dreams"; "Why shouldn't I?
"; "When Noah Went-a-sailing"; "Time to go"; "Chumleigh Fair"; "Our Little Home"; "The Bristol Pageant, Music Composed by Hubert Hunt in 1924" and "Little Lady of the Moon".
[12] Weatherly also worked in opera, making English translations of Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana, for Covent Garden[3] and writing the lyrics for the 1894 premiere of Mirette at the Savoy Theatre.