Amos Noë Freeman (1809—1893) was an African-American

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

minister, and educator. He was the first full-time minister of Abyssinian Congregational Church in

Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropo ...

, where he led a station on the

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. ...

, and served for decades at Siloam Presbyterian Church in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Early life and education

Amos Noë Freeman was born in

Rahway, New Jersey Rahway () is a city in southern Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. A bedroom community of New York City, it is centrally located in the Rahway Valley region, in the New York metropolitan area. The city is southwest of Manhattan ...

. He was orphaned and raised within the church from an early age. As a child, he was sent to attend the

African Free School The African Free School was a school for children of slaves and free people of color in New York City. It was founded by members of the New York Manumission Society, including Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, on November 2, 1787. Many of its alumn ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, then matriculated to Phoenix High School in New York City, established by his mentor Rev. Theodore Sedgewick Wright. Freeman returned to his native New Jersey to attend Rahway Academy, and later transferred to the

Oneida Institute The Oneida Institute was a short-lived (1827–1843) but highly influential school that was a national leader in the emerging abolitionist movement. It was the most radical school in the country, the first at which black men were just as welcome ...

Whitesboro, New York Whitesboro is a village in Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 3,772 at the 2010 census. The village is named after Hugh White, an early settler. The Village of Whitesboro is inside the Town of Whitestown. History The vi ...

. It had recently been founded by radical

minister, Rev.

Beriah Green Beriah Green Jr. (March 24, 1795May 4, 1874) was an American reformer, abolitionist, temperance advocate, college professor, minister, and head of the Oneida Institute. He was "consumed totally by his abolitionist views". He has been described as ...

. Freeman was one of four African Americans in the first year class of 33; others were Amos Beman, who became a good friend;

Alexander Crummell Alexander Crummell (March 3, 1819 – September 10, 1898) was a pioneering African-American minister, academic and African nationalist. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in the United States, Crummell went to England in the late 1840s to raise money ...

, and

Henry Highland Garnet Henry Highland Garnet (December 23, 1815 – February 13, 1882) was an African-American abolitionist, minister, educator and orator. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he grew up in New York City. He was educat ...

.Swift, David Everett
''Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy Before the Civil War''
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989, p. 178. Upon graduating from Oneida Institute in the early 1830s, Freeman moved back to New Jersey, first to

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

, then

Newark Newark most commonly refers to: * Newark, New Jersey, city in the United States * Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey; a major air hub in the New York metropolitan area Newark may also refer to: Places Canada * Niagara-on-the ...

, to teach in the "

colored ''Colored'' (or ''coloured'') is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow Era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur, though it has taken on a special meaning in Sout ...

" public schools.

Marriage and family

In 1839 in Newark, Freeman married Christiana Taylor Williams (1812-1903), born in Red Hook on Hudson, New York. She was a recently

manumitted Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that ...

domestic slave and black descendant of Philip H. Livingston (1769,

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

-1831, New York), grandson of

Philip Livingston Philip Livingston (January 15, 1716 – June 12, 1778) was an American merchant and statesman from New York City. He represented New York at the October 1774 First Continental Congress, where he favored imposing economic sanctions upon Great B ...

, a signer of the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...

; and Barbara Williams, an enslaved woman of African descent born in Jamaica. Christiana Williams had worked in one or more of Livingston's households in New York state. The Freemans had a family, including a daughter, Mary Freeman. She married Rev. Robert Foster Wheeler. One of their daughters,

Laura Wheeler Waring Laura Wheeler Waring (May 16, 1887 – February 3, 1948) was an American artist and educator, best known for her paintings of prominent African Americans that she made during the Harlem Renaissance. She taught art for more than 30 years at Ch ...

, became a portrait painter known for her work during the Harlem Renaissance. She was among the first African-American artists to have works exhibited by the

Harmon Foundation The Harmon Foundation was established in 1921 by wealthy real-estate developer and philanthropist William E. Harmon (1862–1928). A native of the Midwest, Harmon's father was an officer in the 10th Cavalry Regiment. The Foundation originally s ...

, and was commissioned by them to do portraits of prominent African Americans.Art and Culture: Exploring Freedom/Laura Wheeler Waring
''African American World'', PBS-WNET.

Ministry

Freeman was ordained as a minister by the New York Presbytery in 1840. In 1841, he and his wife moved to

, where he was installed as the first pastor of the Abyssinian Congregational Church, now the third oldest surviving black church in the United States. It became a center of the anti-slavery movement and part of the

. Freeman became the most well-known African American in Maine because of his leadership there; he was a strong supporter of education and also ran a school affiliated with the church. For a decade, he and his wife provided support to fugitive slaves at the church and in their home."Abyssinian Congregational Church"
Portland Freedom Trail, 2007. In 1852, Rev. Freeman became the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church in

, founded in 1849. He served there from 1852 to 1860. He was a longtime friend of Amos Gerry Beman, a prominent black minister active in the Northeast. In 1853, he was a prominent attendee of the radical abolitionist National African American Convention in Rochester, New York. His was one of 5 names attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, ''The Claims of Our Common Cause'', along with

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...

, James Monroe Whitfield, Henry O. Wagoner, and

George Boyer Vashon George Boyer Vashon (July 25, 1824 – October 5, 1878) was an African American scholar, poet, lawyer, and abolitionist. Biography George Boyer Vashon was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the third child and only son of an abolitionist, John Be ...

.Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass: Selected speeches and writings. Chicago Review Press, 2000. p260-271 In 1857 Freeman moderated the annual meeting of the Evangelical Association of Colored Ministers of Congregational and Presbyterian Churches, which met from 1856 to 1859 to confirm their distinctive vocation; that year they met at the Central Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. In 1859 Freeman hosted this meeting at the Siloam Church, by which time there were 27 black churches in the group.Swift (1989)
''Black Prophets of Justice''
p. 310. While Rev. Freeman lived in Brooklyn in the mid-1850s, he secretly sheltered and aided Anna Maria Weems, a young fugitive slave, on her journey to freedom in Canada. Jacob Bigelow, a Washington, DC lawyer, disguised her as a boy. They met Dr. Ellwood Harvey of Philadelphia in front of the White House in November 1855, and Weems pretended to be a male buggy driver. She drove Harvey from Washington to Philadelphia, where Harvey took her to the house of another abolitionist,

William Still William Still (October 7, 1821 – July 14, 1902) was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, businessman, writer, historian and civil rights activist. Before the Ameri ...

, for Thanksgiving. The next day Dr. Harvey took Weems across the river to Camden, New Jersey, and on to New York City. In Brooklyn he took her to Rev. Charles Ray's house. Ray took her to the home of

Lewis Tappan Lewis Tappan (May 23, 1788 – June 21, 1873) was a New York abolitionist who worked to achieve freedom for the enslaved Africans aboard the '' Amistad''. Tappan was also among the founders of the American Missionary Association in 1846, which b ...

, where the only photo of Weems was taken in her "boy disguise". Rev. Freeman accompanied Weems from there by train to Canada, where she reached safety at her uncle and aunt's house in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

. It is likely that is where Freeman first met the radical American abolitionist, John Brown. Later Brown stopped at Freeman's church in Brooklyn in 1859, while en route to his raid at Harpers Ferry.

Later years

In 1860, Rev. Freeman was called as pastor of the Congregationalist Talcott Street Church in Hartford, Connecticut. Four years later, Rev. Freeman and family returned to Brooklyn, where he rejoined the congregation at Siloam Presbyterian Church. Freeman served there until his retirement in 1885. Christiana Williams Freeman worked at the Colored Orphans Home in New York City, where she helped protect the children during the

New York Draft Riots The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of white working-cl ...

of 1863. Rev. Freeman died at his home in Brooklyn. Both Freemans are buried at The Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Legacy and honors

*The "Home of Amos Noe and Christiana Williams Freeman" is on the

Portland Freedom Trail The Portland Freedom Trail is a self-guided walking tour of Portland, Maine. Established in 2007, its course passes through the city's oldest and most historic areas, including those related to its African American population, and features thirt ...

in Maine, and a plaque was installed in their honor."Home of Amos Noe and Christiana Williams Freeman"
Historical Marker Database, 2007, includes photo of house, accessed 28 January 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freeman, Amos Noe 1809 births 1893 deaths Activists for African-American civil rights African-American abolitionists Clergy from Newark, New Jersey Congregationalist abolitionists People from New Brunswick, New Jersey People from Rahway, New Jersey Presbyterian abolitionists 19th-century Presbyterian ministers American Congregationalist ministers American Presbyterian ministers Schoolteachers from New Jersey Oneida Institute alumni African-American college graduates before 1865 19th-century American educators 19th-century American clergy