Untitled Document

Pliney Freeman

Pliney Freeman, of Geneseo, is one of the solid citizens of the place, where he has been a resident since the fall of 1869. He is he proprietor of a large amount of property in the city, which includes several business blocks and dwellings. He is the owner of Freeman’s Hall. He has passed the allotted term of human life by ten years, but is still actively interested in the personal supervision of his affairs.

Mr. Freeman was born in Sturbridge , Mass. , in the same town in which his ancestors had lived from the period in which the first progenitor, so far as is now known, settled when he came thence from Newton, in the Bay State. The year of his removal is not known. His name was Samuel Freeman, and he probably became a resident of Sturbridge about the middle of the 18^th century. The town was incorporated Feb. 13, 1739, and he located in what is now the central portion of the village. His widow afterwards married again, and died in 1807 at the age of 92. Their children were named Benjamin, Comfort, Jared, Samuel, Walter, Rachel, Martha and Mary (twins) and Raney. Comfort was the grandfather of Mr. Freeman, and was born Aug. 23, 1750 (O. S.). He was married May 6, 1771. She was born at Sturbridge, Feb. 13, 1749 (O. S.). He died at Sturbridge, Dec. 4, 1796 (N.S.). Her demise occurred Aug. 5, 1832 (N. S.). She was upwards of 93. They had nine children.

Pliny, second son and fifth child, was born Sept. 24, 1780. He was a farmer, and also worked to some extent as a carpenter, as he had a natural gift for the use of tools. He married Delia, daughter of Silas Marsh, and lived nearly the whole of his life at Sturbridge, where his children were born and reared. He died at the residence of his daughter in the town of Webster , in the same county, Oct. 10, 1855. His wife died in 1859. Their children were named Silas M., Pliny, Beulah, Delia, Flortilla, Augusta and Dwight. The last named and Mr. Freeman, of this sketch, are the only survivors, and they both reside at Geneseo.

Mr. Freeman was brought up on his father’s farm, and had only the advantages of the common-schools of the place and period. Which were hardly of the character of the educational institutions of the State which are now the pride and boast of New England . However, those days were the time in which the material on which the prosperity of the West is founded was in its formative state, and it is a motted question whether what was then considered the lack of education, was not the condition which ensured the future of the country. It is an established fact that those who were reared without the so-called advantages of these later times came to be the bone and sinew of the times when men were needed. Mr. Freeman inherited the privilege and ability for hard work, and also the unassuming pretensions of the family tree, of which he was an offshoot. He learned the trade of a carpenter, finishing his knowledge of its details under the instructions of a man named Loren Merrick.

The limited opportunities of the East impelled him to seek a new field of operation, and at 23 he came to Cleveland , Ohio , where he had friends, and he there found an opportunity to work at the trade which he had fixed upon as his vocation in life. Not long after he had commenced his labors in Ohio he was seriously injured in his left knee, and he passed some months on a sick bed in consequence. But his job waited for him, and as soon as possible arrangements were made so he could go on with the work he had planned. He saved his earnings and bought a small piece of land in the vicinity of the city, which he afterwards sold. He fixed his residence at Cleveland , and was a citizen of that place 40 years, and was engaged there as a carpenter during the entire period.

Meanwhile his brother Dwight had settled at Geneseo, and he came here to visit him about the year 1853. He bought at that time a piece of land in the vicinity of the village (then) and made some improvements, with the intention some time of making his home thereon. In the fall of 1869 he removed to Henry County to fulfill the purpose; but, instead of building his house and making ready to pass his life in the quiet retirement of a small place just suited to the needs of his family, he was induced to invest his savings in an entirely different avenue. His brother was the owner of a business building in Geneseo, and soon after the arrival of Mr. Freeman it was destroyed by fire. Mr. Freeman rebuilt the structure, and has since been occupied in the management of the property in which lie so unexpectedly became permanently interested.

He was married Sept. 8, 1835, in the city of Cleveland , to Marcia, daughter of Gaines and Mary (Bronson) Pritchard. She was born in Waterbury , New Haven Co., Conn. , April 11, 1816. Her father removed his family from Connecticut to Cleveland , Ohio , in 1820. The journey was made with an ox tem and occupied six weeks. The following year was sickly, and the mother died in August. A month later the father was also in his grave, and the daughter, then six years old, was an orphan. The generations of the families to which Mrs. Freeman belongs were noted for tenacity of life. When she was in early infancy she had six grandmothers. Her grandmother Pritchard was 96 years old when she died, and the grandmother of her mother’s side was with a few weeks of being 100 when her decease too place. The latter at 90 was in the vigor of a person 20 years younger. She had her second sight and could read and sew without glasses. She was a woman of uncommon energy, and noted for the work in her family which she accomplished, an array that would tire the belles of the period to hear enumerated. The male progenitors of both families were principally farmers, but two of Mrs. Freeman’s cousins in the Pritchard line were Episcopal clergymen, and one was a physician. All the women in the generations which preceded hers were well instructed in the arts common to the period in which they lived. The spun and wove, were fairly educated, and bore themselves through their long and use lives with dignity and grace. Their noble traits are fresh and sweet in the remembrances of their descendants. The mother of Mrs. Freeman, Mary Pritchard, was the daughter of Gates Bronson. The father of the latter was a soldier of the Revolution, and was made a Lieutenant. He also did the duty of an Adjutant. His son was born in the course of the war and was named after the noted General Gates. Lieutenant Bronson never received a pension, and never applied for one, but after his death his widow received about $200 yearly from the Government. Mrs. Freeman is a communicant in the Episcopal Church. She is remarkable well preserved woman, and is a good type of the New England blood from which she spring. She would have made a heroine if circumstances had demanded. But passing her life in the quiet repose which the later generations in this land enjoy, she is simply a lady who is an honor to the community in which she lives. She is prominent in Church matters, and is known for her liberality and genial temper.

1885 Portrait & Biographical Album of Henry Co., Illinois page 438

Transcribed by Jan Roggy

Illinois Ancestors