Amos Noë Freeman

Amos Noë Freeman (1809—1893) was an American abolitionist, Presbyterian minister and educator.

Early life

Freeman was a born in Rahway, New Jersey, and was orphaned and raised within the church from an early age. As a child, he was sent to attend the African Free School in Manhattan, then matriculated to Phoenix High School in New York City, established by his mentor, Rev. Thedore Sedgwick Wright. Freeman returned to his native New Jersey to attend Rahway Academy, and later transferred to Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, which was recently founded by radical Presbyterian minister, Rev. Beriah Green. Upon graduating from Oneida Institute in the early 1830s, Freeman moved back to New Jersey, first to New Brunswick, then Newark to teach in the Colored public schools.

In 1839 in Newark, Freeman married Christiana Taylor Williams (1812-1903), a recently manumitted domestic worker and a black scion of the aristocratic Livingston family of New York.

Ministry

Freeman was ordained as a minister by the New York Presbytery in 1840. By 1841, he and his wife had moved to Portland, Maine, where he was installed as the pastor of the Abyssinian Congregational Church. In 1852, Rev. Freeman became the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church, where he was the minister from 1852 to 1860.

While Rev. Freeman lived in Brooklyn in the mid-1850s, he secreted Anna Maria Weems, a young girl fleeing slavery. Jacob Bigelow, a Washington DC lawyer disguised her as a boy. In front of the White House in Nov. 1855 Bigelow met Dr. Ellwood Harvey of Philadelphia. Weems pretended to be a buggy driver and drove Dr. Harvey from the White House. Two days later he dropped her off at William Still's Philadelphia house for Thanksgiving. The next day Dr. Harvey took her across the river to Camden, NJ and onto NYC. In Brooklyn he dropped her off at Rev. Charles Ray's house. Ray took her to Lewis Tappan's residence where the only photo of Ann was taken, in her "boy disguise". From Tappan's house Rev. Freeman took her across, by train, to Canada and her uncle and aunt's house. [Ontario]], Canada. It is likely that is where he met radical abolitionist, John Brown, who later stayed at the Freeman home in Brooklyn en route to his raid in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859.

Later years

In 1860, the Freemans moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where Rev. Freeman was installed as pastor of the Congregationalist Talcott Street Church. Rev. Freeman and family returned to Brooklyn in 1864 to rejoin his congregation at Siloam Presbyterian Church, where he stayed until his retirement in 1885. He died at his home in Brooklyn.