Freeman Family, the Platte Purchase, and Abandonment
In the first post to this blog more than three years ago, I briefly wrote about the 19th-century migrations of the Malone family, to which I am related through my maternal grandfather, from North Carolina to Texas. (During the Depression they wended their way to California.) In this post I would like to take up a similar thread, namely the 19th-century migrations of the Freeman family, to which I am related through my paternal grandmother, from North Carolina to the Central Coast of California. Three of my paternal grandmother's four grandparents were of Mexican and indigenous American ancestry (which I have written about elsewhere, here, here, and here), but her paternal grandfather, Nathan John Freeman (1844-1923; henceforth N.J.), was born to an Anglo-American family in Missouri, and what is known to me currently about the Freeman family begins with N.J.'s grandfather Nathan.
Nathan Freeman, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, was born in the 1780s most probably in North Carolina. On November 11, 1807 he married Elizabeth Stanley in Stokes Co., North Carolina, and in the 1810 Census they are enumerated in Peters Creek, in the same county, their eldest child John Williams already born (~1808). Between this Census enumeration and 1815, Nathan and Elizabeth's two daughters Nancy and Polly (relative order unknown) were born. Similarly, between the 1810 Census and 1817 the Freemans moved some 200 miles northwest to Knox Co., Kentucky, where on August 30 Nathan was granted 50 acres of land along Meadow Creek west of modern-day Barbourville on the Cumberland Plateau. In 1818 this region became part of newly formed Whitley Co., and on November 2, 1821 and March 16, 1825, Nathan acquired 50 more acres along the same watercourse, resulting in total holdings of 150 acres. Between 1816 and 1820, Nathan and Elizabeth's second son, Thomas Baker E., was born in Kentucky.
The Freeman family probably remained in Kentucky through the first half of the 1830s (they were enumerated in Whitley Co., Kentucky still in 1830). After some 20 years there, however, they migrated further westward, into Ray Co., Missouri, which had joined the Union in 1821. At that time (i.e., 1821) the western boundary of Missouri consisted of a straight north-to-south line, but in 1836 the American government paid $7,500 for the lands east of the Missouri River between there and the western boundary of the state in an arrangement known as the Platte Purchase that severely disenfranchised the indigenous people of the region. Nevertheless, this meant new land for Anglo-American settlers. In fact, it may have been this acquisition of these lands that motivated the Freemans to move into Missouri, although it is clear that they themselves did not acquire land there immediately. On September 7, 1838 Nathan Freeman was granted 70.62 acres of land in Livingston Co., to the northeast of Ray Co. and still outside the bounds of the Platte Purchase. In 1840, however, Nathan Freeman and his family are enumerated within the Platte Purchase, in Jefferson, Buchanan Co., from which Andrew Co. was formed the following year. Although his son Thomas is enumerated as part of this household, it is clear that the Freemans kept ties with Missouri families further to the east, given that Thomas married Obedience Trosper (1823-1913), who in 1840 was resident in Gallatin, Daviess Co., on March 8, 1841.
Thomas (aka Baker) and Obedience had two children, Mary Jane (d. before 1850) and N.J., born February 2, 1844. Tragically, however, Thomas died from unknown causes on January 10, 1844, before the birth of his son and not even yet aged 30. Obedience was made executor of his estate, and an appraisement of his property filed on February 18, 1845 in Andrew Co. lists: 10 head of sheep; 1 grey mare; 1 sorrel mare; 1 roan mare; 1 yoke of oxen; 1 milk cow; 1 red heifer with a white fan; 1 red speckled heifer; 1 black and white steer; 1 red and white calf; 1 carry plow; 1 side saddle; 1 man's saddle; 1 lot of broke hemp; 7 chairs; 1 pot; 1 skillet and lid; 1 sieve; 1 tray; 1 frying pan; 1 bucket; 1 bed stead; 1 barrel; 1 pigeon; 1 table; 1 pair of check lines; 1 piece of sole leather; 1 pair of bridle reins; 1 lot of unbroke hemp; 1 stack of oats; 1 lot of fodder; 1 axe; coffee pot, crock, tin bucket, pipe box, spoons; 1 washing tub; 1 bridle; 1 set of plates and dish and set teacups, saucer, [illegible] cream pot, sugar bowl, salt siller, butter plate, set of knives and forks.
Nathan Freeman's health appears to have deteriorated the following year: his will was written on April 11, 1845, and in it he bequeaths 40 acres of his 160-acre plantation in Andrew Co. to his grandson N.J., which the latter was to fully inherit when he reached 21 years of age. Nathan appears to have died in January 1846 (his will was delivered on January 27, his wife was sworn as executor of his estate on February 14, and his will was officially recorded on July 9), after which his daughter-in-law Obedience went on to marry Gesham Jackson in Nodaway Co., just to the north of Andrew Co., on February 16, 1847. N.J., then, grew up in the home of his stepfather in Nodaway Co. There, in St. Joseph, on March 11, 1862 at the age of 18, he enlisted in Company C of the 4th Regiment of the Missouri State Militia Cavalry. N.J.'s wartime movements and activities have been well documented by Jim Jackson, a descendant of N.J.'s half-brother, and warrant a blog post unto themselves. For now we can note that N.J. was mustered out of the military on March 31, 1865, and by December 7 of the same year he had returned to Nodaway Co. and married Mary Elizabeth Sturgill (1848-1938). The couple came to reside in the township of Union, near Maryville, and went on to have 7 children: Thomas Alvin (1867-1945); Daisy Lillian (1869-1959); Ronda Clarence (1872-1957); Edwin Carl (1875-1961); Ethlyn Pearl (1878-1954); Joseph Francis (1880-?); Rachel Belle (1883-1971).
In the mid-1880s, however, N.J. abandoned his family, and by 1888 he had made his way to Los Angeles Co., CA, where he registered to vote on June 4 of that year. By September 6, 1890, a little over two years later, he had found his way to Cazadero, in the hills of western Sonoma Co. in the northern reaches of the San Francisco Bay. But by October 5, 1891 he was back in Wilmington, in Los Angeles Co., and again by May 4, 1892 he was in Llano, just southeast of Cazadero. Why he went back and forth between Los Angeles and Sonoma counties is unknown. Ultimately he settled in Cayucos, in San Luis Obispo Co., where in San Luis Obispo on June 3, 1899 at the age of 55 he married Frances MartÃnez Soto (1874-1923), a Spanish-speaking woman of Mexican and indigenous American descent. They would go on to have 4 children: Edward Joseph (1900-1974); Nathan John, Jr. (1902-1993); Benjamin Franklin (1905-1986), my great-grandfather; and Dorothy (1908-1927), who died from tuberculosis shortly after her marriage. The family first lived in Morro Bay (1900), then Cambria (1904), then San Luis Obispo (1906).
It is not clear whether N.J. was ever divorced from his first wife Mary, but she also nevertheless remarried following N.J.'s abandonment. On July 18, 1907, her second husband, Edward D. Scott, died in Nodaway Co., MO, and this appears to have sparked yet another move westward. Mary and 5 of her 7 (now married) children first settled in Colorado, and by the latter 1920s the Pasadena, CA area. It is clear that they knew of N.J.'s whereabouts, as son Ronda came to settle in San Luis Obispo Co., marrying there in 1909 and living out the remainder of his life there. However, Mary and the other 4 children who had moved to the West Coast remained in southern California.
In the meantime, N.J. established himself as a stagecoach driver between San Luis Obispo and San Simeon, but on April 10, 1911 , at age 67, he was admitted to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Sawtelle, CA, near Malibu, for chronic bronchitis and asthma. Over the next decade he spent several stints at this hospital (listed below). He appears to have been entirely absent from his family with Frances, as evidenced by the addresses given on his voter registration records, which continued to be in San Luis Obispo Co. during this time (1912 San Simeon; 1914 Cambria; 1916 San Luis Obispo, but address on South Street is son Ronda's). N.J. also sought treatment at the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Roseburg, Oregon, where his great-nieces through his half-sister Margia (1848-1941) had settled.
Sawtelle: April 10, 1911 -- September 23, 1914
Sawtelle: January 19, 1915 -- June 24, 1916
Sawtelle: March 22, 1919 -- June 11, 1919
Roseburg: February 11, 1920 -- October 17, 1920
Sawtelle: November 6, 1920 -- June 6, 1921
Sawtelle: March 4, 1922 -- May 18, 1922
Roseburg: October 15, 1922 -- death
All of this means that, from the age of 6 onwards, my great-grandfather Ben effectively grew up without a father. N.J. and Frances were never divorced, and it is unknown whether Nathan spent his time out of veterans hospitals with his wife Frances or with his son from his first marriage Ronda, although the latter seems more plausible (see above). On January 21, 1920 he is enumerated as the head of Frances' household, but it is unknown whether he was actually resident there, although it is possible given his dates of residence in Sawtelle and Roseburg. N.J. died on February 28, 1923 at the age of 79 in Roseburg, and is buried at the National Cemetery there. His wife Frances died on August 22 of the same year, of cancer.
However, tensions between both of N.J.'s families continued past his death. On April 21, 1924, a little over a year after his death, his daughter Rachel wrote a letter to the Roseburg hospital requesting information on her father's Civil War pension. Similarly, on May 5, 1924, Henry L. Jost, Congressman for the 5th District of Missouri, wrote to George W. Riddle, Commandant of the Roseburg hospital, on behalf of N.J.'s widow Mary requesting N.J.'s army discharge and pension certificate. ("I desire to introduce a bill in Congress for the benefit of Mrs. Nathan J. Freeman and obtain for her a pension."). Jost's letter appears to have been at the behest of N.J.'s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Gertrude Freeman (wife of son Edwin), still resident in Missouri. On May 8, 1924 she also wrote to the Commandant requesting that he send requisite pension-related materials to her mother-in-law in La Junta, CO. The Commandant complied and on May 14 mailed the requisite materials to Jost. Mary Freeman's claim for N.J.'s pension was filed on June 2, but the information she provided appears to have been insufficient, as on July 1 Gertrude Freeman again wrote to the Commandant requesting further information on behalf of her mother-in-law.
The matter appears never to have been resolved, and on January 23, 1929, Winfield Scott, Commissioner for the Bureau of Pensions within the Department of the Interior (in 1930 folded into the newly formed Veterans Administration), wrote to the Commandant, by then Sam W. Starmer, again requesting information, some of which had been obtained in the earlier sets of correspondence, and the Commandant replied swiftly by February 1. There appears to have been a lapse in communication within the Bureau of Pensions, as on April 2, Acting Commissioner E.W. Morgan again wrote to the Commandant requesting the same information as had been requested the previous month. In another lapse (or perhaps lag), on April 11 Jonathan J. See, a pension claim agent based in Pasadena, CA, where Mary Freeman by then resided, wrote to the Commandant. He reiterates that a record of divorce between N.J. and Mary had still not been found. On the following day, April 12, the Commandant happened to write to E.W. Morgan of the Bureau (see above), providing him the information requested, and the Commandant later informed See of this.
Even in 1929 N.J.'s pension was not dispensed, most likely because my great-grandfather Ben had by that time begun to attempt to acquire it. In a letter dated June 4, 1931, Veterans Administration Field Examiner J.G. Corbitt wrote to my great-grandfather informing him that he had obtained all of the information necessary to further his pension request from his half-sister Louise, my great-grandfather and his brother having been absent during the field examiner's visit to Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo on May 14 and 15. But my great-grandfather never received his father's pension, and it's unknown whether Mary Freeman ever did either (she died in 1938). In fact, based on a July 6, 1982 letter that my great-grandfather wrote to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Missouri, it seems that he never even knew the name of his father's first wife, with whom he was vying for the pension, and only knew of 3 of the 7 children that N.J. had had with his first wife Mary.
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| 1810 Census of Nathan Freeman in Peters Creek, NC (ancestry.com) |
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| Nathan Freeman Family Migrations (GoogleEarth) |
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| 1838 Land Grant to Nathan Freeman (General Land Office Records, Bureau of Land Management) |
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| Excerpt of Thomas Freeman Estate Papers (1845) (familysearch.org) |
In the mid-1880s, however, N.J. abandoned his family, and by 1888 he had made his way to Los Angeles Co., CA, where he registered to vote on June 4 of that year. By September 6, 1890, a little over two years later, he had found his way to Cazadero, in the hills of western Sonoma Co. in the northern reaches of the San Francisco Bay. But by October 5, 1891 he was back in Wilmington, in Los Angeles Co., and again by May 4, 1892 he was in Llano, just southeast of Cazadero. Why he went back and forth between Los Angeles and Sonoma counties is unknown. Ultimately he settled in Cayucos, in San Luis Obispo Co., where in San Luis Obispo on June 3, 1899 at the age of 55 he married Frances MartÃnez Soto (1874-1923), a Spanish-speaking woman of Mexican and indigenous American descent. They would go on to have 4 children: Edward Joseph (1900-1974); Nathan John, Jr. (1902-1993); Benjamin Franklin (1905-1986), my great-grandfather; and Dorothy (1908-1927), who died from tuberculosis shortly after her marriage. The family first lived in Morro Bay (1900), then Cambria (1904), then San Luis Obispo (1906).
It is not clear whether N.J. was ever divorced from his first wife Mary, but she also nevertheless remarried following N.J.'s abandonment. On July 18, 1907, her second husband, Edward D. Scott, died in Nodaway Co., MO, and this appears to have sparked yet another move westward. Mary and 5 of her 7 (now married) children first settled in Colorado, and by the latter 1920s the Pasadena, CA area. It is clear that they knew of N.J.'s whereabouts, as son Ronda came to settle in San Luis Obispo Co., marrying there in 1909 and living out the remainder of his life there. However, Mary and the other 4 children who had moved to the West Coast remained in southern California.
In the meantime, N.J. established himself as a stagecoach driver between San Luis Obispo and San Simeon, but on April 10, 1911 , at age 67, he was admitted to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Sawtelle, CA, near Malibu, for chronic bronchitis and asthma. Over the next decade he spent several stints at this hospital (listed below). He appears to have been entirely absent from his family with Frances, as evidenced by the addresses given on his voter registration records, which continued to be in San Luis Obispo Co. during this time (1912 San Simeon; 1914 Cambria; 1916 San Luis Obispo, but address on South Street is son Ronda's). N.J. also sought treatment at the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Roseburg, Oregon, where his great-nieces through his half-sister Margia (1848-1941) had settled.
Sawtelle: April 10, 1911 -- September 23, 1914
Sawtelle: January 19, 1915 -- June 24, 1916
Sawtelle: March 22, 1919 -- June 11, 1919
Roseburg: February 11, 1920 -- October 17, 1920
Sawtelle: November 6, 1920 -- June 6, 1921
Sawtelle: March 4, 1922 -- May 18, 1922
Roseburg: October 15, 1922 -- death
All of this means that, from the age of 6 onwards, my great-grandfather Ben effectively grew up without a father. N.J. and Frances were never divorced, and it is unknown whether Nathan spent his time out of veterans hospitals with his wife Frances or with his son from his first marriage Ronda, although the latter seems more plausible (see above). On January 21, 1920 he is enumerated as the head of Frances' household, but it is unknown whether he was actually resident there, although it is possible given his dates of residence in Sawtelle and Roseburg. N.J. died on February 28, 1923 at the age of 79 in Roseburg, and is buried at the National Cemetery there. His wife Frances died on August 22 of the same year, of cancer.
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| N.J. Freeman Headstone, Roseburg, OR (photo courtesy of Jeannine O'Hagan) |
The matter appears never to have been resolved, and on January 23, 1929, Winfield Scott, Commissioner for the Bureau of Pensions within the Department of the Interior (in 1930 folded into the newly formed Veterans Administration), wrote to the Commandant, by then Sam W. Starmer, again requesting information, some of which had been obtained in the earlier sets of correspondence, and the Commandant replied swiftly by February 1. There appears to have been a lapse in communication within the Bureau of Pensions, as on April 2, Acting Commissioner E.W. Morgan again wrote to the Commandant requesting the same information as had been requested the previous month. In another lapse (or perhaps lag), on April 11 Jonathan J. See, a pension claim agent based in Pasadena, CA, where Mary Freeman by then resided, wrote to the Commandant. He reiterates that a record of divorce between N.J. and Mary had still not been found. On the following day, April 12, the Commandant happened to write to E.W. Morgan of the Bureau (see above), providing him the information requested, and the Commandant later informed See of this.
Even in 1929 N.J.'s pension was not dispensed, most likely because my great-grandfather Ben had by that time begun to attempt to acquire it. In a letter dated June 4, 1931, Veterans Administration Field Examiner J.G. Corbitt wrote to my great-grandfather informing him that he had obtained all of the information necessary to further his pension request from his half-sister Louise, my great-grandfather and his brother having been absent during the field examiner's visit to Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo on May 14 and 15. But my great-grandfather never received his father's pension, and it's unknown whether Mary Freeman ever did either (she died in 1938). In fact, based on a July 6, 1982 letter that my great-grandfather wrote to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Missouri, it seems that he never even knew the name of his father's first wife, with whom he was vying for the pension, and only knew of 3 of the 7 children that N.J. had had with his first wife Mary.
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