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- BENJAMIN FREEMAN, ELDEST CHILD OF SAMUEL #5 (1744-1806)
Benjamin Freeman was born October 24 1744, married Deborah Child of Woodstock June 13 1764, and died May 22 1806, age 60. He was a blacksmith by trade, but also kept open the tavernhouse established by his father.57 Deborah and Benjamin had one child, Kezia, born May 20 1765. She married Jeremiah Shumway in 1786, and they had seven children: Nabby (b 1787), Benjamin (b & d 1789), Jeremiah Jr. (b 1790), Benjamin Freeman (b 1792), Adalade (b 1794), Deborah Anne (b 1797), and Emeline (b 1802). She was widowed before the Emeline's birth, but remarried three years later, and completed her family with daughter Louisa, born in 1806.
At the time of the 1800 census, Benjamin's family included himself and his wife, as well as his mother, Mary Chamberlain, and a housemaid between 16 and 25. (His mother had remarried in 1774, widower Joseph Chamberlain of Dudley. When he died, in 1780, she returned to Sturbridge and made her home in Benjamin's family, where she remained until her death in 1807.) On the 1798 Direct Tax he was listed as owning one dwelling house, one acre worth $600; a dwelling house, outhouse and one acre worth $700; 126 acres at $2381; 150 acres at $1425; 86 acres at $466; and 16 acres at $134. Together, the land parcels totalled $4406, and buildings $1300, for a total real estate value of $5706. (There are two other Freeman households listed on the direct tax—Benjamin's brother Comfort whose real estate of 170 acres and a dwellinghouse were valued at $3075, and Comfort's son Samuel, with a dwellinghouse and 150 acres worth $844.)
The configuration of Benjamin's household changed a number of times in the opening years of the nineteenth century. When Jeremiah Shumway died, Kezia moved her family from the farmstead set off to her mother as her widow's dower—to which Jeremiah had acquired title in 1790—into her father's family on the "home farm."58 Four years later, in March of 1805, Benjamin's wife Deborah, passed away. Two weeks after her death, Kezia married Azor Brown of Woodstock, who moved into the family. The household, then, included Benjamin and his mother, as well as his daughter, her children and her new husband. The spring following, Kezia's eldest daughter married and her father Benjamin died; one year later Mary Chamberlain, at the age of eighty-eight, succumbed to influenza.59
Benjamin Freeman left his estate to Kezia and her children. In his will, dated August 6 1805, he bequeathed to his daughter the equivalent of a widow's third (to revert to her children upon her death); to grandsons Jeremiah and Benjamin one-third, to be equally divided between them; and to his granddaughters the remaining third, to be divided in equal portions.60
Benjamin's estate was substantial: after all just debts and expenses were paid (which amounted to nearly $3000, his real and personal property totalled at $5534.51. Real property included the home farm of 152 acres and buildings, $3812.50; the tavern house lot and buildings that were once his father's, $850; and a sixty-acre parcel, $600.61 By the time his friends Joshua Harding and Jonathan Perry completed their duties as executors nearly thirty years later, however, there was almost nothing material left for they had converted it into cash.62
A little more than two acres, with the buildings thereon and valued at $1200 (the home farm house and barn), were set off to Kezia as her third in 1809, and she and her sons (who had become part-owners) remained there probably until she died.63 At the time of the 1820 census her family included widower Jeremiah, 30, Benjamin, 28, and a male 16-25 (laborer?); Jeremiah's daughter Eliza, 4, two of Kezia's daughters (probably Louisa, 24, and Debbie Anne, 23), and Kezia, 53.64 One one person—probably Jeremiah—was listed as engaged in agriculture. In 1826 Benjamin died, insolvent; Jeremiah Jr. purchased his portion of the property—one-quarter of the dwelling house and one-half acre (as well as rights to another tract)—at auction for $570.01 from his administrator.65 There is no probate for Kezia, but it appears that after her death in 1829 the property was sold. Her daughters had married by then, and were in separate households. Census records indicate that Jeremiah Jr. slipped into the ranks of the propertyless in the community.66 When he next showed up on the federal census for 1850, Jeremiah Shumway, 60, laborer, was listed in a dwelling rented by Irish-born widow Eliza Julian, 29, whose household included as well her two young sons and a couple from Ireland, Catherine and Patrick Healy, laborer, both 44.
Like his father, Benjamin Freeman prospered as a farmer/blacksmith and tavern keeper in Sturbridge. Sadly, however, his estate—was diminished over time. It may have resulted from the fact that his heirs (grandchildren) were relatively young and therefore the administration of the estate extended for a very long time. It may also have resulted from the probable incompetence of Kezia's second husband Azor Brown, who was neither named in the will nor given an appointment of responsibility in its execution. Ultimately, Benjamin's only surviving grandson became a propertyless laborer in a community, where both he and his father were substantial landholders and well-respected gentlemen.
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1744 - 1806 (61 years)