Benjamin Franklin Freeman

Oh, the stories that fall into my lap! Just like all the wonderful stuff about Inez and Odessa that Nancy Meadows shared with me, now I'm getting to know someone even closer to home -- Benjamin Franklin Freeman.

Ben Freeman with his daughter and grandchildren

Terry Roberts, the great-great grandson of Benjamin Franklin Freeman, sent me these old pictures, along with the bare details of Freeman's life.

Terry wrote:

". . . Benjamin Franklin Freeman (1834-1907), who is buried in the Freeman Cemetery (or sometimes called the "Gid Payne" Cemetery) up on the right just at the head of Anderson Branch. He is my great-great grandfather, and in so many ways is the most ambiguous character in the long drama of the family.

My guess is you've taken a walk or two through that cemetery (sign on the gate reads "KEEP CLOSED OR: CATTLE WILL DESTROY YOUR GRAVES").

Just to give you a tease, he fought in both armies during the civil war. He and his brother killed a member of the confederate home guard (who has stolen the family horse) after the war. He "studied medicine" under a doctor in Mars Hill and "wrote prescriptions" through much of his later life. He tried to kill his wife's lover round about 1870, but since he only had his pocket knife, he managed just to "cut him."

And this is just the beginning. And he was (or is; Faulkner says there is no "was") your neighbor on Anderson Branch. "

In a later email, Terry said:

"My understanding from the Freemans is that they lived (when they lived together)
just up at the head of Anderson Branch. And when they separated, he loaded up a sled (pulled by oxen of course) and "moved to the other side of the mountain," where he built the cabin you see in first picture I sent you.

That first picture (with the cabin) is dated ~1880. Kneeling in front of him is his daughter
Margaret Graham, holding two of her children: Millard and Flora. Standing beside him is his granddaughter,
Belva Anderson, who later married Julius Roberts (and who is my grandmother).

The dog is unidentified..."


An old photo of Freeman and his estranged wife, Harriet, from late in their lives, when most of their personal war was over.... ca 1900-1905.I asked for more about Harriet,(how could I not?) and Terry responded:"Apparently they were both hot-tempered, passionate, "robust" people, and if
anything, she was meaner than he. When they sued each other for divorce, he had thrown her out of the house and the children stayed with him for several years (fairly young children, girls as well as boys) until she tried to get them back as part of a divorce settlement.

It apparently started with the war and the fact that he left her to join the union army. Then after he returned, he went to jail at one point for making liquor. She may or may not have had a lover at any of these junctures while he was gone. He caught her by virtue of the fact that she gave him a venereal disease.

It's a perfectly sordid story in many ways, and yet when you read the long, rambling stories he told the federal pension agents, you can't help but like him. And apparently the children and grandchildren all sided with him (which should tell us something about her...). He was a bit of a con man, story teller, whiskey maker, sometime farmer who practiced a sort of rustic medicine (two people have told me he "wrote prescriptions": what does
that mean?). And his children loved him even though he apparently was involved in killing one man and tried to kill another....

I'm still trying to piece together the story--slowly working through a time line. As a child, I was told she refused to live with him after the war. But the more I learn, the more complex it becomes....

And oh yes, he wrote a beautiful hand, and she could not sign her name: put an "X" to mark her depositions.

And like I say: all in your backyard . . ."

l

In my backyard, indeed! The Gid Payne cemetery borders our farm. Those are our bad cows the sign warns against. And Benjamin was the grandfather of Clifford, from whom we bought our farm. I had to pay a visit to this neighbor so I went up the road . . .

Up on the little hogback ridge, I looked for Ben amongst all his many descendants.

There he is -- no wife at his side.



















I get the feeling it suits him just fine.