Zimeon Freer (bef. 1721)

Ancestors

Descendants

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Simon Freer performed Patriotic Service in New York in the American Revolution.

Biography

• Zimeon Freer was born before 1721. Zimeon was the child of Simon Freer and Maritje Wamboom. ^[1] Henry Van Bunschoten calls both him and his father Simeon.^[2] They bought land just below Poughkeepsie and moved there from New Paltz. Besides the four children linked to this record, there was a family tradition of another son who went to Canada.^[3]

17. VII. CATRINA V.B. m. Simeon Freer, bp. at Kingston, Feb. 12, 1721, son of Simeon, b. in 1695, was the son of Hugo Freer and Mary LeRoy, and granson of "Hugo the Patentee" and his wife Mary Hayne -- all of New Paltz. The stock was Huguenot. The record shows that in 1724 Simeon Freer "of Ulster County" purchased forty two morgens of land at "Poegkeepsing;" he is also mentioned in the will of his father-in-law, Peter Van Bommel, in 1732; in 1739 he appears as an Ensign at Poughkeepsie, and in 1744 signs a call to a minister in Holland. ...

They lived at Freertown, as it was called, a mere thickening of population just below the small settlement at Poughkeepsie. Tradition makes Simeon a man of tremendous strength; in pure wantonness of power he was often known to seize a whiffletree and, bracing his feet, hold hopeless fast the biggest Dutch horse. Few particulars survive regarding him. He is found, however, signing the Articles of Association on the outbreak of the Revolution, and serving in the Fourth Regiment of the Line, and also in a Land Bounty Rights Regiment.^[4]

Sources

1. ↑ Estimated by Jess Wallace, Sunday, October 12, 2014.
2. ↑ William Henry Van Benschoten, Concerning the Van Buschoten or Van Benschoten Family in America, A Genealogy and Brief History (West Park-On-Hudson: 1907) p. 211.
3. ↑ William Henry Van Benschoten, Concerning the Van Buschoten or Van Benschoten Family in America, A Genealogy and Brief History (West Park-On-Hudson: 1907) pp. 211-212.
4. ↑ William Henry Van Benschoten, Concerning the Van Buschoten or Van Benschoten Family in America, A Genealogy and Brief History (West Park-On-Hudson: 1907) pp. 211-212.

• Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Genealogical Research Databases, database online, (http://www.dar.org/ : accessed 24 Oct 2021), "Record of Simon Freer", Ancestor # A042250.