Ida (Lawson) Freeman (1868 - 1952)

Born 24 Sep 1868 in Elginburg, Kingston, Frontenac, Ontario, Canada

Ancestors

Wife of Barnabas Cortland Freeman — married 28 Dec 1892 in Elginburg, Kingston, Frontenac, Ontario, Canada

Descendants

Died 31 Jul 1952 at age 83 in Vancouver, Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Biography

Ida was born in 1868. She married Barnabas Cortland "Cortland" Freeman and their family lived in British Columbia.^[1] She passed away in 1952.^[2]

Name

Name: Ida /Lawson/

Found multiple versions of NAME. Using Ida /Lawson/.

Birth

Birth:

Date: 24 Sep 1868

Place: Elginburg, Kingston, Frontenac, Ontario, Canada

Marriage

Husband: Barnabas Cortland "Cortland" Freeman

Wife: Ida Lawson

Marriage:

Date: 28 Dec 1892

Place: Elginburg, Kingston, Frontenac, Ontario, Canada

Type: Ended by death of husband

Child: Helen J. Freeman

Child: Harold Lawson Freeman

Child: Frederick Cortland "Fred" Freeman

Child: Percy Freeman

Child: Kathleen Sarah "Kathy" Freeman

Child: Ida Doreen "Dornie" Freeman

Child: Gordon Edward Freeman

Residence

Residence:

Place: Elginburg, Kingston, Frontenac, Ontario, Canada

Residence:

Place: Skidegate, Skeena-Queen Charlotte Regional District, British Columbia, Canada

Residence:

Date: 14 May 1930

Place: 2627 Slocan St., Vancouver, Greater Vancouver Regional District, British Columbia, Canada

Census, Canada

Canada Census, 1911

Name: Barnabus Corhand Freeman

Event Type: Census

Event Date: 1911

Event Place: Comox-Atlin Sub-Districts 1-52, British Columbia, Canada

Gender: Male

Age (Estimated): 42

Marital Status: Married

Religion: Methodist

Relationship to Head of Household: Head

Birth Date: Jul 1869

Birthplace: Ontario

Household Role Sex Age Birthplace

Barnabus Corhand Freeman Head Male 42 Ontario

Ida Freeman Wife Female 43 Ontario

Harold Lawson Freeman Son Male 15 British Columbia

Frederick Corhand Freeman Son Male 14 British Columbia

Helen Freeman Daughter Female 16 British Columbia

Kathleen Sarah Freeman Daughter Female 11 Ontario

Doreen Freeman Daughter Female 8 British Columbia

Source:

"Recensement du Canada de 1911," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV39-8PJF : 16 March 2018), Barnabus Corhand Freeman, 1911; citing Census, Comox-Atlin Sub-Districts 1-52, British Columbia, Canada, Library and Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; FHL microfilm 2,417,658.

Death

Death:

Date: 31 Jul 1952

Place: Vancouver, Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Cause: Broncho-pneumonia

Event Type:Death

Registration Number:1952-09-007607

BC Archives Mfilm Number:B13212

GSU Mfilm Number:2032861

Event Date (YYYY-MM-DD):1952-07-31

Event Place:VANCOUVER

Age at Death:83

Person:IDA FREEMAN

Vital Stat Images(s): 004437626_02642.jpg

Image available online here:

http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Image/Genealogy/f5f006a9-c2eb-4578-bb62-e69970261c6e

Source:

"BC Archives." Search Our Collection - Royal BC Museum. Accessed March 12, 2019. http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy.

Burial

Burial:

Date: 5 Aug 1952

Place: Ocean View Burial Park, Burnaby, Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Ida Lawson Freeman

BIRTH 24 Sep 1868

Elginburg, Frontenac County, Ontario, Canada

DEATH 31 Jul 1952 (aged 83)

Vancouver, Greater Vancouver Regional District, British Columbia, Canada

BURIAL Ocean View Burial Park

Burnaby, Greater Vancouver Regional District, British Columbia, Canada

PLOT Maple, Lot 58, Grave 03

MEMORIAL ID 21736673

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/21736673/ida-freeman

Notes

Letter to the Editor - Rev. Barnabas Cortland Freeman Title: Letter to the Editor - Rev. Barnabas Cortland Freeman Author: Johnstone, Rev. A.B. Publication: Kingston, ON, Kingston Whig-Standard Reference: S1204 Text: Rev. Barnabas Cortland Freeman CONT To the Editor of the Whig-Standard. CONT Sir:- About two weeks ago the Vancouver press presented an engraving of the late Rev. B.C. Freeman and told of his dropping dead in the midst of a company of Indians where he was stationed as their missionary near the head of Vancouver Island. CONT Bro. Freeman was born at Picadilly in northern Frontenac County, and seeing his picture, I recalled my associations with him on my first charge near there. Though only past his middle teens in 1889-91, he was then the very efficient teacher of the Elginburg, Ontario public school. His fine intelligence and Christian principles won my admiration, and soon impressed me that he would be a real soul winner in the pastorate and, at length, I asked him to lay his life on the altar of the Christian ministry. He demurred; admitted that he had long felt the call, but that he doubted that he had the ability. At length he consented, provided the Church would find him an obscure corner in which to labor. On my representations to our mission board, he was accepted as a student, and appointed to Prince Albert in the North West; and , there he so impressed the people that his superintendent wrote: "O, that Old Ontario would send us a score of young men like Bro. B.C. Freeman." Two years later a greater sacrifice beckoned him to farther fields. He had heard of the sad conditions and sufferings prevailing among the heathen Indians on the Pacific Coast, and with the full consent of his affianced - Miss Ida Lawson of Elginburg, a young lady of rare intelligence and large grasp of eternal verities - he volunteered for that work. They married and were sent to Skidegate to work among the Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands. There his wife's work among the Indian women soon took rank with his own among the men, and heathen rites and cruelties soon gave way before the knowledge of the Prince of Peace. Bro. Freeman soon acquired the Indian language, and that he might approach them from their own viewpoint, he steeped himself in the lore of their traditions, and it was in writing of these to awaken missionary interest for the Indians that his literary ability was perceived by the outside world. Dr. Creighton, editor, said that "it was a delight to use," Bro. Freeman's writings in the columns of our Church paper. CONT At length the need of better schools for their children required that the missionaries leave the Indians and return to civilization, and the Church, ungrudging in its recognition of his abilities, and of the debt owing to them, brought them over to the mainland. There Bro. Freeman was soon made president of the B.C. Conference, and, important charges like Revelstoke, and Trinity Church, Vancouver, were given him. CONT When thus, over 40 years of work had laid its weight upon them, Bro. Freeman superannuated; but, soon the call irresistible to him came again. The Indians up North were without a missionary. His wife no longer able to go, he went alone; and there at work among them in a little company, an angel beckoned him, and, in a few minutes, he was - in the words of one of his last poems - "Out of the night wind, straight into the Dawn, as the peaks are aglow, and the Day comes on." So passed into the "city of God" Barnabas Cortland Freeman, my first recruit for the Christian ministry. Meanwhile a true mate, with a multitude of their dusky converts, waits here a little longer for the call to rejoin her missionary husband, where "Bright in that happy land beams every eye." CONT sincerely CONT (Rev.) A.B. Johnstone CONT Moose Jaw CONT Jan 17, 1936

Ida Lawson Freeman

From Vi Keenleyside, "They Also Came", Vibook Committee, Duncan, 1987, pp.41-45

"Mrs. Freeman was the finest looking lady on the coast." These words were spoken in later years by Captain Pamphlet who had been engaged in coastal shipping right up into Alaska. He had frequently stopped at Skidegate and knew the Freemans well.

The same Captain proceeded to tell of walking up the dock one day at Skidegate and stopping to watch two little boys at play on the beach. Their tongues were going at a great rate. As they were speaking in the Haida language the Captain just listened but did not understand. He called, the boys looked up. They were the Freeman preschoolers. Their "first" language was Haida!

What a contrast for a quiet farm girl from eastern Ontario to become a missionary's wife in a west coast Indian community with none of what we today consider essential conveniences! But when the impetuous young visionary with a mop of fiery red hair asked her to be his life's partner she entered readily into the partnership and never looked back. In later life Freeman wrote of the stable character of "the best girl in the world just providentially left for me, a wisely steadying influence ."

Barnabus Cortland Freeman had his own thoughts of what kind of minister he would be (after changing his mind from medicine to theology). Perhaps I should say he had definite thoughts of the kind of minister he would not be. He despised the "sanctimonious preacher of the orthodox frock coat, amen type, with his booming voice and his superior ways."

Cortland Freeman was positive about one thing. He would not have a "settlement" made for him. He would go where a need cried out. So it was when he read in the Christian Guardian a letter wherein Dr. Ebenezer Robson wrote that the Skidegate Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands desperately wanted a missionary, that was it. Not that he knew anything of the Haidas; in fact, he had only a vague idea of where those islands lay. But, if they wanted him, that was all that was necessary. He answered the call.

The Manitoba and North West Conference, on order from Toronto, set out to ordain the young man who was leaving a mission field in northern Saskatchewan. On his way back to Ontario to marry his fiancee and prepare to leave for the west, he was taken from the train in Winnipeg, rushed to Grace Church where a few church members were waiting in the dimly lit sanctuary, hurried through what he called a "spiritual vaccination," and was thusly ordained into the ministry of the Methodist Church. Then he was whisked back to the waiting train to continue east.

January 10, 1893 the newlyweds left Bedford Station. Ontario. destination Skidegate, Queen Charlotte Islands. The senior Freeman remarked, "Let us give them a cheerful sendoff, for some of us will never see them again."

From Victoria they boarded the old Barbara Boscowitz, said to be a converted whaler with tiny, musty cabins lit by three-inch candles, and headed north. In later years, the Freemans recalled such things of that memorable trip as the square oil lantern hanging in the saloon; Wong, the general steward; the profanity of the captain in the Queen Charlotte Sound storm; the kindness of the engineer (who lent his gumboots and slicker to the youth from the east).

As no one in the village spoke English, the Freemans soon learned the Haida language.

Living accommodation was primitive. Water was gathered from above; plumbing was at the end of a path; fresh fruit grew on bushes in the forest (red huckleberries, blueberries, choke cherries); "fresh" vegetables came from Victoria via a freighter cum passenger boat that arrived two or three times in a summer, then no more until next summer. However, the sea around them provided an abundance of food-salmon, cod, halibut, clams, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and more-when the weather allowed.

When it was approaching time for the birth of their first child in 1894, Ida Freeman packed a bag and waited for a steamer to appear in the Inlet. She would go to the new hospital in Port Simpson, built by that dedicated pioneer, Dr. A.E. Bolton, three years previously.

The steamer arrived, her bag was deposited on board and her passage paid for. The most important passenger to disembark was the new school teacher. But to her dismay, she discovered that with the "exit" of the minister's wife she would be the only white woman in the village. She refused to stay. The only alternative left to Mrs. Freeman was to about face, retrieve her bag and stay in Skidegate. Their first daughter, Helen, was brought into the world by an Indian midwife assisted by Ida's husband.

In time three more Freeman children were thus born in Skidegate, Harold (named Gunwhaad by the Haidas) who lost his life in the battle of Vimy Ridge, Frederick and Percy. Kathleen came into the world in Kepler, Ontario, when her mother was visiting in the east.

One dark foreboding night in Skidegate, a violent quake shook the islands. It so happened that the Rev. Freeman was on one of his frequent visits to the other villages. A knock on the mission house door startled Ida but on opening the door, there stood one of the village elders to inquire about her welfare and to assure her that the islands were frequently shaken by earthquakes but no one was ever hurt.

She felt completely accepted by these quiet, loving people. While the missionary was often absent from the village, not only on visitations but also at area meetings in Port Simpson or attending the annual conference in Victoria, Ida cheerfully carried on, leading all weekly services including Sunday school, church, and prayer meetings. She dispensed medications as she felt able. She had already organized the women of the community into a sewing circle where they created gifts for new babies, or for brides or for any church needs.

With the responsibilities of a growing family of little ones, she was helped by young women from the village in the way of housework and babysitting. Two of these helpers were Sophie Gladstone and one of the Russ girls (Grace?).

After ten strenuous but happy years in Skidegate, the Freemans moved to Port Simpson where daughter Doreen was born. A seventh child, Gordon, came along later when the Freeman family had left the north for Vancouver Island.

It was while they were a few years in the busy Skeena fishing village of Port Essington that the Rev. Freeman officiated at the "wedding of the north" uniting Peter Kelly and Gertrude Russ. The mission house at Essington constantly overflowed with guests. When the hotel rooms were full the overflow was directed to the mission house. No one was turned away.

The Freemans sought service in centres where their children could have the benefits of high school. In 1910 they left the north but carried with them cherished memories of those seventeen years among the Haidas and Tsimpsheans, their "happiest years."

Barnabus Cortland Freeman in a letter of memoirs wrote "... the utter devotion of a long-suffering wife has been the greatest human strength my life has known." When he was elected to be President of Conference in 1920, he took his wife to the platform beside him.

The widowed Ida lived the last twelve years of her life with a loving and devoted daughter-in-law who said to me, "Mother Freeman was as nearly perfect as a woman could be."

From a newspaper clipping [newspaper uncertain, possibly the Kingston Whig-Standard?]:

"Elginburg-

One of the last links with the pioneer missions to the Indians of the Northern coasts of British Columbia was severed on July 31 with the passing of Mrs. Ida Freeman at the Vancouver Hospital after an illness of three weeks.

Born at Kepler, about 10 miles north of Kingston, in 1868, she there married the late Rev. B.C. Freeman in 1892. Setting out immediately by way fo Vancouver and Victoria, they arrived at their isolated mission in the Haida village of Skidegate, Queen Charlotte Islands, in January, 1893. In those days, 15 years before the site of Prince Rupert was chosen and five years before the Klondike gold rush, boat service was infrequent and irregular, the nearest settled white community was Comox, Vancouver Island, and the nearest doctor and hospital at the mission at Port Simpson, over 100 miles across the stormy Hecate Strait. Yet there, without either white neighbours or a store on the islands, Mrs. Freeman not only started to raise a family - she had five children while at Skidegate - but frequently spent anxious days while her husband accompanied canoe parties to distant villages, and even had to substitute for him in reading the burial service.

After 10 years at Skidegate and another eight years at the Tsimshyan missions at Port Simpson and Port Essington, the Freemans moved to other Methodist pastorates in the province, going successfully to Cumberland, South Vancouver, Revelstoke, Trinity (Vancouver), and Cranbrook. They then served the United Church at Beaconsfield (Vancouver), and Coquitlam. In all these places Mrs. Freeman, in her quiet way, made a host of friends, most of whom she outlived.

Since her husband's retirement in 1934 Mrs. Freeman made her home in Vancouver, where she was a faithful member of Marpole United Church.

She is survived by two sons, Frederick C. of Vancouver, with whom she has lived for 12 years, and Gordon E., Prince Rupert; two daughters, Mrs. J.E. Gibbard, Vancouver, and Doreen, Chilliwack; and eight grandchildren. Three of her children predeceased her, as did her husband who died suddenly while filling a temporary appointment to the mission at Quathiaski in 1935.

Funeral service was conducted by Rev. E.L. Bishop of Marpole United Church, and was followed by interment at Ocean View Memorial Park.

Many relatives of the late Mrs. Freeman reside in this district."

Sources

1. ↑ "Recensement du Canada de 1911," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV39-8PJF : 16 March 2018), Barnabus Corhand Freeman, 1911; citing Census, Comox-Atlin Sub-Districts 1-52, British Columbia, Canada, Library and Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; FHL microfilm 2,417,658.
2. ↑ "BC Archives." Search Our Collection - Royal BC Museum. Accessed March 12, 2019. http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy.

See also:

• Find A Grave: Memorial #21736673

Acknowledgments

• WikiTree profile Lawson-1136 created through the import of bgibbard.ged on Oct 29, 2012 by Brant Gibbard. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Brant and others.