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Rev. Barnabas Courtland Freeman

Rev. Barnabas Courtland Freeman

Male 1869 - 1935  (66 years)    Has no ancestors but 35 descendants in this family tree.

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  • Name Barnabas Courtland Freeman 
    Prefix Rev. 
    Birth 30 Jul 1869  Godfrey, Frontenac Co, ON, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 2
    Gender Male 
    Death 17 Dec 1935  Cape Mudge, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location  [3
    Burial 21 Dec 1935  Vancouver, New Westminster Dist, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I87372  Geneagraphie
    Last Modified 29 Oct 2000 

    Family Ida Lawson,   b. 24 Sep 1868, Elginburg, Frontenac Co, ON, Canada Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 31 Jul 1952, Vancouver, New Westminster Dist, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 83 years) 
    Marriage 28 Dec 1892  Elginburg, Frontenac Co, ON, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Children 
     1. Helen Freeman,   b. 22 Sep 1894, Skidegate, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 28 Apr 1942, Penticton, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 47 years)
     2. Harold Lawson Freeman,   b. 6 Jun 1896, Skidegate, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 13 Apr 1917, Vimy, FRA Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 20 years)
    +3. Frederick Courtland Freeman,   b. 27 Nov 1897, Port Simpson, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 25 Oct 1973, Vancouver, New Westminster Dist, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 75 years)
     4. Percy Freeman,   b. 17 May 1899, Éire Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 21 Jul 1900, Hinchinbrooke Twp, Frontenac Co, ON, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 1 year)
    +5. Kathleen Sarah "Kathy" Freeman,   b. 25 Mar 1900, Kepler, Frontenac Co, ON, Canada Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 24 Feb 1977, Vancouver, New Westminster Dist, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 76 years)
     6. Ida Doreen "Dornie" Freeman,   b. 10 Sep 1903   d. 26 Jan 1993, Vancouver, New Westminster Dist, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 89 years)
    +7. Gordon Edward Freeman,   b. 26 Sep 1911, Cumberland, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 12 Sep 1986, Comox, Comox Dist, BC, Canada Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 74 years)
    Family ID F35877  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 29 Aug 2000 

  • Notes 
    • Missionary
      President of the B.C. Conference of the United Church.

      First name given as Barnabus Cortland Freeman on his death certificate, where the informant is his son-in-law, J. E. Gibbard, However, on his wife's death certificate, her husband's name is given as Barnabas Courtland Freeman. Since the informant in the second case was their son, F.C. Freeman, who has the same middle name, and was in a better position to know, I have taken the second form as correct.

      Obituary Letter to the Editor in the Kingston Whig-Standard [with smarmy racism left as found in the original -B.G.]-

      Rev. Barnabas Cortland Freeman
      To the Editor of the Whig-Standard.
      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.
      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.
      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.
      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."
      sincerely
      (Rev.) A.B. Johnstone
      Moose Jaw
      Jan 17, 1936

  • Sources 
    1. [S368] ON Birth Register, 001963/69 (Reliability: 3).

    2. [S437] BC Death Register, (BC, CAN), 77-09-003257 (Reliability: 3).

    3. [S437] BC Death Register, (BC, CAN), 35-09-506357 (Reliability: 3).



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