Author: Freeman, Rowland
Biography:
FREEMAN, Rowland (1778-1859: ancestry.com)
He was born in Prestbury, Gloucestershire, a village near Cheltenham, and was baptised on 7 Oct. 1778, the son of Anthony and Mary Freeman. His father was a clergyman. He apprenticed with a surgeon in Stratford-on-Avon and then completed his medical training at Guy's Hospital in London. After practising for a time in Cheltenham, he moved to London, where he married Martha Taylor (1781-1836) on 6 May 1802. The couple eventually had ten sons and one daughter; five of the children outlived both parents. In 1805 they settled permanently in Minster (or Minster-in-Thanet) in Kent, and Freeman began to take an active interest in local history and antiquities. Besides Regulbium, a historical pamphlet with a poem attached, as the author declared, "to enliven the dry detail," he contributed to regional periodicals and founded a book society, a magazine, and a philanthropic group in Thanet. His major work was a literary history, Kentish Poets (2 vols, 1821). The attribution to him of Ignes Fatui (1810) is doubtful. In 1846, a decade after the death of his wife, he retired from his practice and went to America where two sons were living, but he returned to Minster in 1850 and is recorded in the 1851 Census as a widower residing with his son, who was also a surgeon. He later went to Cheltenham and to Harborne, a village that is now part of Birmingham, where he died of heart disease on 31 Dec. 1859. He was buried at St. Peter, Harborne, on 5 Jan. 1860. (ancestry.com 11 Nov. 2021; findmypast.com 11 Nov. 2021; Medical Times and Gazette 1 [Jan. 1860] 51; The Lancet 21 Jan. 1860)
Other Names:
- R. Freeman