THE FREEMAN MONUMENT (Mound Cemetery)

Orphaned at the age of eighteen months, Stephen Freeman lived in his native Wales until the age of nine, at which time he ran away to Liverpool. There he lived with a relative, the noted composer of hymns, John Williams. At the Laird Shipyards in Liverpool, young Stephen learned how to make boilers. In 1856, having served one year in the Crimean War, Freeman departed to America where his skills would again be applied toward military endeavors related to the Civil War. After ten years of living and working Centralia, Cairo, and Chicago, Illinois, Freeman settled briefly in Milwaukee and came to Racine in 1867.

For a short time he was employed by John Kirkland, a boilermaker. Later, with partners William E. Davis and John R. Davies, he founded the Davis, Freeman, Davies Company, a machine shop and foundry that was a financial disaster lasting little more than a year. Undaunted, Freeman launched his own boilermaking company, which he located on what was Bridge Street (now a part of the grounds of the Case corporate headquarters). So limited were his resources that, at first, he could purchase coal only in half-ton measures. But by 1886, with capital of $60,000, he incorporated Stephen Freeman and Sons Manufacturing.

Freeman’s 160 employees built boilers for threshing machines made by J. I. Case and other companies. Every four hours another boiler was completed. Not one was ever reported to have exploded. Freeman and Sons also manufactured fanning mills, steel pipe, smokestacks, ensilage cutters, corn shellers, steel windmills, and wagon brake locks. At the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the company took first prize for its florists’ goods which - along with ornamental ironwork, fountains, ferneries, vases, and aquaria - rounded out the Freeman line of products. Freeman married Elizabeth Willard (1834-1894) in 1874. Of their eleven children, two died in infancy. The remainder lived with their parents in a rambling wooden house on the northwest corner of Thirteenth and Main Streets.

Freeman served as an alderman and as a county supervisor. The "Stephen Freeman" fire engine, taken by rail too the Chicago fire but never used there, was name in his honor. It is now part of the Firehouse No. 3 Museum, where a portrait of Freeman also hangs.

Submitted by Deborah Crowell