-39-

EDMUND FREEMAN, THE IMMIGRANT

Generation 3

There are two phases in this description of the background of Edmund Freeman. This one involves his life in the Pulborough/Billingshurst/Cowfold/Shipley area (Currently West Sussex county, England). The other phase is in the section following which is excerpted from "Sandwich, A Cape Cod Town" by R.A. Lovell, Jr.

Edmund Freeman, the Immigrant was born in Pulborough, Sussex county, England in 1594, and baptized in St. Mary's Parish Church there in the baptismal font shown in a prior section. The current Parish Church was built in 1220 on the site of the former Anglo-Saxon Church which had been built there about 1120. The date of the baptism, according the St Mary's Parish Church records was July 25, 1596.

As a result of his sailing to the New World in 1635 on the ship ABIGAIL, his burial occurred between June 21st and November 2, 1682 in the burial plot on the Freeman Family Farm in northwestern Sandwich, Massachusetts. Pictures are shown following.

He married, first, the mother of all of his children: Bennett Hodsoll in the Parish Church in Cowfold (St Peter's) on June 16, 1617. Bennett Hodsoll's family history recedes to the 1300's when the family was titled HODSOLE. The first of the line in the records, per "Burke's Landed Gentry", published 1952, page 1249, was John Hodsole "of Kensing and Stanstead, Kent county", England. At various times during the centuries following, the Hodsole/Hodsoll family lived in various towns in Kent county such as: the aforesaid Kensing and Stanstead; also Ash and Wrotham. Nancy Jean and I traveled in this area in May and June 1992. The first time was when we rode a bus from London to Dover through Maidstone and Ashford to catch a ferry to Calais, France; secondly, on our return from our European bus tour of Europe from Amsterdam on the north, Austria on the east; Rome on the south; and Madrid on the west. Our return was from Dunkerque, France via ferry to Ramsgate, Kent county, England, and then westerly through Canterbury, Chatham, and Rochester, Kent county to London. In this return trip we particularly noted the characteristcs of the English country side: neat homes with thatched roofs, farms set off by hedge rows, and prosperous looking farms.

Edmond's first wife, Bennett, according to St Mary's Parish Church records, was buried in Pulborough on April 12, 1630. While she was living, the Edmund Freeman family lived in Pulborough and Billingshurst, Sussex county: in Pulborough, from 1617 to about 1620; in Billingshurst from about 1620 to 1627; and in Pulborough again from 1627 to 1635.