George W. Freeman

Who was George W. Freeman?

George Washington Freeman was the second Episcopal bishop of Arkansas and Provisional Bishop of Texas.

Freeman was born of a Congregationalist family in Sandwich, Massachusetts. He did not initially intend a career in the clergy, but he afterward went to North Carolina and studied for the ministry of the Episcopal Church. Freeman was ordained deacon in Christ Church, Raleigh, North Carolina, by Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft in 1826, and was ordained priest in New Bern, North Carolina the following year by the same bishop. Freeman married and later had a son, Andrew, who also became an Episcopal priest.

In 1818, he married Anne Yates the granddaughter of Rev. William Yates, the College of William & Mary's fifth president and is the namesake for Yates Hall on the College's campus; and a descendant of William Randolph, a colonist and land owner who played an important role in the history and government of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He and his wife, Mary Isham, are referred to as the "Adam and Eve" of Virginia. She had married as her first husband, Thomas Gholson, Jr., an American lawyer and politician.