a strong supporter of education and also ran a school affiliated with the church. For a decade, he and his wife provided support to fugitive slaves at the church and in their home. In 1852, Rev. Freeman became the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York, founded in 1849. He served there from 1852 to 1860. He was a longtime friend of Amos Gerry Beman, a prominent black minister active in the Northeast. In 1853, he was a prominent attendee of the radical abolitionist National African American Convention in Rochester, New York. His was one of 5 names attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, The Claims of Our Common Cause, along with Frederick Douglass, James Monroe Whitfield, Henry O. Wagoner, and George Boyer Vashon. In 1857 Freeman moderated the annual meeting of the Evangelical Association of Colored Ministers of Congregational and Presbyterian Churches, which met from 1856 to 1859 to confirm their distinctive vocation; that year they met at the Central Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. In 1859 Freeman hosted this meeting at the Siloam Church, by which time there were 27 black churches in the group. While Rev. Freeman lived in Brooklyn in the mid-1850s, he secretly sheltered and aided Anna Maria Weems, a young fugitive slave, on her journey to freedom in Canada. Jacob Bigelow, a Washington, DC lawyer, disguised her as a boy. They met Dr. Ellwood Harvey of Philadelphia in front of the White House in November 1855, and Weems pretended to be a male buggy driver. She drove Harvey from Washington to Philadelphia, where Harvey took her to the house of another abolitionist, William Still, for Thanksgiving. The next day Dr. Harvey took Weems across the river to Camden, New Jersey, and on to New York City. In Brooklyn he took her to Rev. Charles Ray's house. Ray took her to the home of Lewis Tappan, where the only photo of Weems was taken in her "boy disguise". Rev. Freeman accompanied Weems from there by train to Canada, where she reached safety at her uncle and aunt's house in Ontario. It is likely that is where Freeman first met the radical American abolitionist, John Brown. Later Brown stopped at Freeman's church in Brooklyn in 1859, while en route to his raid at Harpers Ferry. Later years In 1860, Rev. Freeman was called