William Freeman
Palestine, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William Freeman was born a slave in Anderson County on August 1, 1863, to Charlotte Freeman. His mother was a slave and the maid at the Jacob Hunter Plantation near Mound Prairie. After the slaves were freed in 1865, they moved to Palestine. William received his early education from the First Ward Colored School in Old Town Community and attended Prairie View State Normal School for two years in the early 1880s, focusing on a teaching certification and brick masonry studies. In 1885, William married Mary Frances Carter and they had three sons: Wesley, Samuel and Byron. Mary died in 1899 and William married Bobbie McMeans. They had four children: Elizabeth, Polly, Eugene and Lionel. as a rural school educator in Anderson County, William Freeman joined other visionary African Americans to change the name of the Colored School in Palestine to Frederick Douglass Elementary School in 1898. The next year, he earned his teacher’s re-certification and, in 1901, became the principal of Douglass Elementary until 1909. In addition to his leadership abilities, Freeman was also a master brick mason. He made bricks for many of Palestine’s buildings before brick factories existed. He owned a brick yard and made bricks that were used to build the first Anderson County Jailhouse in 1879. Some notable works by Freeman are rock houses where red iron ore rocks were used to cover the homes’ exteriors. The son and grandson of William Freeman followed in his footsteps as principals of the Douglass school for 46 years. Freeman’s legacy as an educator, brick maker, brick mason and carpenter shaped Palestine’s history. He died on August 28, 1931, and is buried in Memorial Cemetery. (2013)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born into slavery in 1863 to Charlotte Freeman, a plantation maid, William Freeman gained his freedom as a toddler and went on to study at Prairie View, training as both a teacher and a brick mason. He helped rename Palestine's Colored School for Frederick Douglass in 1898 and served as principal of Douglass Elementary from 1901 to 1909, even as he made and laid bricks for many of the town's buildings. His son and grandson followed him as principals of the school for forty-six years.
Why it matters
Freeman's life bridges emancipation and the building of Black educational institutions, and his multigenerational legacy shows how one freedman's family shaped a community's schools and its very streetscape.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
William Freeman was born into slavery in Anderson County on August 1, 1863, the son of Charlotte Freeman, an enslaved woman who worked as a maid at a plantation near Mound Prairie. He entered the world in a strange interval of history — after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, but before word and enforcement of freedom reached the enslaved people of Texas, which would not fully come until the following summer.
When freedom did arrive in 1865, Freeman was still a small child, and his family moved to Palestine to begin building a life as free people. That timing shaped everything: he was among the first generation of Black Texans to grow up free, and to face the enormous question of what to do with a freedom that came without land, money, or schools.
The answer, for a remarkable few, was education. Freeman received his early schooling at the First Ward Colored School and then attended Prairie View — the state's first public college for Black students — for two years in the early 1880s, studying both for a teaching certificate and in brick masonry. In one young man's course of study you can see a whole community deciding to build itself, mind and buildings alike.
People & events
Freeman became a rural school educator, and in 1898 he joined other forward-looking African Americans to give their school a name that carried a statement: they changed the Colored School in Palestine to Frederick Douglass Elementary. The great abolitionist had died only a few years earlier, and to teach children under his name was to hand them a lineage. Freeman earned his teaching recertification the next year and served as principal of Douglass Elementary from 1901 to 1909.
He married twice and raised a large family — three sons with his first wife, Mary Frances Carter, and four more children with his second wife, Bobbie McMeans — and his influence ran down through the generations. His son and grandson followed him as principals of the Douglass school, so that a single family guided the institution for forty-six years.
But Freeman built with his hands as much as with his teaching. He was a master brick mason in the days before Palestine had brick factories, and he owned his own brickyard. His bricks went into the first Anderson County jailhouse in 1879 and into many of the town's buildings, and he is remembered too for distinctive rock houses faced with local red iron ore. When he died in 1931, he left behind both students and structures.
Its place in the American story
Freeman's life is a near-perfect illustration of what the first free generation of Black Americans accomplished, and how. Freedom in 1865 came with almost nothing attached — no forty acres, no funded schools, no capital. What that generation did have was labor, skill, and an unshakable conviction that education was the road out. Across the South they poured those into founding and staffing their own schools, often against fierce resistance.
The naming of Douglass Elementary is a small act with a large meaning. All over the country, Black communities named their schools for figures like Frederick Douglass, deliberately claiming a heritage of freedom and achievement for children whose parents had been told they had none. It was an assertion of dignity written on a schoolhouse door.
And Freeman's dual legacy — as educator and builder — captures the double work of the era. The same man who shaped young minds also shaped the physical town, laying bricks into a courthouse jail and homes that outlasted him. A family that held one school's leadership for forty-six years shows how, generation by generation, freed people and their descendants built the institutions that a hostile society would not build for them.
If you visit
Palestine's history is not confined to markers and cemeteries — in William Freeman's case, some of it may still be standing in the walls around you. This is a place to visit with your eyes on the buildings, imagining the hands of a self-taught master mason in the old brickwork of a town that had no brick factory when he started.
The marker invites two kinds of attention. One is to the idea of Douglass Elementary — a school named for an abolitionist by people determined that their children would inherit that legacy, and led by three generations of one family across forty-six years. The other is to the streetscape itself, and the quiet possibility that a wall or a red iron-ore rock house near you owes its existence to Freeman's trade.
He is buried in Memorial Cemetery, and a visit there closes the circle: a man born enslaved in 1863 who died in 1931 having helped build both the minds and the buildings of his community. Let his story remind you, as you travel, that a town's history is written not only in its records but in its very masonry.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Freeman
- · Charlotte Freeman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Frederick Douglass Elementary School
Palestine, TX
Opened in 1875 as the 'First Ward School for Coloreds,' this was the only public school ever built in Palestine's Old Town neighborhood, and for nearly a century it educated the community's African-American children. Renamed for Frederick Douglass in 1898 after the great abolitionist's death, it rebuilt in brick after a 1912 fire and became far more than a schoolhouse — hosting teacher associations, Friday assemblies, and county-fair exhibits. Three generations of the Freeman family led it before desegregation closed its doors in 1967.
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Born in New Orleans and college-educated, Alonzo Marion Story came to Texas young and devoted his life to teaching mathematics, settling in Palestine in 1912 to instruct students at the town's school for African American children. He served for decades as teacher and principal, staying on through his final years even after losing his eyesight, and continued tutoring from home after retiring. The community named schools in his honor, a testament to a man revered across the era of segregated education.
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Born in 1902 to a father who had escaped slavery, Timothy Stephen Smith earned a degree from Prairie View A&M and taught school for forty-two years. Convinced that Anderson County's voting boundaries diluted Black political strength, he and others sued in 1973; Judge William Wayne Justice agreed, striking down a "racially motivated gerrymander" and forcing a switch to single-member districts. Similar success against the City of Palestine soon followed, opening the way for the county's first Black officeholders.
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