Henry Floyd Freeman was my Great Great Grandfather on my Mother's side. His family was one of the first to settle in Tallapoosa County where I was born and raised. This history was given to my father by Charles Boone. We think it was written by Robert Perry.
Henry Floyd Freeman
Henry Floyd Freeman fought in the Civil War. I have heard Reubin Freeman, one of his grandsons, tell how he left to go off to fight in the Civil War; a man came to his home near the Tallapoosa River about five miles from Horseshoe Bend and told him he must go. Henry had completed a log cabin for himself and his family, all except hanging the front door when he left. A quilt hung over the opening for the door until he returned home. When the war ended, he was in Mississippi and it took him 40 days to walk home to Tallapoosa County. He went blind 15 years before he died. I have heard my wife’s daddy say that he continued to work. He could pull weeds out of corn; by feeling, he could tell the weeds from the corn. He could still pick cotton, pull corn and cut wood for the stove and fireplace. He is buried in Eagle Creek Cemetery.
His parents were Jessie and Louinia Wynn Freeman. He had three sisters - Margaret, Mary and Martha and three brothers - Jones Wynn, Henry Floyd and James William. Jessie and Louinia and family came to Tallapoosa County between 1839 and 1841.
Henry Floyd Freeman (1835 – 1922) married Margaret Jane “Jamie” Duffey (1845 – 1930) in 1858 in Tallapoosa County. To this couple were born eleven children.
One of the boys was Jessie W. Freeman, who was born in 1862 and married Martha Weston Patterson (born 1869) in 1877. This couple had 3 children – Henry Authur, Albert Coley, and Reubin. Reubin and his wife, Mary Taylor Freeman, lived in the Eagle Creek area. Their children were Joseph, Wayne, Hazel (who married Evelyn Henderson and lived in Camp Hill), Nettie, and Mary Jo (who married Loyal Pritchard and lived in Dadeville & now Alabaster).
Another son of Henry and Margaret Duffey was John Willis Freeman (1866-1932). John Willis married Della Mahoney Henderson (1872 – 1917) in 1888. One of their 5 children was John Willis who married Bertha Kate Ledbetter in Notasulga.
This Freeman family was one of the early settlers in Tallapoosa County. Many of their descendants still live in the area and surrounding area.
