Anderson County, Texas, MRS. SUSAN R. FREEMAN, WIDOW OF TEXAS WAR OF INDEPENDENCE HERO Contributed by: East Texas Genealogical Society P. O. Box 6967, Tyler, TX 75711 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Typed and proofed by Lawrence E. Oliver for the ETGS ************************************************** WIDOW OF TEXAS FREEDOM HERO SKIMPS ON HER $12.50 PENSION By Richard Main, Dallas News 1947 Special Correspondent of the News Palestine, Texas Sept. 8. A gray-haired little lady, who spends most of her days rocking on the gallery of an unpainted East Texas farm home near Elkhart, believes there's little glory in being the last widow of a Texas war of Independence soldier. A few weeks ago Mrs. Susan R. Freeman--the only surviving pensioner of a war fought 111 year ago--observed her eighty-eighth birthday anniversary. Only a few members of her family remembered. "I had a birthday cake," she said, "but there weren't many here to enjoy it." The slender woman who has outlived two husbands by more than fifty years says the only recognition’s she has received from the state her husband helped make is a pension check--one for $12.50 each month. The sad state of affairs for the state's last pensioner might be straightened out, Mrs. Freeman believes, if only she could have a little talk with Gov. Beauford Jester. If the audience could be arranged, she would ask why, as the last person on the Texas Revolution rolls, she wasn't entitled to a bonus during these days of an inflated $12.50--hardly enough to buy a pair of spectacles needed ever since "my eyes went bad on me a couple of years ago." Back in more socially active days, the blue-eyed daughter of Texas pioneers was a speaking acquaintance of all Texas Chief Executives. "From Gov. Dick Hubbard to Gov. Bill Hobby." The Governors, she explained, once attended the doings of the Texas Veterans Association, an organization of Independence fighters and their wives. Today Mrs. Freeman believes she's the last association member. The Texas Revolution widow lists her birthplace as "in the middle of Polk County jungles" about eighteen miles south of Livingston. She was born Aug. 21, 1859. Although an uncle of James Bowie of Alamo fame, her father did not follow in his famed first cousin, Albert Sidney Johnston, a general in the Confederate army, Mrs. Freeman reported. "Papa was just a buck private," she said. "He spent the whole war with Dick Dowling at Sabine Pass." Previously, Johnston almost became a veteran of the Texas Revolution, Mrs. Freeman revealed. He joined a group of Louisiana volunteers bound to aid Sam Houston. "Before they got to Texas," Mrs. Freeman said, "they heard of the Battle of San Jacinto and busted up like a bunch of July gnats." Young Susan Johnston, Mrs. Freeman recalled was the baby of the family, " a little whippoorwill but a stout one. I knew what it was to clear land and build fences. I had lots of experiences with varmints." A night she'll never forget came many months ago in Liberty County when a "screeching panther" followed Susan and her father through the woods. "Papa got his gun and a fire pan and put some burning pine knots in it. The panther kept playing around so he could never get a bead on it." The panther was finally killed after an all-day hunt by her father, neighbors, and dog packs. Relatives in Austin introduced Mrs. Susan Johnston Johnson widow in her late twenties, to handsome, 60-year-old Thomas Freeman, a Texas Ranger and a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto. They were married in the state capitol. "Tom, Mrs. Freeman said, "run off from his home in Ohio to join a bunch of volunteers going to Texas." The 17-year-old Freeman enlisted as a private in a company commanded by Capt. Sidney Sherman, but the youth was not allowed to get in the front lines when Gen. Sam Houston's gallant band drove followers of Santa Anna into Buffalo Bayou. Instead Private Freeman--while the Independence of Texas was being assured on the San Jacinto battlefield -- stood guard around the Texas army's supplies and baggage in the camp opposite Harrisburg. Freeman became a Texas Ranger, a tailor, and a rancher in Austin. After his death in 1889 Mrs. Freeman and her three children moved to Elkhart. Today Mrs. Freeman alternates between two daughters, Mrs. Edna Woodard, Elkhart; Mrs. Lula Currie, Jacksonville and her daughter-in-law Mrs. Morris Johnson, who occupies the family homeplace three miles south of Elkhart. She is finding it difficult to keep up with members of the expanding family -- consisting of nineteen grandchildren, twenty-one great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter. ************************************************** FUNDS VOTED REVOLUTION'S LAST WIDOW Austin Bureau of The News Austin, Texas, July 5, 1949. The last widow of the Texas Revolution will get $2000 a year for life under a bill passed Tuesday by the Legislature. The House approved and sent to the Governor, Sen. Searcy Bracewell's bill to pension Mrs. Susan Freeman of Elkhart, the only surviving Texas receiving state aid as a result of the Texas War for Independence fought 113 years ago. Mrs. Freeman, nearly a hundred, is the widow of a soldier who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto when he was 17 years old. Mrs. Freeman has been receiving $37.50 every three months, $150 a year, under a law pensioning Texas veterans and their widows. It makes her ineligible for other old-age assistance, said Rep. John B. McDonald of Neches, who sponsored the new pension in the House. Mrs. Freeman is nearly blind, he added. She lives with a daughter Mrs. Charles Woodard of Elkhart. She married Thomas Freeman in 1882 when she was twenty-three years old.