Biographies
ABRAHAM
CLARK FREEMAN
ABRAHAM CLARK
FREEMAN.–In the long line of distinguished California jurists, some of them
native sons of the great golden State, and many more the worthy representatives
of older commonwealths than those on the Pacific, it is doubtful if any bid
fair to attain a more certain immortality than the highly esteemed and beloved
Abraham Clark Freeman, whose most fruitful and useful life was eventually
rounded out at the apex of indisputable success. He was a gentleman, a
scholar and a patriot, who sought by the improvement of each golden moment to
add something of value to life, and earnestly strove to hasten the day when the
state of his early adoption should rise to its rightful place in the galaxy of
the nation’s commonwealths.
He was born at
Warsaw, Hancock County, or not far from that town, on May 15, 1843. He
went to the local public school, and early manifested a love for
study. Despite the limitations imposed by the time, and the geographical
location of his home, he fitted himself for teaching, and when only seventeen
or eighteen years of age took charge of a school in the district next adjoining
the one in which he himself had been reared. He was an only child of Obediah S. and Nancy (Clark) Freeman. His grandfather,
Abraham Clark, served in the Revolutionary War; and his great-grandfather
Clark, also named Abraham, was one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence.
When his father
decided to migrate to the Pacific Coast, Abraham Clark Freeman agreed to
accompany him. In April, 1861, therefore, he set out with his parents to
cross the great Plains; and after a trip of five
months, they arrived in California, and settled at Elk Grove. A month
later, Abraham began an engagement for the winter of 1861-1862, to teach a
district school in San Joaquin County. About that time he had the novel
experience of a trip to Sacramento during the flood. Although he did not
particularly relish the work of the pedagogue, he stuck to his task, then of
particular appeal because of the formative state of society here, until July,
1862. Returning to his father’s farm, he remained there until September 6,
1863; and it having been decided that he should abandon teaching and take up
the study of law, he then went into the capital city, found a lodging place,
and began work in the office of the Hon. M. M. Estee,
then district attorney of Sacramento. In July, 1864, only nine months
after he had entered Mr. Estee’s office, he was
admitted to the bar, on examination by the Supreme Court of California; and
that coveted honor was conferred upon him six weeks after he had attained his
majority. He remained in the district attorney’s office for the remaining
two years of Mr. Estee’s term, and also during the
four years’ incumbency of his successor, James C. Goods. With the
expiration of Mr. Goods’ tenure of the office, Mr. Freeman’s official duties
were also terminated, in March, 1870. Before this connection with the
district attorney’s office was severed, Mr. Freeman had formed a partnership
with the Hon. Thomas J. Clunie, and later, in 1872,
he was associated with the Hon. J. K. Alexander, afterwards a judge of the
Superior Court of California; and also, in 1879, with G. E. Bates, with whom he
removed to San Francisco, in 1886.
Although a man of
frail constitution, Mr. Freeman managed to maintain good health, and to
cultivate a sound mind in a sound body. He was no mere theorist, but was
eminently practical, and possessed of undisputed
ability and skill in the trial of cases, as well as in their presentation and
argument; and he was very naturally laid hold of for other service than that to
which, with a becoming modesty, he had aspired. He was a member of the
constitutional convention of 1878-1879, and in the latter year was appointed by
the governor a commissioner to suggest amendments to the codes, and to adapt
them to the new constitution. Later he was appointed by Governor Gage a
member of the code commission, his associates being Judge D. Enis of Los Angeles and Judge Van Vleet
of Sacramento.
While still an
obscure, struggling lawyer, in 1873, he attained more than a local reputation
as a legal author by one of his greatest works, "A Treatise on the Law of
Judgments," now popularly known as "Freeman on Judgments," which
enjoyed an immediate fame and is doubly interesting today because it was the
first treatise of national scope written or published in California. Its
recognition and success, in fact, were unprecedented; for surprise at the fact
that a law treatise should be written and published in the extreme West grew to astonishment as the high character of the work
came to be understood. As in all of his writings, remarkable for a
vigorous condensation, Mr. Freeman’s style was crisp and incisive. He was
able to state the most complex doctrine in a few words and yet clearly; and the
"American Law Review" said of the "Treatise on Judgments":
"It seems impossible for a young lawyer to have composed so good a book,
in so good a manner; yet it seems also impossible that, if old in law, so able
a lawyer should not long since have become familiar to the profession
everywhere, and we confess to a painful doubt lest he torn out to be some
eminent barrister, whom not to know is only to confess our own
ignorance." It is no wonder, therefore, that the discovery of a new
work displaying such learning and grasp of mind, produced by a man virtually
unknown outside of his home town, and little known there, should come as a
surprise to veterans of the Bar. This was a mystery which excited
curiosity even in the Supreme Court of the United States; and for years Mr.
Freeman had in his office a framed clipping wherein one of the Supreme Justices
was quoted as expressing his positive conviction that Abraham Clark was a nom
de plume assumed for some unknown reason by a lawyer of great reputation, but
who, for some reason or other, was not yet ready to be known as the author of
the work on "Judgments." This monumental work, "Freeman on
Judgments," has gone through four or five editions, and holds the field
without a rival as the authority on the subject of which it treats.
Encouraged by the
prompt and complete recognition by the legal journalists, Mr. Freeman began at
once to cast about for another unoccupied field; and a year later he had
finished for the press his treatise on "Cotenancy
and Partition," perhaps the most intricate and perplexing theme in
law. By many this work is regarded as his masterpiece. Challenging at
the outset the definitions of Littleton, Blackstone, Kent, Preston and others,
and showing wherein they were incomplete or incorrect, by careful comparison,
revision, elimination and modification he formulated his own definitions, which
are remarkably clear, simple and complete. In 1876, his next work,
"On the Law of Executions in Civil Cases," was published,
a kind of Centennial contribution by California scholarship to the celebration
of the first 100 years of the American nation; and this was followed later by a
work on "Void Executions, Judicial and Probate Sales."
In 1879, at the death
of Mr. Proffett, who had edited the first twelve
volumes of American Decisions," and had ably performed his part up to that
time, Mr. Freeman was engaged to take his place; and in one sense, his great
life-work began as Mr. Proffett’s successor, for he
had the best chance to present the result of his studies and observations to
the public, instead of keeping them solely for his own individual use, and he
came more and more into prominence in the reporting and annotation of some
eighty-eight or eighty-nine volumes of "American Decisions" and in
some 135 volumes of American State Reports. This editorial engagement with
the Bancroft-Whitney Company led to Mr. Freeman’s removal to San Francisco, in
which city he grew into social as well as professional eminence. Each of
the volumes referred to contains a large number o carefully
written notes, some of them reaching the dignity of a monograph or a
treatise upon the subject discussed. He came to be generally recognized as
one of the greatest analyists (sic) of his time, if
not one of the most proficient in the entire history of English law; and his
works are today recognized, as they have been for years past, and are cited and
respected as authority by the highest courts in the land.
Mr. Freeman was a
Republican, and on account of his legal lore and his high standards of
patriotism he served his party as did few in his time, until 1873; but in that
year, so memorable for his first publication of national import, he assisted in
the formation of the Independent Taxpayers’ Party, and he was honored as one of
its nominees for the State Assembly in 1875. He had in his charge, as
legal adviser or attorney, the affairs of many corporations and solid men of
both the metropolis and the capital city of the state; and he amassed a
well-earned fortune, so that from a business standpoint, too, his career was a
marked success.
At the bride’s home,
at Elk Grove, in 1867, Mr. Freeman was married to Miss Josephine B. Foulks, a native of Ohio, and the daughter of Alfred Foulks, of Pennsylvania. Mrs. Freeman is a gifted, accomplished
and charming lady, whose life-story is very properly given in greater detail
elsewhere in this work. The youngest of five children in a notable family,
she was graduated from the Pacific College at San Jose, and became greatly
interested in Mr. Freeman’s work, and assisted him in every way she could,
especially in the matter of encouragement and delight in seeing him gain his
ambition. She has one child, Mabel, the wife of Benjamin Romaine, an
attorney of San Francisco. Mr. Freeman was decidedly a domestic man,
although he found pleasure in the circles of the Odd Fellows, to which he
belonged. He traveled much over the United States and Europe, and spent
the winter of 1900-1901 visiting Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy and
Egypt. He had become deeply devoted to Sacramento, city and county, and
also to San Francisco and to northern California in general; and posterity owes
him a kindly thought for which he did to make easier the paths of those coming
after him. He breathed his last at his home in San Francisco on April 11,
1911.
Mr. Freeman loved
Sacramento County and its people, and he was fond of spending his leisure time
on the old Freeman Rancho, some 275 acres on the Cosumnes
(sic) River, which he regarded as a plaything, finding real sport in its trim
fields of alfalfa and its fine herd of well-selected cows. Many of the
improvements here were due to his progressive, enterprising and enthusiastic
spirit, and to his desire to make such a property highly and creditably
productive, and attractive from a scientific as well as from a practical
standpoint.
Transcribed 2-7-07
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 392-397. Historic Record Company,
© 2007 Marilyn R. Pankey.