Port of Portland's Custom House and Collectors of Customs


Falmouth Neck deed of ownership, Portland, 1764

Falmouth Neck deed of ownership, Portland, 1764
Item 102285   info
Maine Historical Society

Enoch Freeman, a native of Eastham, Massachusetts was born May 19, 1706, graduated from Harvard College (1729), taught school and engaged in the Boston Commission business (Barbados slave trade) before seeking his fortune as a Falmouth merchant in 1741. His family would join the gentry because of his social standing and old school connections.

A voracious office seeker, Freeman was appointed Naval Officer in 1749 but was replaced the next year with yet another Harvard graduate, Jabez Fox. Freeman complained bitterly to fellow classmates over the demotion. According to Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Volume VIII, many locals considered Freeman a mere stranger; and William Willis’ Journals of Smith and Deane (1849) describes Freeman as “somewhat arbitrary and overbearing” though a man of “great moral worth and strict integrity.”

Freeman and Fox waged a major legal battle over the estate of Col. Thomas Westbrook during the same era. Freeman became Deputy Collector, Judge of Common Pleas, one of the town’s leading revolutionaries, colonel of a local militia company and holder of so many offices that Willis in his History of Portland (1865) stated “Freeman and eldest son, Samuel, for near a hundred years exercised a controlling influence in the affairs of the town and country.” The colonel died September 2,1788.

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