Photographs: 2011

Monday, May 9, 2011

Newspaper Clipping in Album

Obituary.

Mrs. Eleanor Coolbaugh Freeman.

Mrs. Eleanor Coolbaugh Freeman, widow of the late Samuel Freeman, of Phillipsburg, died on Thursday at her home in Montclair, N. J.
Mrs. Eleanor Nyce Coolbaugh Freeman was born in Smithfield, Monroe county, Pa. (near Stroudsburg), August 6, 1823. She was a daughter of Judge M. R. Coolbaugh, who was prominent in local and State politics for many years prior to his death. She was the eldest daughter. A brother, older than herself, was Hon. William F Coolbaugh, president of the First National Bank, of Chicago, whose tragic death in 1877 is still remembered. Her favorite niece, the daughter of the eldest brother, is the wife if the Hon. Melville W. Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In her youth she attended school in her native village, which was taught by the man who was destined to be her future husband, Samuel Freeman, who, a youth himself, emigrated from Connecticut in the '40's with so any others and started teaching school lin the Middle States. Her husband was a great educator, -- a man of wonderful power and magnetism in the school room. He died in 1881 from col gas asphyxiation at the age of 58. In their early married life both Mr. and Mrs. Freeman conducted a boarding school in Phillipsburg, which soon became recognized as the leading school in the State. Many men now prominent in State and national affairs were educated in this school. Later on her husband was made superintendent of the public schools of Phillipsburg, a position he held almost all of his life. Both husband and wife were more responsible for the splendid public school system of New Jersey than any other two educators in the State. They conceived the system of pubic school education, which enables pupils to graduated from high schools thoroughly equipped to enter any college in the United States. Mrs. Freeman was a remarkable woman, with a wonderful intellect. She retained all of her faculties until the last. She was dignified and refined and had a marvelous faculty of making and holding friends. She was exceptionally considerate and charitable in action and in thought, and there are thousands of people who will remember her not only for her good deeds but for her exemplary life.
The body will be brought to this place for interment in the Phillipsburg Cemetery on Saturday morning. See death notice in another column.