FREEMAN, JAMES: Pastor of the first Unitarian Church in America; b. at Charlestown, Mass., Apr. 22, 1759; d. at Newton, Mass., Nov. 14, 1835. He was educated in the public Latin school, Boston, and at Harvard College (B.A., 1777; D.D., 1811). After his graduation from college he went to Cape Cod and drilled a company of recruits for the colonial army. In 1780 he visited Quebec, where he was arrested and held till 1782. He then returned to Boston, became lay reader at King's Chapel in 1782, and pastor in 1783, but with the stipulation that he might omit the Athanasian Creed from the service. Having become a Unitarian in his views, he openly renounced the doctrine of the trinity, and in 1785 induced his church to change its liturgy, thus converting the first Episcopal Church in New England into the first Unitarian Church in America. On being refused ordination by Bishop Provost he was ordained by his own people, Nov. 18, 1787. He remained pastor of the church till 1827, though in 1826 he gave up his pastoral duties to his colleague, Francis W. P. Greenwood, and retired to a country residence near Boston. He published Sermons and Addresses (Boston, 1832), and made many contributions to periodical literature, and to the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which he was one of the founders.