John Gosse Freeze

John Gosse Freeze (November 4, 1825 – July 8, 1913) was an American lawyer and writer. He was born in Montoursville and attended both private and common schools. After school, he briefly worked as a schoolteacher before turning to law in 1846. He was admitted to the bar of Columbia County in 1848 and served as a lawyer for more than 60 years. He was also the register and recorder of Columbia County from 1863 to 1869 and was on the staff of Pennsylvania governor William Bigler. Freeze wrote a book of poetry and two volumes of county history. He married in 1854 and had five children, but none lived past the age of 24.

Family Freeze's ancestors originally resided in Germany or the Low Countries, but moved to the United States well before the American Revolutionary War. His ancestors settled in New Jersey, from where his grandfather relocated to Pennsylvania. Freeze's paternal grandfather, Peter Freeze, fought in the militia in the American Revolutionary War. Freeze served in this capacity for more than sixty years before retiring only shortly before his death. However, he resigned from this position on the third day of the convention and Charles R. Buckalew took his place. and A History of Columbia County, Pennsylvania: From the Earliest Times in 1888. J.H. Beers described the latter book as being "undoubtedly the best written and considered the standard authority and an exhaustive work of reference on the subject".

Freeze was a member and also a vestryman of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church.

Personal life The 1890 book Local and National Poets of America described Freeze as being 5 ft 9 in tall and weighing approximately . He had gray eyes and dark hair that turned gray in his later years.

Freeze married Margaret Walker, a resident of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1854. They had five children. Freeze survived both his wife and all his children. Of his children, only the second, Maude, survived to adulthood, dying at the age of 24. Freeze's first child, Kate, died in infancy and his last three children (Hope, Helen, and Boyd) all died in childhood.

On July 8, 1913, Freeze died of old age at his home on Center and Third Streets in Bloomsburg. He was buried at the Rosemont Cemetery.