Mattie A. Freeman

Mattie A. Freeman (9 August 1839 was an American freethinker, abolitionist, writer, and lecturer. She became well known as a secularist speaker, was corresponding secretary of the American Secular Union,

Early life Mattie A. Freeman was born in Sturgis, Michigan on 9 August 1839. while her mother was a Baptist. She was interested in the reform movement, and especially in woman's emancipation, convinced it underpinned all other questions.

At the thirteenth annual congress of the American Secular Union held in Chicago, Freeman was elected chairman of the finance committee, and in 1891 corresponding secretary. In an 1887 article published in The Truth Seeker, Secretary of the American Secular Union E.A. Stevens wrote that:Mrs Freeman's lectures bristle with profound logic, bravely and beautifully expressed in choicest language. For one hour, without manuscript and without a flaw, she held her auditors in that stillness that allows no word to be lost. If years of unpaid incessant unselfish devotion of talents of the highest order for the upbuilding of the Secular cause entitle anyone to our thanks, that person is the bright, brave little moral heroine who has enduring fame in literature as well as on the rostrum and of whom we of Chicago are justly proud, Mrs M.A. Freeman, chairman of the finance committee of the American Secular Union. Mattie A. Freeman died on 7 September 1901. A funeral address was given by Judge Charles Burlingame Waite, who described Freeman as:a very talented woman; a remarkable woman, in some respects. She was a logical thinker, a good writer, and had a wonderful gift of oratory. As а speaker she occupied a very high position in the society of which she was an officer, and among Freethinkers and Liberals throughout the country... Performing her duty as she understood it in this life, and doing what good she could in this world, she troubled herself not about another life or another world. To any one endeavoring to draw out her opinions on such matters, her invariable response was: "That is something we know nothing about."