John Finley Freeman, 1929-1965

✍ Scribed by George W. Stocking Jr.

• Book ID: 101357087
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1965
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 119 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/1520-6696(196510)1:4<299::aid-jhbs2300010402>3.0.co;2-e

✦ Synopsis

John Finley Freeman, who died of a heart attack on March 22, 1965, was one of a small group of professional historians with continuing research interests in the history of the behavioral sciences, particularly 19th century American anthropology. Freeman brought to his research on the one hand a professional grounding in American social and intellectual history and on the other an interdisciplinary background that protected him from the parochialism which can bedevil an historian venturing upon the history of other disciplines. After receiving his A. B. (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1951, Freeman went on there to take an A. M. in American History in 1955. While pursuing studies toward a doctorate in American Civilization, he worked under Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry Murray as head section man in their general education course in the social sciences, which traced theories of human nature from Herodotus to Freud. From 1958 to 1960, he taught American colonial history and the history of Western culture at Bates College, and in the latter year he received his Ph. D. from Harvard, presenting as his dissertation a biography of "Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1793