Elizabeth Freeman
American former slave and abolitionist
Elizabeth Freeman (c. 1744 – December 28, 1829), also known as Mumbet, was one of the first slaves to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, ruling in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts. Her suit, Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781), was cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appellate review of Quock Walker's freedom suit. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, the ruling was considered to have implicitly ended slavery in Massachusetts.
Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth [sic] a free woman—I would.
Biography
Freeman was illiterate and left no written records of her life. Her early history has been pieced together from the writings of contemporaries to whom she told her story or who heard it indirectly, as well as from historical records.
Freeman was born into slavery on April 4, 1744, on the plantation of Pieter Hogeboom in Claverack, New York, where she was given the name Bet.
The public source identifies “Elizabeth Freeman” as american former slave and abolitionist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Elizabeth, Freeman and American.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3375368. VIAF identifies the subject as 50933734. The Library of Congress control number is n95047321. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1744, 1829, 1780 and 1781.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elizabeth Freeman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.