Freeman was born on July 27th, 1855, in West Bridgton, ME, where his early life was spent in his father’s farm. His education began in the country schools and was resumed later in public schools in Portland, ME, and Lawrence, MA. In 1876, he graduated from the MIT –Civil Engineering department- with a Bachelor degree in science.

After that, Freeman worked for the Essex Company, a waterpower company at Lawrence, MA, which had previously employed him during his vacations at the institute. He soon became the Principal Assistant Engineer to the Chief Engineer of the company.

In 1886, Freeman resigned his position to become Engineer and Special Inspector for the Associated Factory Mutual Fire Insurance Companies in Boston, MA. There, he re-organized the employed inspectors, conducted experiments to improve the fire prevention apparatus, and researched the causes of fires. During this period he presented to the Society his papers entitled Experiments Relating to the Hydraulics of Fire Streams, for which he received the Norman Gold Medal of the Society in 1890. And The Nozzle as an Accurate Water Meter, for which he received the Norman Medal of 1891.

While in Boston, Freeman arranged to give half of his time to a consulting practice in waterpower, municipal water supply, and factory construction. There, he also began his long career in the public service to which he gave so much of his life. He was a member of the Water Board of his hometown of Winchester, MA. In 1895-96, he was Engineer Member of the Metropolitan Water Board of Massachusetts.

In 1896, Freeman left for Providence, RI, to become the president and treasurer of the Massachusetts Mutual Fire Insurance Company and its associated companies there, a position which he held for the rest of his life. His success was marked by a constant improvement in fire prevention methods and a steady reduction in insurance costs. His companies, which wrote about $65,000,000 of insurance in 1986, had about $3,000,000,000 on their books in 1932.

Freeman approached the problems of building construction and of safeguarding life and preventing fire losses both as an engineer and an insurance executive. He wrote extensively on fire protection matters and in 1905 published The Safeguarding of Life in Theatres, which represented a comprehensive study of theatre fires, their causes, and means of prevention. In 1915, he presented to the International Engineering Congress at San Francisco a paper on The Fire Protection of Cities.

Freeman’s interests, besides fire prevention, extended to preventing life and property loss caused by earthquakes. He was a member of the Seismological Society of America, and devoted much effort to stimulating engineers, geologists, and seismologists to realize the importance of obtaining adequate information on the magnitude and character of earth movements in the vicinity of major seismic disturbances. He visited many earthquake regions worldwide to study the causes of failure of buildings and other structures, and in 1932 published a book entitled Earthquake Damage and Earthquake Insurance, which can be considered a textbook on earthquake-resisting design.

In 1888, Freeman married Elizabeth Farwell Clark who, with four sons and one daughter, survived him. Freeman was elected a junior of the American Society of Civil Engineers on June 7, 1882; a member on April 3, 1889; and an Honorary Member on September 29, 1930. He served as a director from 1896-98; as Vice President in 1902 and 1903; and as President in 1922.

In 1903, Freeman was made Chief Engineer of the Charles River Dam Commission and prepared an exhaustive report on the project for the conversion of the lower estuary of the Charles River into a fresh-water lake. The resulting Charles River Basin has graced Boston for nearly a century.

From 1917-23, he acted as a Consulting Engineer to the Chinese Government on the improvement of the Grand Canal and the prevention of disastrous floods on the Yellow River and the Hwai River, organized a staff of engineers to investigate those problems, and went to China himself in 1919.

Freeman has also conceived the idea of a National Hydraulic Laboratory in Washington DC, and was active in furthering the passage of the necessary legislation at Washington and in advising on its construction.

In 1923, Freeman gave $25,000 each to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Boston Society of Civil Engineers with which to provide for traveling scholarships in hydraulics open to young engineers and junior professors. The first scholarship was awarded by the Society in 1927, and since then, one or two men have studied each year in Europe.