Elisabeth Freeman is the daughter of John and Blanche (Bishop) Freeman. She was the fourth of five children in that family and was raised primarily in Binghamton NY. She attended Cortland Normal School (now SUNY-Cortland) studying education. She became a teacher and ultimately a much beloved and compassionate guidance counselor in the Paramus NJ school…
Life partner of Carl Wittman. Allan Troxler is an artist and Country dance teacher in Durham NC. He was a Conscientious Objector to the mandatory military draft during the Vietnam War and did his service in the Boston area. He subsequently joined Carl in Wolf Creek in creating gay community and sustainable community among gays,…
This 1963 mimeographed article was written by Carl Wittman and Tom Hayden based on observations of their work in poor neighborhoods in Newark, NJ organizing around issues of housing, jobs, and discrimination. It is a detailed analysis of which issues are economic and potentially cross race and class lines, and which were about racism and…
The Gay Manifesto, was, and remains, a pioneering document for the gay movement. Written shortly before the Stonewall Uprising in NYC in June of 1969, it laid out the revolutionary potential of the movement to challenge the power structure. In reading it now, there are some things that stand out. One is his acknowledgement that…
Carl Wittman, son of Jeanette Freeman Wittman and Walter Wittman. Carl Wittman lived the life of an organizer and he was pivotal in a number of movements. He grew up in Paramus NJ and went to Swarthmore College where he became involved in radical organizing, responding to racism and poverty in Cambridge, MD and later…
Notes prepared by Jeanette Freeman Wittman Jane Freeman, the portrait painter and artist, was born in Chesterfield England in 1871 and was brought by her mother (Mary Hall Freeman) to the United States with her two younger siblings, John Francis Freeman and Elisabeth Freeman in the mid 1870’s. Jane died on September 23, 1963…
Jennie is the mother of Blanche Bishop Freeman, who was mother of Jeanette, Ruth, John, Elizabeth, and Helen Freeman. She was born Jeanette Fraser June 22, 1855 in Oxford in Chenango County New York. Her granddaughter Nettie said that “she scratched her name ‘Jeanette’ out of the family Bible, to the horror of everyone, and…
Walter T. Wittman was the son of Carl and Mary (Thalmeyer) Wittman, and father of Jane Vandebogart and Carl Wittman. Walter, or “Walt” as he was known in the family, was good natured, humorous, and well liked. He was a lawyer specializing in school and municipal law, and secretly held firm beliefs in Communism, which…
The following is a cookbook from Jane’s unwieldy box of recipes on scraps of paper. A record of her activism, her childhood, her relationship with her mother, Jeanette (“Netty”) Freeman and grandmother, “Mama” (Mary) Wittman, the title refers to the many potlucks she cooked for.
Jane is the daughter of Jeanette Freeman and Walter T. Wittman. She married Aaron Vandebogart in 1967 and separated in 1977 with an official divorce in 1989. She lived in Woodstock NY her whole adult life and was active in community causes and government as a member of the Town Council and in the Planning…
