The Freeman post office opened in 1871, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Morristown (1848), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
2020 census: 475155 years
Founding year: the first Freeman post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Freeman’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The town of Freeman is located on land once belonging to the Osage Nation that was ceded under duress in the Osage Treaty (1825). In 1845, J.C. Morris relocated from Pennsylvania to Cass County, Missouri and founded the town of Morristown. It was located approximately a mile and half northwest of the present town of Freeman. Though Morristown survived several fires and the Civil War, it could not survive being bypassed by the railroad.
Passages that mention Freeman, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Cass County, Missouri1917 · page 394Read the page →
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year, and in the spring of 1866 returned to Harrisonville. Shortly after that he engaged in the mercantile business at Salem, Illinois. After re¬ maining there one year he went to Morristown, which was located about a mile north of where Freeman now stands, before the railroad was built through that section. In 1868 he located there, and in 1871, when the town of Freeman was started, he built a store building on the corner where the Bank of Freeman now stands. Here he engaged in the gen¬ eral mercantile business. His was one of the first stores to be started in
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History of Cass County, Missouri1917 · page 133Read the page →
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Freeman, probably at its birth, had more native Cass Countians than any other new town of the county. People from other parts of the county, for speculative purposes, settled other towns, but not so with Freeman. As a general rule its people lived nearby prior to the opening of the town. Freeman in its earlier days had a good trade from the country around. In time other towns sprung up, curtailing her trade, largely. She lived through the time of depression caused in this way, and is now one of the prosperous towns of the county, enjoying an
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Freeman, 1848 to 1871
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
