 Freeman, who preferred the country to the city and was devoted to horticulture, lived in Newton, Massachusetts part of the year, residing in Boston during the winter.When he married Martha Clarke in 1783, he accepted her nine-year-old child, Samuel, as his own.In 1811, when they moved to Boston, Samuel and his wife Rebecca left their third son, James Freeman Clarke, later another influential Unitarian minister, under the care of James and Martha.