Rutland native Martin Henry Freeman was a ground-breaking African American educator and abolitionist. Born May 11, 1826, Freeman was tutored by East Parish Congregational Church's Rev. William Mitchell and was among the first African Americans to attend college in Vermont, graduating from Middlebury College as salutatorian in 1849. The grandson of a slave who gained freedom fighting in the Revolutionary War, Freeman became a professor in 1850 and president of Allegheny Institute near Pittsburgh in 1856. He was the first African American professor and president of an American college and a leading advocate for African American education in the 1800s. During the Civil War, in 1864, he emigrated to Africa, where he was a professor and later president of Liberia College until his death in 1889.