Freetown, founded sixteen years before the start of the Civil War, is one of the largest and oldest African American communities in Anne Arundel County. Its founders included free-born Blacks, formerly enslaved persons and runaways, and indentured servants, and the community remains a source of pride, inspiration, and support for descendants and residents today. In 1845, free Black James Spencer purchased 56 acres in the Freetown vicinity, and his initial and additional purchases, along with those of William Henry Howard, Edmund Franklin, Abraham Franklin, and Robert Curry, helped anchor the community. Freetown eventually comprised 1,000 acres and is now bounded by Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard to the west, Solley Road to the east, Marley Neck Boulevard to the north, and Mountain Road to the south. Early residents worshipped at Magothy Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church and Furnace Branch Methodist Church, and Hall Chapel at Marley Neck was built in 1878 on land donated by William H. Hall and his wife, Emeline, a woman of Native American descent. Church members informally taught local children in a small school building there. The first certified, trained teacher later taught grades one through seven at the nearby Good Templars Lodge until it burned down. Charles Pearman and Henry Franklin then advocated for a new Rosenwald School in 1924, supported by community funds and labor, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and Anne Arundel County. Though it lacked indoor plumbing, central heat, and adequate seating and learning materials, it was Freetown's first purpose-built school and one of 23 Rosenwald schools built in the county between 1921 and 1932. Older students had few opportunities until Wiley Bates High School in Annapolis opened in 1932. Community life included promenades, dances, field trips, ball games, church socials, celebrations, and socializing in George Jenkins' bean and strawberry fields. After a new elementary school was built in the 1950s, the Freetown Community Improvement Association bought the Rosenwald school building from the county. It is one of only ten Rosenwald schools to survive in Anne Arundel County, and in 2007 it became the county's first Rosenwald school listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Community service and activism also shaped Freetown through figures including Cora Spencer Carter and Jane Dorsey Matthews, who petitioned for a school with a certified, trained teacher; Sherman Bouyer, who founded the Freetown Christian Improvement Association in 1954; Annie Parker, known as Ms. Lizzie "Row Boss," who supervised George Jenkins' produce fields; and midwife Annie Kess, who delivered and cared for about 1,000 infants and mothers of all races and ethnicities, established the first well-baby clinic in Pasadena, Md., and served Black mothers in her home when white staffers barred them elsewhere.