United States Eventing Association

Iris Winthrop Freeman died on May 26 at Groton House, in Hamilton, Massachusetts, where she had grown up.

Born in 1935, Freeman was an accomplished horsewoman. She rode ponies as a small child, and later showed, foxhunted, and participated in eventing. Freeman was instrumental in bringing the sport of eventing to this country. She was a member of the founding Board of Governors of the USEA (formerly the USCTA) in 1959.

Freeman had gone to Badminton in England in the early 1950s and persuaded her father, Frederic Winthrop, and a neighboring landowner, Col. FR Appleton, to run one at their farm, which became Groton House Horse Trials. The top American riders, many of them trained by former European cavalry officers, participated. The event caught the attention of other U.S. horsemen, and gradually more were organized throughout the country.

By the mid-1980s, the event ran two consecutive weekends to accommodate more than 600 entries from Novice to Advanced. In 1996, Groton House was chosen as an observation trial for the Atlanta Olympics and was a mandatory outing for the Pan American Games (Winnipeg, Canada) team in 1999. In 2009, the event returned to a single weekend horse trial hosting through Preliminary, and in 2022, the event ended its long run.

Freeman was a committed and generous conservationist. A longtime resident of Aiken, South Carolina, she co-founded the Aiken Land Trust (now the Aiken Land Conservancy) to protect Aiken County's open spaces, natural habitats, and historic resources. She also served on the board of the American Farmland Trust and supported the Trustees of Reservations and Essex County Greenbelt Association. A graduate of Chatham Hall and Radcliffe College, she was for many years a trustee of Proctor Academy.

She was predeceased by her husband Willard C. Freeman, a Thoroughbred racehorse trainer (1929-2013); daughter-in-law Jessie Milne Freeman (1978-2022); and brother Adam (1938-1982). She leaves her son Michael W.; grandson Michael W. Jr.; her sister Ann Getchell; brothers, Frederic Jr., Robert, Grant F., and Jonathan Winthrop; and numerous nieces, nephews and great-nieces and nephews. Gifts in her memory may be made to The Aiken Land Conservancy, Friends of the Animal Shelter Aiken, or Care Dimensions.

The USEA sends our deepest condolences to Freeman's family and friends.