Ancestry.com, a website more often used for genealogical research, has records of passengers and crew members arriving in various U.S. ports of entry, primarily New York City, between 1820 and 1957. Records of the arrival of merchant marine and Armed Guard crew members of World War II merchant ships are often found at this website.
Through a search of www.ancestry.com I found five records for a Levi Freeland (or variations of that name) arriving in New York between March 1943 and November 1944. Brief details of each arrival follow:
28 March 1943, Levi Eual Freeland arrived aboard SS DEAN EMERY, which had sailed from Liverpool, England, as part of a 28-man Navy Armed Guard gun crew. The Armed Guard commanding officer was ENS James Cunningham. DEAN EMERY had arrived in Liverpool on 22 February 1943. (DEAN EMERY was an oil tanker, built in 1919, scrapped in 1949. She sailed under the Panamanian flag at the time Levi Freeland was aboard. See http://www.armed-guard.com/deanem.html)
20 June 1943 seaman 1/c Levi E. Freeland arrived aboard SS PAULSBORO, which had sailed from Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, as part of a 17-man Navy Armed Guard detachment, under the command of ENS John T. Kenny, Jr. The ship had arrived in Curacao from New York on 6 June 1943. (PAULSBORO was an oil tanker, built in 1916, scrapped in 1948.)
29 November 1943 seaman 1/c Levi Freeland arrived aboard SS CHARLES SUMNER, which had sailed from Manchester, England, on 11 November 1943, as part of a 28-man Armed Guard gun crew, under the command of LT(jg) Charles Sawyer. (CHARLES SUMNER was a Liberty ship, built in April 1943, scrapped in 1962.)
1 March 1944 seaman 1/c "Levie" Freeland arrived aboard SS CHARLES SUMNER, which had sailed from London, England, on 11 November 1943, as part of a 29-man Armed Guard gun crew, under the command of ENS Richard Coogan. The ship had sailed from London on 9 February 1944.
25 November 1944 seaman 1/c Levi Eual Freeland arrived aboard SS CHARLES SUMNER, which had sailed from Liverpool, England, on 10 November 1944, as part of a 27-man Armed Guard gun crew, still under the command of ENS Coogan. Freeland had service number 6026070 and the date of 9/29/43 was associated with his name, the meaning of which is not clear. It may be the date he was first assigned to the SUMNER.
The website www.convoyweb.org.uk has sailing records for the three ships on which Levi Freeland served, as follows:
PAULSBORO: see http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ports/index.html?search.php?vessel=PAULSBORO~armain
DEAN EMERY: see http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ports/index.html?search.php?vessel=DEAN%20EMERY~armain
CHARLES SUMNER: see http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ports/index.html?search.php?vessel=CHARLES%20SUMNER~armain
You may be able to obtain some or all of Levi Freeland's service record by contacting the U.S. National Archives. See http://www.armed-guard.com/searchmil.html#milrec for more information and details.
Good luck.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
Armed Guard website www.armed-guard.com
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