Philip Morin Freneau Born

Later years and death
Freneau later retired to a more rural life and wrote a mix of political and nature works.
He died at 80 years of age, frozen to death while returning to his home, and was buried in what became the Philip Morin Freneau Cemetery on Poet's Drive in Matawan, New Jersey. His wife and mother were also buried there.
Legacy
The non-political works of Freneau combined neoclassicism and romanticism. Although he is not as generally well known as Ralph Waldo Emerson or James Fenimore Cooper, Freneau introduced many themes and images for which later authors became famous. For example, Freneau's poem "The House of Night", one of the first romantic poems written and published in America, included the Gothic elements and dark imagery that were later seen in the poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. Freneau's nature poem, "The Wild Honey Suckle" (1786), was considered an early seed to the later Transcendentalist movement taken up by William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Romantic primitivism was also anticipated by Freneau's poems "The Indian Burying Ground" and "Noble Savage."
Memorials to him in Matawan include:

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  The Matawan Post Office on Main Street has a sculpture of Freneau on its wall, depicting him with black slaves as he was an abolitionist later in life. It was created in 1939 by Armin Scheler under a New Deal commission from the Treasury Department.
  
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  There is a Freneau fire company on Main Street/Route 79.
  
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  A site Freneau frequented in Matawan is now in use as a restaurant. From 1961 until 2008, it operated as "The Poet's Inn", to honor Freneau's memory. The business has since changed hands several times and building has been renovated and added on to over the years, and is now a popular bar and grill.^[5]
  
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  Freneau, New Jersey, an unincorporated community within Matawan, was named in his honor.^[6]