By LaRae Free Kerr
There are other folks I’d like to mention but I really
haven’t time.

Anyway, they were all blessed from birth with names that do not rhyme.

However there is one fine little man, and his wife is just as grand,

And I really feel I’m honored when I shake him by the hand.

He’s more faithful in attendance than anyone I know,

And when a project’s started he’s there to make it go.

Now I suppose you are all guessing just who this man can be,

And I’m not going to tell his name, but his initials are A. P. Free.”

This rhyme, written many years ago for an Idaho Falls, Idaho church program, by Roland C. Beazer, was sent to me in 1975. It was the culmination of a systematic search for information generated by the death of Absalom Pennington Free, Jr. who had died some twenty-five years earlier on 29 March 1950 in Idaho Falls, Bonneville County, Idaho. Following the thread created by just this one death date and place led to many records, all of which enhanced the history of Absalom P. Free, Jr.

A P Free, Jr.’s death date led to the death certificate from the Idaho Center for Vital Statistics and the obituary from The Salt Lake Tribune of 30 March, 1950. Both provided the wife’s name, so a death certificate and obituary were found for her as well. These two documents provided the facts of A P Free, Jr.’s death, but I wanted biographical data as well. So I pursued the clues in these two documents.

A P Free, Jr.’s obituary gave the place of death as an Idaho Falls hospital. There was only one hospital in Idaho Falls, so I visited the record office. The 3×5 card for A P Free, Jr. indicated he was admitted 22 March 1950 and died 29 March 1950, and that Dr. David Smith was his doctor. The recorder told me all hospital death records were destroyed after ten years though state law mandated they be kept for only seven years. But the hospital preserved the card file indefinitely.

Under some circumstances it would have been possible to visit the doctor, but he no longer practiced. He too destroyed patient records, according to law, after seven years. So in this circumstance, the doctor was a dead end. But it might not be for you.

The obituary said the body had lain at the Williams Funeral home.
So I motored over to the still- functioning mortuary. Mr. Williams, the owner, remembered both A P Free, Jr. and his wife, Carrie, and the stories they told him of knowing Brigham Young and his wife, Emeline Free Young, who was A P Free, Jr.’s sister.

The Williams Funeral Home record provided additional clues. First, it said the church the Frees belonged to was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 4th Ward in Idaho Falls, leading me to church records. The services were conducted by the then Bishop, Lloyd Mickelsen. Knowing the ward and Bishop led me to other ward members I interviewed, even all those years later. One of those interviewed provided the rhyme quoted above.

Williams Funeral Home records gave the place of the Free’s burial as the Ashton, Idaho Cemetery. Cemetery records then became available. More importantly, it gave me a new county to search.
When I went to the Fremont County Courthouse, I found Civil Court records, Deeds, Marriage Licenses, and Mortgage records. What a haul. But no probate record appeared in either Fremont or Bonneville Counties for A P Free, Jr. or for Carrie.

(You can find funeral homes by searching the mortuary directories held by morticians.)

After searching records created because of A P Free Jr.’s death, I charted the places mentioned in the obituary. A P Free, Jr. was born 1862 and lived some years in Salt Lake City, Utah and Nevada. He lived in Ashton, Idaho from 1916 until 1937 when he moved to Idaho Falls.

Armed with this information, I searched United States censuses of Utah for the 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910 censuses, where I found A P Free, Jr. and his family. As a substitute for the missing 1890 census, I searched the 1893 Salt Lake City, Utah Directory where I found him farming on 12th South. I also checked old Idaho Falls phone books in the local library, whence I followed his address to the little house on the knoll where he and his wife had lived.

Then because I wanted a complete census picture for his family, and because the names of the children in the obituary were not clear, I searched the LDS Censuses, where I found the family in 1914 in Sandy, Utah; in 1925 in Ashton, Idaho; and in 1930 in St Anthony, Idaho. LDS Church censuses can be found in the FamilySearch.org catalog.

This study illustrates the many leads a death date and place can generate for family historians. Throughout 2009, columns will highlight these records individually.