Bishop in Vernal Utah
per certs in poss of Erma Beck Taylor
Per certs in poss of Charlene F. Merkley
Clara P. Seeman, The Freestone Family, pages 9, 26-30
George Freestone was born Aug. 13, 1838 on Prince Edward Island (Canada) to English parents, Thomas and Ann Fall Freestone. He was their eldest son and in 1840, while still a small child he sailed along with his parents to the U.S. He spent his boyhood growing up on a small farm in Harden Co. Ohio.
At that time, Mormon missionaries were preaching in the area and his mother went to hear them speak. She was so impressed with their teachings, she brought the rest of the family to later meetings. They were all eventually baptized into the church and decided to join other members who were travelling by ox teams to Utah. By November of 1852 they arrived at Mt. Pisga, Iowa. Here they suffered many privations during the Winter months. They left for Utah again in the Spring and arrived in Salt Lake on Sep. 9, 1853 in Daniel Miller's company. They moved to American Fork and lived there for one year and then came to the area of Alpine at the foot of the beautiful Wasatch mountains.
The first years in Alpine were very hard. The family was nearly destitute especially after George's father, Thomas was killed by Indians in 1858. It was the strength of his mother that held the family together. On Dec. 25, 1861 George married Alice Carlisle, the widow (divorced) of Mr. Wilkins with three children: Richard, Jed and Jeanette. George was 23 years of age, and Alice was 26. She was an English woman from Nottingham, the area made famous by Robin Hood. Alice was the daughter of Richard and Jenny Field Carlisle. Her parents also came to Utah from England to be with other members of the L.D.S. faith and had also settled in Alpine, Utah.
George was busy this same year hauling rock for the Salt Lake temple. He also served in the Black Hawk War as a Captain in 1866. George had a farm in Alpine and here he and Alice had four daughters: Alice, Mary, Rhoda and Drusilla. After the birth of Drusilla, Alice fell ill and lingered for eight days and died on Dec. 4, 1868. She was buried this same day on the hilltop cemetery in Alpine. Sadly, Drusilla was to live to be only eleven years old. George soon moved his family to Bridgeport, Idaho where he met his second wife.
On Aug. 12, 1872 George remarried Jennie Lind, the 17 year old daughter of Jens and Mary Nielsen Lind. She was born in Jutland, Denmark and had come to the U.S. with her parents in 1868. George, his new wife and his four children moved to Bear River, western Idaho, with intention of raising stock. George enjoyed fishing and hunting while living in this area. George and Jennie had three children, George, Georgine and Rosella in Idaho.
After living in Idaho for seven years the family then relocated by mule team to Vernal, in the Ashley Valley. This journey took them a month to complete and their first winter was very hard. Like other new settlers, they built a one room log cabin with a dirt roof that had no floor or windows. Food was scarce and many people became ill. There was no doctor in the area but luckily all of the children, stricken with diphtheria, recovered. All of their horned stock perished. Later, George was to have better luck with farming grain and raising bees.
Here he built the first frame house. He planted the first nursery of fruit and shade trees that supplied the settlers for many years. George and Jennie had eight more children in Vernal: James, Emma, Louis, Reuben, Emery, Charles, Afton and Clarence.
In 1894 George served a mission in England and while there visited relatives at Flixton, Suffolk. He wrote the following account of this visit in his diary: "Feb. 28, 1894. A beautiful morning. I walked to Flixton, the old Freestone homestead, about three miles from cousin James' place where Father and his brothers and cousins were born. There is a little church there built of flint stones and gravel cemented together. It stands upon a hill and belongs to the Church of England. It has a tower and a spire on which stands a rooster. In the churchyard lie my grandfather and grandmother, but no tombstones mark their graves. Just below the hill stood the house where they once lived and died, but it is gone now and another takes its place. The country round is very beautiful, being covered with many groves of trees. I returned the way I came, and many curious thoughts filled my mind".
George, after living a long and full life, died on Aug. 26, 1920. Jennie survived him by sixteen years and died on Aug. 30, 1936. They are both buried in Vernal.
