Mr. & Mrs. George F. Freeman, 63rd Anniv., 1938

FREEMAN, ALLEN

Posted By: S. Ferrall - IAGenWeb volunteer
Date: 5/18/2021 at 21:26:33

Longest Wed M'Gregor Couple
McGregor, Ia. - Special: McGregor's longest-married couple, Captain and Mrs. George Freeman will "celebrate" their sixty-third wedding anniversary here Tuesday.

"No, don't say celebrate," corrected the captain. "We'll just have a family dinner. when folks get as old as we are, they ought to have sense enough not to celebrate. We did our celebrating on our fiftieth anniversary. "Remember how we hired a hall and invited in nearly the whole town?" McGregor people still talk about that Freeman golden wedding as the biggest party McGregor ever had.

For 40 years Captain Freeman was "Ferryman Freeman," running his Rob Roy between McGregor and Prairie du Chien, Wis. Five years ago came the highway bridge across the Mississippi, from Marquette to Prairie du Chien to deal a staggering blow to the ferry industry. After staging a losing fight for two years, the owners of the two other ferries, rivals of the Rob Roy, gave up the ghost and sold their boats down river.

But not the Rob Roy. A ferryman once, a ferryman always, is Captain Freeman. What's more, he is financially able to afford such a luxury as keeping a non-earning ferry, if he wants to.

So, for three summers the Rob Roy has been tied up at the McGregor levee, as idle as the "painted ship" of the poet. Will it ever be sold? Almost, quite certainly not - so say those who know best the owner's sentiments about it.

From his boat house porch the veteran ferryman can look beyond the Rob Roy out onto the part of the river, where, when he was a boy of seven, he crossed to Iowa with his parents. "It was the last of December," he said, "and we drove across the ice in a sleigh. I almost froze."

Captain and Mrs. Freeman were married at Decorah on Aug. 2, 1875. They have lived most of their married life in McGregor.

One day last week the captain got a notion he wanted to see the 63-year-old marriage certificate. He looked for it and couldn't find it. Mrs. Freeman looked and couldn't find it. They ransacked the house together, but to no avail. There just wasn't any marriage certificate.

Then the captain got out his car, invited a notary public friend to go with him and drove to Decorah to the courthouse. He had a certified copy made of their marriage record and came home with it in his pocket. "So that's all right now," he said. "It's okeh for us to announce our sixty-third anniversary.

~Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, August 1, 1938

Note: Mrs. Freeman was nee Kate Allen. The photo of the couple was with the article.

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