Charles Free

On Thursday, March 1, 2012, Charles Haynes Free passed away peacefully at his home in San Marino, California. Mr. Free was 103 years old. He was born on January 27, 1909, in West Monroe, Louisiana, the oldest of the six children of the late C. Omer and Clara Haynes Free. (C. Omer Free represented Knox & Daviess Counties in the Indiana House and Senate from 1939 to 1948.) Charles was a ninth generation descendant of Marie Warenbuer Ferree, recognized as the first Caucasian settler of what is now Lancaster County Pennsylvania.Charles Free spent most of his youth in Vincennes where the family lived at the corner of North 5th St. and Seminary. The Frees were members of The First Christian Church of Vincennes, where he was baptized in 1921. He graduated from Vincennes Lincoln High School in 1926 where he was part of the Hi-Y Club, on the track and football teams, and played trombone. His yearbook called him