Leather Medical Bag and Medical Instruments of Dr. Margaret Ann Freece Arenson Salina, Utah

Description

Physician’s Bag. Leather Doctor’s Bag and Medical Instruments of Margaret Ann Freece of Salina, Utah.

Margaret Ann Freece Arnenson (1871-1957), a native of Scipio, Utah, was physician and surgeon in Salina, Utah, for more than 60 years. Her parents, Peter Freece and Margaret Sorenson Freece, were Mormon converts and handcart pioneers to Utah from Denmark. They settled in Scipio, Utah, where Peter took up farming. However, in Utah, the Freeces were horrified and repulsed by the Mormon practice of polygamy and soon withdrew from the Church. Thereafter, they joined the Presbyterian Church where Peter later became a member of the clergy. In 1892, the Freece family relocated in Salina, Utah. Margaret graduated from Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant; from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, and from the Rush Medical College, Chicago, Illinois in 1897. For three years after completing the medical course, she was house surgeon in a Woman’s Hospital in Chicago. In April 1899, Margaret was awarded a certificate from the Utah Board of Medical Examiners to practice medicine within the state. Thereafter, Dr. Freece returned to Salina, and was the first trained doctor and surgeon in Sevier and Millard Counties, and visited her patients with horse and buggy. Margaret was active in the civic, church, and education affairs of the community. For twenty years she was a member of the school board; she taught in the Sunday School and Bible class at the Presbyterian Church, and was a special influence to students seeking a higher education. Dr. Freece married John Arneson at Manti, Utah, in 1925, but the couple remained childless. She died at the Salina Hospital of old age.