Joseph Askew, my great-great-great-grandfather, was one of the first people I focused on when starting my family history work over 35 years ago. My grandmother Harriet (Askew) Prettyman (Joseph’s great-granddaughter) spoke about him and the hotels he built and ran, even though he died over a decade before she was born. My great-great-uncle Gordy Askew (Joseph’s grandson) sent me photocopies of newspaper articles and a couple of published biographical sketches of Joseph. Joseph Askew was a man who left a large print on the world around him, and was (and is) known to many people who never had the occasion to meet him personally.
While I have focused on Joseph Askew for decades, I realized only recently that I’ve been primarily focusing on his ancestry, bypassing much of the history of the man himself once I had gathered the basic biographical facts on him. It’s about time that I look more deeply into his life, learning about who he was and what he was like. This post won’t go too much in that direction; rather, this will be more of an appetizer, presenting a couple of photos of Joseph that I recently scanned and a few details of his early life. Continue reading
