Monthly Archives: July 2013

The Prettyman barbershop, part 1

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2013-07-21 scans002 (1)My great-grandfather, Charles Austin Prettyman, and his three brothers ran a barbershop in Wadena, Minnesota in the 1910s through at least the early 1920s. All four Prettyman boys were involved with the barbershop—Roy, Irvin, Charles, and Clarence. In fact, when my grandfather, William Prettyman, was born in 1919, his father’s profession was listed on the birth certificate as “barber.”

I’ve found two photos of the barbershop, but because I don’t know who is who in these photos, I’m hoping my Prettyman relations out there can help me sort that out.

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The William Noble Bailey family

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The photo that is the focus of this post is a charming family portrait, and one of the favorites in my collection. You might recognize it as the uncropped, unrotated image from which this site’s header image is derived.

The house is in the Olympia, Washington area. Since I’ll be heading up that area to do some family history research in late August–early September, I figured this would be a good time to post something about William N. Bailey and his family, some of my Olympia-area ancestors.

This post won’t go into much depth about the Bailey family, but I’d like to give you enough to that you know at least a little about everyone pictured in the photo. I’ll write more about the house itself in a later post.

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Clyde and his union shop

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2011-11-22-024 (1)Another loose photo I found among my grandmother Harriet Prettyman’s old photos. It’s a photo of Clyde Askew, my great-grandfather, and fellow employees at his place of work in the late 1940s or early 1950s. I believe my grandmother said he worked as a machinist at the General Electric plant the utility company (PG&E?) that was just down the street from where they lived in Oakland, CA, at the time.

As with the majority of the family photos I have, this one has no inscription on the back, so I’ll have to rely on details contained in the photo for hints as to where and when the photo was taken.
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Wadena H.S. 1941 yearbook

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Detail of HarrietMy grandmother, Harriet (Askew) Prettyman, attended Wadena, MN, public schools from kindergarten through her high school graduation. While organizing some of her old photos, I came across her Wadena High School yearbook from 1941. She had apparently taken it with her to her 40th high school reunion, as there are photos and other materials from that reunion, and she had written “deceased” next to the yearbook photos of all of her class members who had passed away. Other than that and some scotch tape to fasten several of the photos, the yearbook appears to be in pretty much the same condition that it was in when she first received it.

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Gert Askew and daughters in S.F. Chinatown

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1945 Chinese Skyroom p1Whew. I like to write a post or two per week, but it’s been a busy several weeks since my last post. My time has been stretched really thin over these past weeks, primarily between travel, family, a bad cold, and writing a $500k NSF grant. I’ll do my best to get back on the family history blogging rails. Towards that end, I’ll see if I can get a few posts written this weekend to get some momentum built up again.

For my first post today, I present this charming souvenir photo I found recently while continuing to organize my grandmother’s photos.

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