Category Archives: Joseph Askew

Joseph Askew on Menahga’s progress

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Joseph Askew, ca. 1909.jpgA couple of years before he died, Col. Joseph Askew commented on the town he helped found—Menahga. Joseph built the first frame building in Menahga (which was also the town’s first hotel), and one of the first (if not the first) sawmill in town. He was also the town’s first mayor. In short, Menahga was a town in which he had invested so much of his time, money, and effort as a younger man. Despite his investment in the development of the town, Joseph moved to Wadena shortly after 1900. In the summer of 1908, a couple of years before he died, Joseph was asked to discuss how the village had changed over the years.

I haven’t had the opportunity to see the original of this article yet, but am instead relying on a transcription made by Rebecca Komppa, a local history journalist in the Menahga area.
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Joseph Askew vs. Mr. Paddock

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This post may give you the feeling that you’ve walked into a room and found two people arguing so vehemently about such deep-rooted issues that you can’t figure out what they’re actually so upset about. My apologies for that, but currently I’ve only discovered a brief portion of what seems to be an impassioned row between two men of widely divergent political and personal viewpoints.

On the one hand is Joseph Askew, a self-made man who believed in success through hard work and sharing the wealth with the less fortunate. He was a religious man and became a liberal politician affiliated with the Populist party; in today’s political climate he might be fairly described as a Socialist. On the other hand is Mr. L. A. Paddock, a man with a troubled past who’s cast himself as a fiscally concerned individual who feels he’s paying too much in taxes to a government he sees as fiscally irresponsible; someone who, in today’s political climate, might be best described as a Tea Party Republican.

Clearly there’s a lot more to the animosity between these two men than what is presented in these two letters to the editor from 1891.
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The Joseph Askew Homestead (part 2)

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In my original post on this topic, I used the legal document recording Joseph Askew’s homestead and combined that with aerial imagery to locate the exact location and extent of the Askew homestead from 1875 until the 1890s. In some of the recent images, at least five buildings and a grain silo could still be seen standing, giving me hope that I might be able to glean at least a little insight into what the original buildings may have looked like.

In what appeared to be the most recent aerial photo, however, all of the buildings except the silo appeared to have been destroyed. I decided that on my recent family history trip to Wadena, I would have to go check the homestead myself to see if the buildings really had been destroyed, and to see if I could still learn anything about the layout of the original homestead.

I’ve now returned from my Wadena-area family history research trip and I’d like to share with you what I learned about the Askew homestead.

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Joseph Askew threshing wheat

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Today’s post is the first of two Thanksgiving-themed posts. This first post is a harvest-related post, in which my great-great-great-grandfather, Col. Joseph Askew, is seen running a wheat-threshing operation in Minnesota in the late 1800s.

Before I go any further, I’d like to acknowledge the Wadena County Historical Society and their Executive Director and Curator, Rose Bakke. The photo that is the focus of today’s post is one from their Genealogical Research Center collections, and I would not have been able to find it or take a scan of it without the kind and generous help of Ms. Bakke. I spent a full day in their collections, making wonderful discoveries every few minutes, and I left wishing that I had an extra few days to learn even more from their impressive collections. The Wadena County Historical Society’s Museum is an inspirational place, and I’d like to sincerely thank Rose and everyone who’s had a hand in building, curating, indexing, and databasing their collections for keeping Wadena County history alive.

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Joseph Askew’s 1875 homestead (part 1)

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Yesterday all I knew of the location of Joseph Askew’s homestead was that in the spring of 1875, immediately after arriving from Gosforth, England, via Liverpool, New York, and Duluth, Joseph claimed his homestead about five miles east of Wadena. This evening I learned exactly where his homestead was, after finding his 1882 homestead certificate in the U.S. General Land Office records.

In this post, I’d like to share my findings with you—both the homestead certificate and the location of the Joseph Askew homestead.

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Col. Joseph Askew, part 1

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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 →

The Arlington Hotel at the turn of the century

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The Arlington Hotel was the first framed building to be built in Menahga, Minnesota. My great-great-great-grandfather, Col. Joseph Askew, built and operated the hotel with his wife, Jane (Eilbeck) Askew.

A couple of decades ago, my grandmother Harriet (Askew) Prettyman gave me a photograph of the Arlington Hotel. Nothing was written on either the back or the front of the photo. In this post, I’ll be taking a closer look at the photograph to see what I can learn about this photo and the hotel it depicts. Continue reading →

Two deaths at Deer Creek

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For this post, I want to relay a newspaper article from 1910, and give it what context I can from other sources.  I have several second-, third-, and even fourth-generation photocopies of the article, but I have not yet found a physical or digital copy of the original article.

In the span of about a week, the lives of Frank Scott and his four daughters were turned upside down. Frank’s wife Margaret got sick and died suddenly and unexpectedly. Her funeral was immediately arranged, and when her funeral procession passed Frank’s house, where his infirm step-father Nathaniel was staying, Nathaniel died. His step-father’s funeral was arranged and held two days later, and then Frank was left alone with his four young girls, aged 3–12. Continue reading →