As with most family photo collections, I have some photos that are unidentified. The following photo of the girl worried about the dead tribble at her feet is one of these. Let’s see if we can narrow down the possibilities for who this might be. The following are the research notes I took as I worked through this mystery. Continue reading
I thought I’d have a change of pace for today’s post. Rather than researching a single photo, I thought I’d gather together a series of photos I’ve got of someone I’d like to know more about; in this case, my great great grandfather Frank Scott. I’ll lay out the photos I’ve got and the approximate dates of each, and we’ll get to see what Frank Scott looked like through time. Continue reading
While my grandfather, William Eugene Prettyman, was alive, he alluded on a few occasions to an accident he was in in which three people were killed. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t tell the full story to any of his family members, but he conveyed enough overlapping pieces to several family members that the skeleton of a confusing story slowly came into focus. Continue reading
Back in May, my wife gave me two Ancestry.com DNA tests (the Paternal Lineage Test and the more general AncestryDNA test) for a joint birthday present/ Valentine’s Day gift. While that may sound odd to many readers, for me it was the perfect gift! Continue reading
In an earlier post about a road building project in Washburn, McLean County, North Dakota, I concluded that the photo was not of Clyde Askew, as my grandmother had stated, but of Frank Scott, as Frank is clearly pictured and one of the photos was found in a photo album that most likely had belonged to him.
While doing research for another post, I discovered that members of the Askew family also had connections to the tiny town of Washburn around 1916-1918, and may have participated in this same road building project. Continue reading
I received this photo from my grandmother, Harriet (Askew) Prettyman a few years back and it’s one of my favorite family photos.
I love the way the edge of the painted backdrop can be clearly seen on the left side of the photo, and that the bottom of the backdrop sits rumpled on the floor, visible in the gap between a child’s arm and his torso. The backless, single-armed chair upon which the father sits contributes only briefly to the verisimilitude of the family sitting casually in their living room. The sad potted plants that appear to have surrendered all dignity complete the scene. All of this stands in stark contrast to the proud, grounded, and solidly built family that is the subject of the photo.
Compositional details aside, this photo is tragic in many ways. It documents a family together for perhaps the last time. It speaks to the effects that death can have on a family. It also serves as an example of how the decisions we make about where to live and where to work can have large and unintended consequences. Continue reading
Among the handful of photos my grandmother Harriet Prettyman gave me in August 2012 were these two curious images. When I asked her about them, she said her father, Clyde Lawson Askew, was a hardworking man who did many different kinds of jobs. One of his jobs, she said, was that of road builder, and these were pictures of a project he had worked on. In fact, she said, she had been told that he’s pictured in both photos, somewhere among the faces. Continue reading
My family, like most families, has its share of tall tales, embellished truths, imagined histories, and shared deceptions. I’ve heard about the Cherokee princess, the honeymoon murder, the drunk-driving triple homicide, and the ornery slave owner. As I’ll discuss in later posts on these topics, none of these inherited truths turned out to be quite what we believed it to be from the stories that were passed down to us.
When I heard the story of the “pickle factory,” I assumed this was just another embroidered memory. My grandmother Harriet told me this story later in her life (I believe I first heard this story in 2005). She told me that her grandfather on her mother’s side, Frank Scott, had a pickle factory in Menahga, MN, and that when she and her siblings visited him, he would give them a huge barrel of pickles that they would take back to Wadena and share with their friends. Continue reading
On August 7, 2012, Harriet Prettyman gave me a few of her older family photos, including the photo pictured below. The woman in the lower right of the photo is my great-great grandmother, Hattie Eddy Askew.
Hattie Eddy Askew lived a short life, dying in her early thirties (32-34) at the young age of 33. She died around 1908-1910† on February 14, 1909, at her farm home outside Casselton, North Dakota. She died of pneumonia, which I was told she caught on a trip to Colorado as a result of a sudden and unexpected heart failure following an illness of about a week’s duration. Not only did her grandchildren never get a chance to meet her, but her own children were only about 1, 8, and 10 1 ¾, nearly 9, and 12 ¾ years old when she died, so they also didn’t get much of a chance to learn about their mother as a person.
This is only the second definitive photo I’ve found of Hattie Eddy Askew, which is why I’m interested in learning as much as I can about this photo. What follows is a log I kept of my initial research on this photo. Continue reading
While I was thinking of what to call this new site, one name that kept coming to me was Dust and Memories. One of the goals of this site is to document the history of those family members who came before me. I consider this to be an almost sacred duty of the family historian, because if no one in a family takes the time to document these histories with writings, images, and tangible artifacts, a family’s historical legacy all too quickly becomes dust and fading memories. Continue reading