{"id":5951,"date":"2016-06-28T21:14:30","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T04:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackenedroots.com\/blog\/?p=5951"},"modified":"2020-01-21T09:10:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T17:10:03","slug":"mystery-photo-4-c-a-rose-prettyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackenedroots.com\/blog\/mystery-photo-4-c-a-rose-prettyman\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery photo #5: C.A. & Rose Prettyman"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today’s mystery photo is only partly a mystery. Well, mostly a mystery, really. But I do know some things about the photo.<\/p>\n

In this photo, a dashing gent in a flat cap<\/a>, knickerbockers<\/a>, a leather car coat<\/a> and argyle socks<\/a> is showing off a pan of something while posing between two women. The hats and clothing of all three is evocative of the fashions of the Roaring Twenties<\/a> (roughly 1925\u20131932), and the little bit of the automobile that we can see also looks like a 1920s-to-earliest-1930s model.<\/p>\n

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I think the man in the photo is Charles Austin (“C.A.”) Prettyman, and I think the woman on the viewer’s left is his wife, Rose Cecila (Gores) Prettyman. My grandmother thought the woman on the viewer’s right might be C.A.’s sister-in-law Frances Josephine (Essex) Prettyman, G.I. Prettyman’s wife.<\/p>\n

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The landscape they’re pictured in looks more like the rolling hills of my own haunts in coastal California (and for that matter, coastal Oregon and Washington) than what I know of Minnesota topography based on my own meager 10 days experience in that state a few years back. Where I travelled by car\u2014from St. Paul to Wadena, Otter Tail, Todd, Douglas, and Hubbard counties\u2014was pretty much flat. I don’t remember seeing anything like the landscape in the photo.<\/p>\n

The hilly landscape as well as the farm buildings, wooden fence, general grassiness and lack of trees have this rural scene reminding me of a ranch or a dairy farm. As C.A.’s dad was a dairy farmer, perhaps this was a trip down memory lane for C.A., as he traveled back to a place from his childhood.<\/p>\n

Here are the big questions I’m looking to answer:<\/p>\n