KNOWLES BIOGRAPHIES
Elijah Barrett PRETTYMAN
(1891 - 1971)
based on article from
Washington Post Staff Writer, Toni Locy, March 27, 1997 (page J1)
and Knowles / Marvel / Prettyman research by:
D. Mitchell Jones, Rev. Edgar Cannon Prettyman, Robert L. Smith, Robert B. Noles,
et al
GENEALOGY
Elijah Barrett Prettyman (1891- 1971)
s/o Forrest Johnston Prettyman (1860 - 1945)
s/o Elijah Barrett Prettyman (1830 - 1907)
s/o William Prettyman (1792 - 1875)
s/o Thomas Jefferson Prettyman (1764 - 1824)
s/o William Prettyman (c 1738 - 1772)
s/o John Prettyman (c 1714 - 1754)
s/o William Prettyman (c 1679 - 1743)
s/o John Prettyman, Jr. (c 1630 - 1724)
s/o John Prettyman (1608 - 1688)
s/o Robert Prettyman (1570 - bef. 1626)
s/o Thomas Prettyman (1542 - c 1601)
s/o John Pratyman (c 1512 - 1559)
[descendant of John Pratyman ( b bef. 1361)]
Note: There were a number of marriages among
the Sussex County, Delaware Knowles families [descendants of Edmund "Old
Silverhead" Knowles (1685 - 1762), the Marvel families [descendants of Thomas
Marvel (1674 - 1754) and his wife Elizabeth Huggins] and the Prettyman families
[descendants of Thomas Prettyman, Jr. (c 1700 - 1790) and his wife Elizabeth
Inloes], resulting in many double cousins among the descendants of these three
old families. A chart depicting the interconnections among these three old
Delaware families from the 18th century will be provided in the future.
For Example:
-
Richard KNOWLES, Sr. (1715 - 1791) married Prudence MARVEL (c 1725 - bef. 1791)
-
James Wesley MARVEL (1803 - 1885) married Susan Comfort KNOWLES (1813 - 1883)
-
James KNOWLES (1757 - 1839) married Patience MARVEL (1758 - 1817)
-
Asa Knowles (1856 - aft. 1880) married Lavinia Elizabeth MARVEL (1863 - aft. 1880)
-
Edmund KNOWLES (1747 - 1835) married Patience PRETTYMAN (1749 - 1836)
-
David MARVEL (1729 - 1796) married Sarah PRETTYMAN (c 1760 - 1801)
Elijah Barrett Prettyman
The Federal Court House in
Washington D.C. was named in honor of E. Barrett Prettyman on July 1, 1996.
By Toni Locy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 1997 ; Page J01
After nearly 45 years in virtual anonymity, the courthouse
that was the scene of historic
arguments on the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate trials and the first appearance
by a first lady before a federal grand jury now has a name. The U.S.
Courthouse has become the E. Barrett Prettyman
Courthouse. Prettyman died in 1971, and not many people remember him.
But, just like the building named after him, Prettyman has a place in history.
Appointed by President Harry S. Truman, he served on the prestigious U.S. Court
of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for 26 years, including two years as chief
judge. He taught tax law at Georgetown University. He was general
counsel to the old Internal Revenue Bureau. He was corporation
counsel for the District in the mid-1930s. And he was chosen to
determine whether Francis Gary Powers handled himself appropriately after his
U-2 spy plane was downed over the Soviet Union in 1962.
During
a dedication ceremony last week (March 1997), Prettyman's accomplishments were
ticked off to explain why the nondescript gray building at Third Street and
Constitution Avenue NW will carry his name. His achievements were extolled
by some respected judges, including William H. Rehnquist, the chief justice of
the United States. Prettyman's credentials were impressive, but the
case for naming a building after him was helped by one of his former law clerks
-- John W. Warner, now the senior U.S. senator from Virginia -- who pushed the
christening legislation through Congress. U.S. District Judge Louis F.
Oberdorfer, the courthouse's resident historian, regaled spectators with stories
from Prettyman's papers, which he found at the Library of Congress.
Prettyman kept two diaries, one when he was in the Army in which he anguished
over learning to kill with a bayonet. In the other, he wrote about being
pressured to make politically motivated tax rulings while he was counsel to the
Internal Revenue Bureau in the early days of the New Deal. "It [reads]
like Tom Sawyer," Oberdorfer said. Born in 1891 in Lexington, Virginia,
the courtly but passionate southerner witnessed exciting times and much change.
Oberdorfer said Prettyman wrote about growing up as a Methodist minister's son,
seeing his first movie, "The Great Train Robbery," and driving on a dirt road
from Rockville to Washington.
As a young lawyer, he hung out his shingle in 1916 in Hopewell, Virginia, so
raucous a town that
Prettyman carried a pistol. He worked as a newspaperman on the side,
running at least two papers. A few years earlier, as manager of the
Randolph-Macon College football team, he boldly enlisted the help of President
William H. Taft to persuade the school's faculty to lift its ban on students'
attending the last game of the year.
It seems that Prettyman, the team manager, was to blame for the punishment
because he liberally interpreted a half-day leave for the team to travel to the
previous game and the team took the whole day off. The faculty was
incensed and banned students from attending the season finale. When
Prettyman heard that Taft was going to be in Richmond, he went to the governor's
mansion, and somehow, cornered the president. Oberdorfer said Taft roared with
laughter, telling the young man he didn't think he could help. But the
next day, Taft's train made a brief stop near the school. "About this
football situation," Taft began, according to Oberdorfer. Taft told the "boys"
that if they were "locked up in a federal penitentiary," he could help them.
Unfortunately, they were in college and not under his control. But the
faculty got the message and relented, allowing the students to attend the
football game.
Eventually, Prettyman put away childish things -- and his gun -- and moved to
Washington,
where he became active in politics and social programs, and made a name for
himself as a tax lawyer. In 1945, he went on the bench. Asked what his
father might say about the Prettyman courthouse, E. Barrett Prettyman Jr. said:
"Are you kidding? He'd love it. He loved that courthouse."
Prettyman said his father jockeyed for years to get chambers with a view of
Pennsylvania Avenue, where any parade worth watching passes by. "The whole
family would go," Prettyman Jr. recalled. "It was great fun." Warner
remembered Prettyman's excitement as he watched workers erect the triangular
24-foot-high shaft of granite in front of the building. It was Prettyman's
brainchild, with excerpts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution
and the Fifth Amendment on one side and scenes depicting portions of the Bill of
Rights on the others. Barrett Prettyman Jr. said his father was sensitive
to individual rights, especially unlawful searches of homes, mainly because he
never had a real home of his own until he was an adult. The family lived a
nomadic life because the Rev. Forrest J. Prettyman (E. Barrett's father) moved
from parsonage to parsonage. During his years on the court, Prettyman
often was the "swing man," the pivotal vote on key cases, Oberdorfer said.
He stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Judge David L. Bazelon in the landmark
Durham case, which broadened the insanity defense. He was one of the
leaders in establishing the city's first legal aid society. And he was the
father of court administrative procedures.
But
he was "no bleeding heart," Oberdorfer said. Prettyman, in a speech,
called drug dealers "the slimiest reptiles in the human race," driven by money
to "the destruction of all that is good and decent in people." Warner
recalled how important good and decent people were to Prettyman and how the
judge worried about a particular case in which developers and government
officials wanted to take land in Southwest Washington by condemning it and
forcing many people to leave their homes. One day, Warner said, Prettyman
burst into his office and told his young law clerk to get his coat. They
headed for Southwest Washington, stopping every time Prettyman saw a neatly kept
home amid the bleakness. In the end, the judge sided with the developers,
telling Warner: "I will go to my grave remembering those houses. But we
must have progress."
