Archives West Finding Aid

Charles Robert Pratsch was born November 17, 1857 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, son of Charles August (born 1833, Leipzig) and Catherine Anna Dostman Pratsch (born 1837, Lancaster, Pennsylvania). Moving westward he left Iowa at the age of 25 with his brother-in-law, Lester L. Darling, and in 1884 the two homesteaded adjacent claims on the Wishkah River in the Grays Harbor country. After establishing claims they were joined by the elder Pratschs and their daughter, Mrs. Darling. Upon arrival Pratsch's parents entered the business life of the new community of Aberdeen (platted in 1883 and organized as a town in 1885). C. A. Pratsch was appointed postmaster of Aberdeen in 1886 and served in that position until 1889. He built the Pioneer House, later, the Del Monte, a wood frame hotel, in 1885, and in 1889 built a bakery and confectionary, known as Mrs. Pratsch & Co., across the street from the hotel. While Charles Robert occasionally worked in the hotel, he was soon involved in a project of his own: photography. He had persuaded a photographer named Tolman to teach him the techniques for $300. In a "mugbook" of 1890 Charles R. Pratsch is listed:

Photographer, F Street, between Heron and Wishkah. We are indebted to Mr. Pratsch for many of the subjects from which our Gray's Harbor and Aberdeen engravings were made, his collection of views, portraits and architectural subjects, being very fine indeed. Mr. Pratsch is at present erecting a new studio building, and by the time this volume is out of press, he will be prepared to conduct his business with the aid of greater and better facilities than before. He attends to all classes of work, such as portraits, views, buildings, copying, enlarging, reducing, etc., and charges very reasonable prices. ( South-western Washington; its topography...and pen sketches of their representative business men... Olympia: Pacific Publishing Company, 1890.178.)

In his later years Charles Robert Pratsch was caretaker of the Laidlow Island duck preserve. He died in 1937 at the age of 79 a few days after walking into a slowly moving train. His son, Fred Pratsch, acquired the negatives and made prints which he reproduced as oil paintings. (for example see 111 35)

In the collection are many negative and lantern slides that are indentified as the work of Colin S. MacKenzie (1879-1912). MacKenzie, a deputy sheriff in the Grays Harbor area, had become a studio photographer following a back injury suffered while fighting a fire. See Alfred J. Hillier Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 35:3 (July, 1944) After his death at the hands of John Tornow, his photographic files and materials were given to Pratsch by the family, for MacKenzie had often used Pratsch's equipment and facilities. Colin's name is spelled as MacKenzie on his photographs, in the 1910 census, and in a 1907 Pacific Monthly article using his photographs, but newspaper reports of and after his death popularized McKenzie as the spelling.