Researching A. Pritzker & Sons Inc

[bjoy]

Aaron Pritzker (1869-?) was born in Russia and came to Boston in 1885. He married in 1897 to German-born Nettie Bergman (1874-?).

They had three sons: Benjamin Morris (1899-1948), Bernard (1900-1967), Paul Percival (1902-1997).

Aaron owned the business Boston Overall Co with the earliest mention found being 1915. There was a fire in 1917 in a nearby building causing major smoke and water damage to their stock, and last found mention of the company was in 1920.

The earliest reference to "A. Pritzker & Sons Inc" found was in 1935 when its workers unionized. At that time the company employed "two hundred workers on leather garments". A nasty three-week strike occurred a year later "to preserve the union standards of wages and hours".

I did not find mention of this company during WWII other than there are a number of Pritzker manufactured military garments still existing which are tagged as "war aid".

The company was purchased by "Ethan Ames Manufacturing Co, Inc" in 1956.

In his obituary, Benjamin was described as "president of A. Pritzker & Sons". He had a child Ronald who attended Brown University, graduated in 1949, and then worked in the family business.

In his obituary, Paul (he seems to have been called "Percy" as a child) was described as "retired treasurer of the family business, A. Pritzker & Sons Inc., manufacturers of heavy leather and cloth outerwear". He graduated from Harvard University in 1923. He had two sons James A. and M. Frederick.

 

[Anonymous]

where do you find all this?

 

[bjoy]

where do you find all this?

Basically it is the result of MANY searches and followups mainly using Google, Google Books, Google Newspapers, and free genealogy sites.

Sometimes you get lucky and the local newspaper archives are not behind a pay wall (or at least they used a decent OCR tool so the digital text is readable, they enabled Google snippet view, and the snippet view is accurately placed).

Things are also much easier if your subject has a fairly unique name and is consistent. (Aaron Pritzker sometimes was Aarne and his wife's maiden name Bergusen in early records. Paul Percival Pritzker was recorded as being named Percy in the 1910 census.)

http://www.google.com/
http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp
http://www.google.com/webhp?tbs=nws:1,ar:1&source=newspapers
https://www.familysearch.org/
http://www.jewishgen.org/
http://www.footnote.com/

 

[Anonymous]

excellent job
thanks for sharing

 

[Cami Pritzker Griffith]

Terrific information. I'm about to get a subscription to ancestry, but this helps. Thanks.

 

[Roughwear]

To add to this in February 1928 the company was known as "A. Pritzker Company of Boston and was a contractor for US Air Corps A1 flying jackets. This information comes from an original letter in Gary Eastman's Type A2 Flight Jacket ID Manual, p.117.

 

[tmitchell59]