Max Prevedell. Photo Courtesy of Mullen Family

Massimino “Max” Prevedell was born on 18 February 1861 in Brez, Trento, in Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy. His father, Francesco Prevedel, was 34 and his mother, Maria Dominica Ruffini, was 24 at the time of his birth. Max left his home in Austria before he turned 18 to avoid military service and spent time working in Russia, Germany, and France. In 1886 he immigrated to Bessemer, Michigan, where he worked in the coal mines. A year later, in 1887, he married Maria Albertini, whom his parents had helped him find. Max had asked them to locate an Austrian girl who would be a good worker, as he had been away from home for a long time and did not know which girls were still unmarried. Maria arrived in Michigan accompanied by three brothers, and the couple married shortly thereafter.

In 1888, Max and Marie married in Canada and began raising a family. They eventually moved from Michigan five years later to escape the dangers of coal mining and bought a farm in the Day Creek area of Skagit Valley. The couple had at least eight children: Virginia, Ernestine, Almeda, Frank, Mary Ann, Thomas, and Edith. Life on the Day Creek farm proved perilous. After two severe floods, the family endured dramatic experiences. During one flood, the water rose to the level of their house, and Max constructed a raft of boards to carry the family—four young children and the two adults—to a large fir tree, where they spent the night in a hastily built treehouse. Early the next morning, local Indigenous people arrived in canoes from Lyman, across the Skagit River, to rescue them. The following year, another flood forced the family to spend the night on the upper floor of their barn.

Following these floods, Max sought higher ground and purchased an 80-acre property on a hill above Lyman, which had been auctioned off due to mortgage default. For $525 in cash, he acquired a small house, a very small barn, and mostly uncleared timberland. On this property, Max and Marie established a family farm that would remain central to their lives and their descendants for generations.

Both the Prevedell and Mullen families were early pioneers in the Lyman area. The Mullens, experienced millwrights who had already built several mills, arrived in Lyman in 1908 to construct a shingle mill. Around 1915, Henry Patrick Mullen and his son Henry built a large barn for Max and Marie Prevedell, using timber milled from the Prevedell property. This barn is now recognized as a designated heritage structure. The close ties between the families were strengthened when Henry Mullen married Max and Marie’s oldest daughter, Virginia, in 1909. By that time, Henry and Virginia were raising six children nearby.

The farm was eventually inherited by Max and Marie’s son, Frank Prevedell, whose life was devoted almost entirely to the land. He installed a ceramic tile drainage system, which remains in use today. When Frank died in 1978, the farm passed to his nephew Dennis Mullen, whose sons, Kevin and Terry, now own the property. Kevin Mullen carried out significant repairs to stabilize and preserve the barn, including replacing missing or damaged parts. Today, the farm spans approximately 140 acres and continues to be stewarded by Prevedell and Mullen descendants, maintaining the legacy of two pioneering families in the Lyman area.

Max Prevedell died on 28 June 1949 in Lyman, Skagit County, Washington, at the age of 88 and was buried in Union Cemetery, Sedro-Woolley, Skagit County, Washington.

Virginia (Prevedell) Mullen circa 1916 pictured with three of her five children, Robert (Bob) Mullen, Roger Mullen, Frances Mullen in front of a home built by her husband, Henry at the base of Prevedell Hill. Photo Courtesy of Mullen family.

Virginia was one of Max and Marie Prevedell's daughters that moved to Day Creek around 1896, and then to what is now known as Prevedell Hill in 1902. In an interview with family members, she shared that she could shoot a rifle; in later life she told us that she shot 3 cats and a dog.  She said "the cats really jump."

She said her family never went fishing; not Frank, not her dad, not her.  We asked her where she got her taste for fish; she couldn't figure it out. [Her daughter Fran noted that the Prevedells would buy fish from the back of a truck.]

She said that Maria, her mom, made most of their clothes when she was young. Probably most by hand.

She said that Fran was good about doing chores, but Doris didn't like to do that sort of thing.  

She had to milk the cows herself and do the boy's chores [her sons?] when they went camping.

She liked home cured bacon and ham better than the store bought version.