William Prather ( 1766 – 1853) was a schoolteacher in Virginia and possibly North Carolina1, a pioneering landowner of Clark County, Indiana2 and a farmer and probate Judge of Jennings County,3 an active member of Methodist Churches in Clark and Jennings Counties, Indiana4, was promoted to ensign, lieutenant, captain and major in the Clark County militia5, farmer,6 father of 14 well-document children with his 2 well-documented wives,7 was enumerated on 5 federal census8and at the end of his long life he was blind for 20 years.9 He lived a life enmeshed in communities filled with family – parents, siblings, cousins, children, grandchildren and various layers of in-laws.10 He was a respected member of that community. But something odd happened to William’s life – after his death.
Long after his death in Jennings County, Indiana in 1853, William’s life story was told in a very different way. In that life story, he was a rebel and wanderer who had constantly itchy feet which sent him traveling nearly constantly along woodland trails as well as up and down the Ohio River (and possibly also the Mississippi.) He was a serial bigamist who married up to 3 additional wives, at the same time as his long-term marriage to Lettice McCarrell, in places as far from Indiana as Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee and who had children with each additional wife. Whenever he had “marriage issues,” or changed his mind about his living situation, he apparently abandoned the woman he was living with and with whom he had fathered children and moved back in with his “other” family. He was a river boatman and a trader/peddler. He was constantly hard-up for cash for his travels. He continued this double (triple?) life into his late old age when his sons intervened to keep him at home with his legal wife Lettice in Indiana or when he died while on a riverboat trip. And in this alternate life story, he acquired a nickname, Skipjack, which supposedly summed up this morally loose and wandering nature.
It isn’t unheard of for an individual to have 2 different lives – one a misspent youth and one a staid old age or one life and family at each end of a long journey regularly taken (say by train or long distance riverboat.) It isn’t unheard of for men to be church members and dishonest bigamists.
But it is extremely unusual to lead this kind of double life while maintaining a well-documented life in one community, where you are related to most of the community and long absences/unusual behavior/money problems would be noted and commented upon and while fathering children about every 18 month . And it is far beyond unusual to have a wandering double life in the early 19th century when you are blind!
You may notice something about the two life stories laid out above. The first has documentation for every factual statement – sources that attest to William in a specific place at a specific time. Children’s births, land purchased, marriage records, census entries, recollections of a relative that were written down shortly after William died. The normal stuff of a life in early 19th century America (even on the frontier.) The bare items don’t make great story, no wandering, no bigamy, nothing particularly exciting.
The second life story appears in different but similar versions on many Ancestry Trees, Wiki trees, and The Prater/Prather Genealogy website none of which attach sources to any of the stated “facts” about William Prather. On the Prater/Prather Genealogy website there is a longish version of this “story” about William Prather and the “source” is entered as “The information on Williams (sic) marriages came from Dewey Prather, a grandson, and is related in his family genealogy which was collected by Sandy Prather Merritt of Barrington, IL. (1980.)”
And there is one very big problem with that “source” statement. There is no William Prather grandson named Dewey Prather. There is a Dewey, or Dewey R., or Dewey Reynolds Prather shown on FamilySearch and several Ancestry Trees as a son of Richard Horace Prather. Richard Horace Prather is shown as a son of William Jennings Prather. BUT there are two William Jennings Prathers and only one is a grandchild of William Prather and Lettice McCarroll.)
- William Jennings Prather (1821-1851) son of William Prather and Lettice McCarroll is shown by some Ancestry Trees to have a son Richard Horace Prather (1844 or 1846 – ??) However, he would have to have been squeezed in between sons born in 1843, 1845 and 1847 who were all documented in the 1850 census where Richard is not shown.11
- William Jennings Prather (1833-1900) FamilySearch ID LZL7-28F has a son Richard Horace Prather (1866 – 1948) FamilySearch ID KH8W-S83, who has a documented grandson Dewey Reynolds Prather. HOWEVER, this William Jennings Prather is the son of William Gaither Prather FamilySearch ID G4M6-PMH who was the son of Walter P. Prather and Ann Higgins and therefore a distant cousin of William Prather, son of Basil Prather and Chlorenda Robertson.
The posthumously developed story of William Prather’s life is exciting and makes for great family legend. But the only “source” for the legend isn’t descended from William Prather!
So, what could possibly be happening here? I suspect that people have conflated the numerous contemporary William Prather men of Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina. Combining men with the “same name” over multiple generations with various wives and children into one more “exciting” ancestor.
to be continued
- Dr. Ray R. Knight (Minneapolis, Minnesota) to Mrs. Harvey Morris, Photocopy enclosed with letter, September 1927; “Data from a diary and notebook of personal recollections of early Indiana Territory, written by Hiram Prather, about 1870-1875 (sic, Hiram Prather died in March 1874). Book in possession of Clarence D. Prather, in office of Northern Pacific Railway, Minneapolis, Minn. It furnishes some interesting date of original sources of Indiana History. Send by Dr. Ray R. Knight to Mrs. Harvey Morris, Sept. 1927.” Hiram’s recollections appear to be very accurate for his immediate family – father William Prather and mother Lettice McCarrell and his siblings and some of their children. His information regarding his more distant ancestors on his father’s side is incorrect. His information on his mother’s family goes back only 1 generation to her parents. Hiram lived with or in the immediate vicinity of his parents all his life. ↩
- Clark, Indiana, Deed Records, 1801-1901, 2: 99 – 100, Isaac Shelby collector of land tax to William Prather, 6 August 1807; 12 acres in the Illinois Grant (survey number not recorded) FHL microfilm 1428594. John Porter Bloom and Clarence Edwin Carter, editors, The Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Service, 1934), 8: 144-146; being petitions of various kinds submitted by pre-statehood inhabitants of Indiana. ↩
- “Special Edition – Jennings County vol 1,” Hoosier Journal of Ancestry, 59; Circuit County 28 Oct 1822. “William Prather and Jonathan Barnett are Associate Judges.” ↩
- History of the New Chapel Methodist Church near Watson, Indiana, typescript in the collection on the Charlestown Public Library, Charlestown, Indiana, author unknown, possibly Ruth G. Jacobs, 1934, page 2 “The families who made up the congregation of the time were: Jacobs, Swartz, Prathers, Spanglers, …Frys, Bottorffs….” all of these intermarried repeatedly with the William Prather family and the families of his siblings. ↩
- William Wesley Woollen and Daniel Wait Howe, editors, Executive Journal of Indiana Territory 1800-1816, III, no 3 (Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, 1900), p. 31 “1803 —Sept. 20th The following persons were Commissioned by the Governor officers of the militia for the County of Clark……William Prather, Lieut…” William’s militia career is traced through 1809 in this volume…Captain Lewis C. Baird, Baird’s History of Clark County Indiana (Indianapolis, Indiana: B.F. Bowen & Company, 1909), pages 142-144 ↩
- Maurice Holmes, Early Landowners of Jennings County, Indiana, Shelbyville, Indiana, 1976, pg 45, “Prather, William, (purchased) Dec 20, 1819.” 1840 U.S. census, Jennings, Indiana agricultural schedule, p. 26B7, William Prather; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 8 Sep 2019); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm M704, roll 84. ↩
- William L. Prather Family Tree of Ancestry member jkm20081is thoughtfully (although shallowly) researched example on Ancestry. ↩
- Prather, William, 1790 U.S. Census, Iredell, North Carolina, alphabetized clerk’s copy, p. 398, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing NARA M637; Roll: 7. William Prather, 1820 U S Census, Charlestown, Clark, Indiana; Page: 37; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing NARA M33 roll 13; William Prather, 1830 U.S. Census, Vernon, Geneva, and Columbia, Jennings, Indiana, p. 152; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing NARA M19 roll 27; William Prather, 1840 U.S. Census, Jennings, Indiana, p 246; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing NARA M704 roll 84; William Prather 1850 U.S. Census, Vernon, Jennings, Indiana, p. 340a; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing NARA M432, roll 155. ↩
- Hiram Prather, Data from a diary and notebooks of personal recollection ↩
- Charles M. Franklin, Indiana Territorial Pioneer Records 1801-1815 (Indianapolis, Indiana: Heritage House, 1983), 15; Citing original records in the Indiana State Library, Archives Division; being primarily voting records of various pre-statehood elections, including elections in 1807-1810 in Clark County. William never appears on a voting list without at least 3 of his siblings, in-laws or parents also being on that list. History of the New Chapel Methodist Church near Watson, pg 2. Captain Lewis C. Baird, Baird’s History of Clark County Indiana (Indianapolis, Indiana: B.F. Bowen & Company, 1909), pages 142-144, Indiana. 1820 U.S. census, Clark, Indiana population schedule, Jeffersonville, p. 10, Schwartz, John and John jr; digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 8 Sep 2019); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm M33, roll 13. and many other census and land deeds. ↩
- 1850 William Prather, U.S. Census, Marion, Putnam, Indiana, p. 453a; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing NARA M432 roll: 167. ↩