William Prather ( 1766 – 1853) was a schoolteacher in Virginia and possibly North Carolina1, a pioneer of Clark County, Indiana2 and a probate Judge of Jennings County,3 a 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 and at the end of his long life he was blind for 20 years.8 He lived a life enmeshed in communities filled with family – parents, siblings, cousins, children, grandchildren and various layers of in-laws.9 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 1858, 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 multiple 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. 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 Prather attached on FamilySearch and several Ancestry Trees as a son Richard Horace Prather. Richard Horace Prather is shown as a grandson of William Jennings Prather (1821 – 1851) (who was the youngest son of William Prather and Lettice McCarroll.) BUT there are at least two Richard Horace Prathers in most genealogy databases AND neither of them could be the child of William Jennings Prather. The Richard Horace Prather (1846 – 1872) who is claimed to be Dewey’s father would have been born when William Jennings Prather was 16 years old, which extremely precocious for this time and place. The other Richard Horace Prather (1866 – 1948) appearing in FamilySearch and Ancestry is supposed to have been born in 1866 when William Jennings Prather was deceased. And even if this proposed descent were somehow correct – William Jennings Prather moved his family to Putnam County, Indiana before most of his children were born. And he died while his sons were very, very young. The posthumous 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!
What could possibly be happening here? 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. ↩
- 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 an example of a well documented and thoughtfully researched example on Ancestry. ↩
- Hiram Prather, Data from a diary and notebooks of personal recollection ↩
- 1790 U.S. Census, Iredell, North Carolina, alphabetized clerk’s copy, pg 398, Prather, William, digital images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 April 2022) citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm M637; Roll: 7. 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. ↩