How many times have I walked past Prentis's store without thinking about the
full range of the family's business interest ?

Kari J. Winter, The American Dreams of John B. Prentis, Slave Trader [of
Williamsburg]
University of Georgia Press 180 pp.

Reviewed in the new *Washington Independent Review of Books * by David S.
Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler

The American family has provided fertile ground for historians and social
scientists during the past few decades, but few writers approach the subject
the way Kari J. Winter, a professor of American studies, does in her most
recent work. Her title seems to indicate her focus will be the life of an
individual. But Winter actually takes a detailed look at the evolution and
devolution of the entire Prentis clan, sketching an interesting picture of
early 19thcentury American family life in all its variety, complexity and
contradiction.

She begins with the English Prentises, tracing the migration of William
Prentis to America and his rise in the business world of Williamsburg,
Virginia. He also founded an important family in this important colony, one
that Winter follows into its next generation, focusing primarily on John B.
Prentis’s father, Judge Joseph Prentis. His activities as a member of
Virginia’s upper crust, including his marriage to Margaret Bowdoin and the
rearing of their four children who reached adulthood, make up the bulk of
her narrative in this early section.

It is their younger son, however, the John B. Prentis of the title, who
begins to shape the story.  He was not like the rest of them. He broke their
traditional mold of respectability, dismissed their genteel interests as
extraneous, and shunned the careers acceptable to his class. John intended
to become his own man, a self-made one if necessary. He persuaded his father
to let him blaze a unique path and became apprenticed to a Philadelphia
builder/architect. John learned the ropes the hard hands-on way, and after
his father’s death returned to Virginia to take up the building trade in
Richmond, one of the fastest growing cities in the South.

As Winter explores John’s complicated relationships with older brother
Joseph and two sisters, she exposes the great sadness that clouded all their
lives. None of these people was very happy, despite their privileged
upbringing. In John’s case, however, it was not for want of trying, though
his efforts too often relied on the false maxim that enough money could buy
anything, including joyfulness. He did not like books and found tedious the
education that made his brother a successful attorney. Rather, John at first
preferred prosperous artisan work and then lucrative business arrangements
that promised wealth and status. Ultimately he chose the slave trade as his
primary occupation, a decision seemingly incompatible with his earlier
anti-slavery sentiments. This sordid business meant a steady income
bounteous enough to expand his property holdings and improve his standard of
living, but it also soiled him in the estimation of polite Southern society.
. . .

For the rest of the review see :
http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/the-american-dreams-of-john-b-prentis-slave-trader/

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Jon Kukla
________________
www.JonKukla.com <http://www.jonkukla.com/>

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