I'm gonna be charged with being picky, picky, picky, as editors often
are, but:

There are no contemporary documents that refer to Gabriel with a
surname. If he had one, it does not appear in the records. There is no
evidence and little reason to believe that he adopted the surname of his
owner or that his friends and coconspirators, who never referred to him
as Gabriel Prosser, applied that name to him.

His name was Gabriel. The trial records often refer to him as Prosser's
Gabriel to distinguish him from another Gabriel who was the enslaved
property of another white man.

And there was no rebellion. There would have been if a flood hadn't
washed out the bridges and made it impossible for the conpirators to
assemble and if two men hadn't given away the secret so that the
authorities could be alerted.

It was therefore Gabriel's Conpiracy. And it was Gabriel, not Gabriel
Prosser.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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