The Curious Death of a Vaunted Quincy Citizen

 The Mayflower-era family’s patriarch, Valentine Prentice, born February 25, 1598, in Felsted, England, and his wife, Alice Bredda Prentice of Chelmsford, sailed on the HMS Lyon on its third voyage to British colonial America. Before leaving, the Prentices were required to swear their loyalty to King Charles I. Days later, on August 23, 1631, they departed Bristol with 119 other passengers for a 71-day voyage to the New World. They arrived at Boston Harbor on November 2.

 For the Prentices, the voyage compounded the sadness the family carried with them on the journey. They had buried four-year-old Josias, their eldest son, in Chelmsford just before they left England. Midway through the crossing to America, death took their youngest boy, 16-month-old Geremiah, and the Prentices gave their boy’s small body to the sea. Three-year-old John Prentice was Valentine and Alice’s only surviving child. It was from John, born May 6, 1628, that the lines to the Henry Leonidas Prentiss family descended. Still, the voyage might be considered fortuitous for the Prentices. On its next voyage, its fourth, the Lyon hit a shoal near the Chesapeake River and sank.

 John Prentice phoneticized his name to Prentis. During Henry Leonidas’s generation, someone—according to a family genealogist it might have been Henry Leonidas himself—added a second s to the surname, and the family went by Prentiss. That’s how the Quincy Whig referred to them. 

None of the stories explained Henry Leonidas’s self-promotion. During his two years as a militiaman in the War of 1812, Henry Leonidas was promoted from sergeant to captain. In Quincy, he took the liberty of advancing himself a grade, calling himself Major Henry Leonidas Prentiss.

 On April 14, 1814, Prentiss married Rebecca Mayberry in Belleville, Virginia, and their third child and first son, Benjamin Mayberry, was born there on November 23, 1819. In 1836, Henry Leonidas moved his family to Marion County, Missouri, to manufacture rope from hemp grown there.

 Trade in Quincy acquainted Henry Leonidas with several people in Ellington Township who were cultivating flax for the manufacture of linen. Leonidas saw an opportunity to organize the producers to increase the use of linen for clothing, sacks, sheets, tablecloths, and towels. And in 1841, he moved his family to Quincy to develop the business. There, however, he found more demand for rope, particularly by steamboats that made dozens of stops there each week. A steamboat could require as much as five miles of rope of various sizes for various purposes.

 Henry Leonidas and son Benjamin built a nearly block-long “ropewalk” on Hampshire between 5th and 6th streets to twist long hemp fibers into rope, or cordage. A special census the city council commissioned in 1842 found the Prentiss ropewalk operating without competition. And Tenk Hardware on the south side of Maine Street between 5th and 6th Streets sold Prentiss cordage in all lengths and strengths.

 Henry Leonidas was highly regarded in mid-19th century Quincy as businessman and civic leader, and Quincyans were shocked the next morning to learn he had been found at 9 p.m. December 24, 1849, bludgeoned outside the Quincy Saloon on the northwest side of John’s Square. He died four hours later.

 The Quincy Whig reported that the one witness to the murder saw Prentiss and two men exit the saloon. One administered the single blow that killed Henry Leonidas. He fell, groaning, against the brick wall of Janson’s Furniture store and slid to the sidewalk. The perpetrators fled in opposite directions. They were apprehended before Christmas Eve ended.

 In the early hours of Christmas Day, County Coroner Thaddeus Monroe assembled an inquest jury at Henry Leonidas’s home, where his body had been taken. A Whig reporter, also summoned, was as thorough in his description as Doctors Edward L. Pearson, J.W. Hollowbush, and Charles A.W. Zimmerman were in examining Henry Leonidas’s body. They separated the scalp sufficiently to examine the parietal bone. They described it as badly fractured by the blow to the left side of Henry Leonidas’s skull. The blow was delivered with enough force, doctors agreed, to split the skull to expose the brain. The only other marks were abrasions on Henry Leonidas’s elbows.

 Witnesses testified that Prentiss “had a quarrel or a difficulty with a young man by the name of Austin West in the Quincy Saloon on the same evening about a game of cards.” Prentiss, they said, struck the first blow, which “drew blood from the face of West.” The saloon’s owner separated the antagonists and ordered Prentiss to leave. He did. The two younger men followed him out. Ten minutes later, he was found unconscious in a sitting position at the steps of Janson’s Furniture store.

 The inquest jury continued the investigation at the courthouse on the east side of the square and decided that Austin West, one of the two men apprehended soon after the incident, had committed the crime. According to the Whig, West had a reputation for being “one of a band of rowdies who unfortunately harbor in our city and nightly congregate about the drinking establishments and make ‘night hideous’ with their drunken revels and debaucheries.”

 But the Whig found Henry Leonidas culpable, too, reckoning that the twin vices of gambling and intemperance were responsible for the altercation that claimed his life. Though a knowledgeable man and warm politician, the newspaper reported, Prentiss was inclined to be contentious “when under the influence of his besetting sin.”

 A jury convicted West of manslaughter, and Circuit Judge Willliam Minshall sentenced him to three years in prison. A large contingent of the Quincy community, including most of the city’s lawyers, eight jury members, and a good many residents, however, objected. Responding to their petition, Governor Arthur C. French in July 1851 pardoned West. Freed, he never returned to Quincy.

Sources:

“Atrocious Murder,” Quincy Whig, December 28, 1849, 3.

Binney, C.J.F. The History and Genealogy of the Prentice, or Prentiss Family, in New England, Etc. (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Sons, 1883), 297.

Collins, William H. and Cicero F. Perry. Past and Present of Adams County. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1905) 248, 322.

“Descendants of Valentine Prentice,” https://www.prenticenet.com/people/america/valentine/

Dewald Jr., Linus Joseph. “War of 1812 Soldiers: Prentice, Prentis, Prentiss.” https://prenticenet.com/pnet/news/?/news/99/war-of-1812_soldiers.htm

“From the Editor of the Alton Telegraph,” Quincy Herald, January 1, 1850, 3.

“Local Matters,” Quincy Whig, January 1, 1850, 3.

“Lyon 1631 Voyage,” https://familypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Lyon_1631_voyage#Research_Notes

“Murder in Quincy, Mo (sic),” The New Orleans Current,” January 17, 1850, 2.

Pope, Charles Henry. The Pioneers of Massachusetts. (Boston: Charles H. Pope, 1900), 372.

“Quincy,” Quincy Whig, June 18, 1842, 2.

Shaw, S.C. Sketches of Wood County; As Embraced in and Connected with Other Counties of West Virginia. (Parkersburg: George Elletson, Job Printer, 1878), 58.

Williams, Walter, ed. A History of Northwest Missouri. Volume 3. (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Co., 1915), 1308.

“West Pardoned,” Quincy Herald, July 21, 1851, 1.

Wilcox, David F. Quincy and Adams County History and Representative Men. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1919), 156.