The American Dreams of John B. Prentis, Slave Trader

Two. Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship Be merry Peter, and feare not thy Master, Fight for the credit of the Prentices. —Shakespeare, Henry VI “Dear Brother, I embrace this opportunity of writing these few lines to you to let you know that I arrived at Norfolk safe” (May 1805, wpfp). So opens John B. Prentis’s voluminous correspondence to his family. In May 1805, at the age of seventeen, he set off to study architecture as an indentured apprentice in Philadelphia, stopping in Norfolk to catch a boat that would sail up the Atlantic Coast to the Delaware Bay and into the city of Philadelphia. John’s prose was saturated with the values of his upbringing: effusive sentiment, eagerness to please, and a strong sense of duty to family, God, and country. John quickly discovered that compared to Williamsburg, Philadelphia was a bustling metropolis. He loved to stroll in the evenings or on Sunday afternoons along narrow streets and broad avenues, alone or with mates, imbibing the sights, sounds, and smells of the city’s pubs, cafés, waterways , bridges, mansions, parks, gardens, and orchards. He was smitten by the smart clothes of the well-to-do. He lived and worked with a successful Quaker architect, Charles E. Smith, whose house and business were located two hundred yards from the corner of Sixth Street and Vine. With the Pennsylvania Legislature directing considerable state revenues to public works projects such as canals, turnpikes, and bridges, architectural companies were thriving. Charles Smith and his adult son, John, used many teenaged boys as apprentices. The boys learned how to design and build, beginning with small projects such as windows, sashes, shutters , and roofs and moving on to sheds, houses, churches, bridges, and large commercial and civic buildings. Their milieu fostered pride in their work. Partly as a result of the ideology of work promoted by Benjamin CHAPTER 2 The first extant letter written by John B. Prentis to his brother, Joseph Prentis Jr., 1805. Papers of the Webb-Prentis Families, 1735–1942 (accession #4136). Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. apprenticeship 51 Franklin, many Americans had grown to respect and even admire manual labor and commercial sagacity. John Prentis expressed youthful pride and ambition in a letter asking his father to look after his tools back in Williamsburg. On his return home, he asserted proudly, he would use them “to make a handsome liveing with my labour and industry” (August 24, 1805, wpfp). While Joseph Prentis Sr. imagined a good society as one in which genteel intellectuals led their inferiors—manual laborers—toward virtue, his younger son viewed hard work and productivity as the signs of virtue and merit. He embraced the image of tradesman in training. He missed his old dog, Fidel, entrusted to his sisters’ care, and his horse, entrusted to the care of a slave, Charles, but Prentis was pleased with his situation in Philadelphia —his “snug little room” with a small desk for his papers, letters, and books. He adorned his walls with a looking glass, his father’s portrait, and likenesses of other relatives and friends. His early letters emphasized his gratitude that his father had given him permission to pursue his chosen line of work. Although Judge Prentis had hoped that his son would pursue a more cerebral profession, he eventually had used his social connections to secure John a spot as an architectural apprentice. John understood how highly his family valued liberal education, but his tastes ran toward hands-on work. “Give my love to sisters Elizabeth and Mary Anne,” he wrote, continuing with a characteristic combination of self-laceration and self-assertion. “Tell Mary that she must be attentive to her learning not to be as careless about it as I was. Though I now plainly see the effects of not being attentive and paying that attention that I ought to have done when I had it in my power. . . . [A]ll my time and attention is taken up in learning the true art and mystery of the Carpenters trade for I never feel as contented as when I have a tool in my hand or studying the draft book which shews me how work ought to be done” (December 6, 1806, wpfp). He excused the infrequency of his letters with the explanation that his long work hours left him little time to read and write. Apprentices typically worked six days a week from dawn to...