Historic Williamsburg

39. Prentis House

Williamsburg, VA

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John Brooke was the original owner of the lot at the corner of Botetourt and Duke of Gloucester Streets where the reconstructed Prentis House now stands. He purchased the property around 1712 under an agreement that he would construct a house on the site within 24 months. In 1714 he applied for a license to operate a tavern out of his home. He sold his son in law William Prentis a small house on the property in 1724, but researchers do not know if this house was an early part of the main house or a different structure somewhere on the lot. Brooke died in 1729 and left the entire estate to Prentis, for whom the existing building is named. The house remained in the family until John, William Prentis's oldest son, died in 1775. Robert Anderson, a wealthy landowner and landlord, was the last owner of the home. Tax records in 1842 show that two of Anderson's Williamsburg buildings were destroyed by fire. The Prentis House may have been one of those buildings, since John Charles writes in his "Recollections of Williamsburg" that the original single story home burned down before the Civil War. The Prentis House site underwent excavations in 1935. Reconstruction of the eighteenth-century structure began in May of 1938 and ended in November 1939.