Partly-printed vellum DS as president, one page, 13.75 x 17.5, August 16, 1861. President Lincoln appoints Sartell Prentice as “First Lieutenant in the Twelfth Regiment of Infantry.” Signed at the conclusion by Abraham Lincoln and countersigned by Secretary of War Simon Cameron. The original blue seal remains affixed to the upper left. In very good condition, with overall soiling, complete silking to the reverse, and the handwritten portions of the document are very difficult to read; Lincoln's and Cameron's signatures are light, but entirely legible.
Sartell Prentice (1837-1905) was born in Albany, New York, a son of Ezra Prentice and Philena Cheney. The elder Prentice was successful in fur trading, shipping, banking, and railroads. The younger Sartell studied at Williams College in Massachusetts and the University of Gottingen in Germany. He entered Harvard Law School in 1860 but left at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
Prentice was commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the Twelfth Infantry of the U.S. Army by President Abraham Lincoln on May 14, 1861. Prentice was later promoted to Captain and Brevet Major and he was recognized for bravery in the bloody 1864 Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. He resigned from the military in 1865 due to ill health.
On May 29, 1862, Prentice married Mary Adeline Isham (1838-1913), a daughter of Pierrepont Isham and Samantha Swift. Isham was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont. The Prentice couple had five children, Ezra Parmalee, Pierrepont Isham, Sartell Jr., Richard Skinner, and Mary Isham.
After the war, Major Prentice settled in Chicago working with a relative in real estate with the firm Isham & Prentice and later with the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company. He also traveled to promote his health. Prentice was active in the veterans group Commandery of the State of Illinois Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States.
‘As a businessman his life in Chicago was successful and he possessed in his highest degree the respect and trust of those with whom he had dealings, while his long service with the Insurance Company attests its confidence in him and satisfaction with his services,’ a friend wrote. Major Prentice died in Nyack, NY, at the home of his son Rev. Dr. Sartell Prentice Jr., who pastored at the First Reformed Church. The elder Prentice had moved east a few years earlier due to poor health. He was buried in Dellwood Cemetery in Manchester, Vermont, his wife’s home state and his wife was buried there eight years later.
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