E. Parmalee (Ezra Parmalee) Prentice

Born in 1863, Ezra Parmalee Prentice built an early career in law and was for many years a partner in the firm of Murray, Prentice, and Howland. Contemporary club records note that legal work was never his deepest interest; much more of his energy went into Mount Hope, his large farm near Williamstown, Massachusetts.

At Mount Hope, Prentice devoted himself to agriculture on an unusually serious scale. Accounts of the farm describe extensive work in breeding dairy cattle, and later scientific work there connected the estate with important experiments in animal breeding and herd improvement. His marriage to Alta Rockefeller in 1901 also placed him within one of America’s best-known families, though the surviving sources suggest his personal reputation rested as much on farming and stock breeding as on society connections.

Prentice also wrote books, including Hunger and History and the multi-volume Prentice Memoirs. He died in 1955, leaving behind the picture of a man whose life ranged well beyond the office—part country gentleman, part agricultural experimenter, and part family historian.