William Prows

William Cook Prows (or Prouse) (1827 - 1894), born June 11, 1827, in the upper part of the Kanawha Valley in then the Commonwealth of Virginia (now part of West Virginia), was reportedly the first man to wash gold on the Comstock Lode. ["Southern California Quarterly". Los Angeles County Pioneers of Southern California, Historical Society of Southern California, p. 297.] He made the discovery while returning from California with the Mormon Battalion in 1848. [Zanjani, Sally Springmeyer. "Devils Will Reign: How Nevada Began". University of Nevada Press, 2006, p. 175.] Prows joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1841 in Nauvoo, Illinois. He was a Mormon pioneer who signed up to be a part of the Mormon Battalion. Prows became an early Mormon leader and one of the founders of Fillmore, Utah. He was jailed for a time for practicing polygamy. In 1894, Prows decided to retrace the steps of the Mormon Battalion, became ill on the trek, and was taken to city-state|Colonia Juárez|Chihuahua, Mexico, where many Latter-day Saints lived to avoid prosecution for practicing polygamy. He died on May 3, 1894, in Colonia Juárez. William Cook Prows is descended from Captain Thomas Pickering, an early leader of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The other principal candidate for first discovery of the Comstock Lode is Abner Blackburn. [Bagley, Will, ed. "Frontiersman: Abner Blackburn's Narrative", ix, 133-36.]

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