Shortly after their return to Meade County around 1835, Robert and Elizabeth sold 40 acres of the Northwest quarter of the Northeast quarter of Section 2 to Washington Chandley on 10 April 1838. Robert’s deserting all this real estate in Perry County between the mid-1830s and the early 1850s so soon after acquiring it supports a theory that these 15-plus years were a period of prudently lying low.
In 1850, Robert and most of the family were in Meade County; Jonathan and William were resident in Union Township. On 5 October 1854, Jonathan purchased 120 acres from the heirs of Lewis Galey. This tract lay a mile due east of Mt. Pleasant (and a mile southeast of Penitentiary Rocks), described as the West half of the Southwest quarter of Section 35, T4S, R1W, and the Northwest quarter of the Northwest quarter of Section 2, T5S, R1W. On the same date he purchased 1-1/2 acres near the Ohio River just upstream from Robert’s third purchase; the location is marked by stones.
Two years later, on 28 April 1856, Jonathan Prather purchased another 80 acres from William Elder located a mile and a half northeast of Derby, 4 miles south of his original purchase. It is described as the West half of the Northwest quarter of Section 27, T5S, R1W.
On 26 March 1857, Pleasant Prather purchased 158 acres from Jane Dearmit, which lay in Leopold Township 2-1/2 miles due west of Mt. Pleasant. It is located as the East half of the Southwest and the West half of the Southeast quarters of Section 31, T4S, R1W.
According to one local tradition, Robert Prather’s house was placed on a hill overlooking the river. A more likely tradition suitable for large-scale horse stealing locates the Prather house around a quarter-mile from the river in a more secluded site. Today a large pile of stones is said to mark the location. The house is reputed to have been of the southern style with a separate summer kitchen joined with a roofed breezeway. Prather’s Spring still flows a few hundred feet farther from the river.
If Robert Prather had been involved in transacting in horses near Rome in the early 1830s, he learned of the hazard attendant upon stealing the neighbor’s horses. The modus operandi of the 1850s reduced this hazard by dealing with horses stolen in neighboring counties and sole in locales several states distant from Perry County. This system enabled him to avoid direct confrontation with Perry County law for around a half-dozen years before 1858.
By the 1850s, Robert Prather was severely afflicted with rheumatism so as to be confined to chair and bed. He would sit in the breezeway while the stolen horses were led past him for his appraisal. Payment in gold for the price he set was to be obtained by his sons at the distant sales. These gold receipts were said to have been buried somewhere near the Prather homestead. They have been the object of many excavations in the years after 1860.
According to 1858-1859 indictments in Perry and Crawford Counties, just 7 of Prather’s sons participated in the business, at least in Indiana: Jonathan, William, Rensalear, Thomas, Jackson, Pleasant and Richard. Only Reuben was omitted from these proceedings; in 1860 he was head of a household in Meade County, Kentucky. An oral tradition related in the 1960s said that the Prathers worked “with some Bramlet boys in Breckinridge County, Kentucky” who escaped to Illinois. These would have been grandsons of James Bramlet, a Revolutionary War veteran. Reuben Prather might have been the family agent in dealing with them.