Jesse H. Prout Sr., 86; WWII Buffalo Soldier

By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005; Page B04

Jesse Hamilton Prout Sr., 86, a Clinton resident who served with the Buffalo Soldiers during World War II, died Dec. 8 of a heart attack at Southern Maryland Hospital in Clinton.

Born in Chesapeake Beach, the youngest and the last surviving of nine children, Mr. Prout was a man with stories to tell -- stories about his experiences as a latter-day Buffalo Soldier and about his fascinating family tree.

He enjoyed telling about how his great-grandmother, a Native American and member of the Blackfeet Nation, made her way on foot from a South Dakota reservation to Sunderland. According to family members, she walked, daughter in tow, because members of her tribe were being relocated out West. She slipped away from her family and headed east, eventually finding employment on the Maryland tobacco farm of a man named Prout.