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He bought the journals off Smith and spent the next six years translating them. When he finished the translation in 1984, he rounded it out with an introduction and genealogical research, and published seventy-five copies of the work. Jones, who has also written the memoir “Bearwallow; A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland,” purchased a copy of “The Enciphered Diaries of William Thomas Prestwood” by Nathanial C. Browder for $79.99 on Amazon. Even without the sexual conquests, the idea of unearthing journals of a great-great-great-great-grandfather sounds fascinating, and for a writer, it is a jackpot of material. The notes about his intimacies with women are recorded in plain language about what he did and to whom. The women are usually referred to by first name or with initials. And these details are only one piece of Prestwood’s daily concerns. The man’s sexy business was the hook, but only one part of his life. He was a teacher, a surveyor and a member of the militia. He had a complicated relationship with his father. But, as Jones soon found, when put into context, the journals depict something deeper and more troubling. For many, South Carolina was not a pleasant place to live in the early 1800s — and few today are keen on discovering a family history of slave ownership. But this is exactly what Jones found in his ancestor’s diaries. The journals are so sparely written that the horrors of life during that time lurk largely in what’s not expressly said. One of Prestwood’s most frequent sexual partners was the enslaved woman his parents gave him as a gift when he turned 18, for example. And there’s no way to tell who most of the other women were or much of what Prestwood was thinking about many events of his life. The space between these questions and what exists on the pages of the journals are ripe for exploration. Jones handles the complexities of this endeavor with tentative curiosity and full honesty, and he makes attempts to fill in the gaps with additional historic and genealogical research.
