Jacob W. Prout

Jacob W. Prout (1804–1849) was a Liberian politician and physician. He served as the secretary of the 1847 constitutional convention.

Biography Prout was born free in 1804 in Baltimore, Maryland. He immigrated to the Commonwealth of Liberia in 1826. In the colonial Liberian government, Prout had been employed as a register of wills. In 1832, Prout returned to Baltimore with favorable accounts of Liberia. Prout served as a physician for the American Colonization Society until 1840, when Governor Thomas Buchanan abolished Prout's post to cut the colony's costs. Most of the papers relating to the convention have been lost, though a surviving account of the convention from Dr. James W. Lugenbeel, the American Colonization Society's white resident physician, criticized Prout's secretarial abilities, though it is unclear if Lugenbeel's negative portrayal of Prout's abilities are accurate.

In 1847, Prout was elected as a member to the Senate of Liberia. In 1849, Prout died by drowning in Monrovia.