Virginia "Jenny" Prentiss (1832-1922): Beloved Nanny of Author Jack London

Jenny Prentiss (center)

Born around 1832 in slavery on a plantation in Tennessee, Virginia Prentiss—often called “Jennie” or “Jenny”—was separated from her parents in a sale; their names and ultimate fates remain unknown. She was purchased by a plantation owner named John Parker near Nashville and assigned as servant and companion to his youngest daughter. As she grew older, she learned to read and write alongside Parker’s daughter and acquired domestic skills that would shape her later life.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Parker plantation was destroyed. Prentiss and Mrs. Parker fled to St. Louis. Eventually she returned to Tennessee, and later married a man named Alonzo Prentiss. By the mid-1870s, the couple had migrated to San Francisco; Alonzo worked as a carpenter, and they had two children.

In early 1876, after a difficult birth and a stillborn baby of her own, Jenny was asked to serve as wet-nurse and nanny to a baby named John — later known as Jack London. What was to have been a short-term arrangement evolved into something much more profound. Jack spent large parts of his infancy and childhood living with the Prentiss family. It was Jenny who first called him “Jack,” because the baby leaped on her like a “jumping-jack.”

As the London family struggled financially, Jenny provided stability and love. She lent the 15-year-old Jack $300 so he could buy his first boat — a felucca named Razzle Dazzle — which he used to work as an oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay. She also encouraged his early writing — urging him to enter contests and persist even amid hardship.

Throughout his life, Jack London regarded Jenny Prentiss as the primary source of love and affection in his childhood.  His daughter recalled that “the only love and affection he knew as a child came from Aunt Jennie.” 

Book on Jack London and Racial Views

Yet their relationship was complicated. London often referred to her as “Mammy Jenny” — a deeply stereotyped appellation tied to racist tropes — even though Jenny repeatedly asked him not to use it. In doing so, he reflected the conflicted racial attitudes of his era: though he loved Jenny, and she profoundly shaped him, he did not fully transcend the prejudices embedded in his society. Scholars suggest that despite Jenny’s rejection of white supremacy — believing Black people to be “more Christian,” and rejecting notions of white superiority — London nonetheless retained some of the era’s racial blindspots.

As London's fame grew, his bond with Jenny remained. After she was widowed and left with limited means, he ensured she was cared for: in 1906 he purchased a home for her in Oakland. Jenny even helped care for his own daughters.

Despite dementia in her later years, Jenny’s final years were provisioned through London’s will: he guaranteed her a pension and paid for her funeral. She died on November 27, 1922, at a psychiatric hospital in Napa at about ninety-one years old, and was buried in an unmarked grave at Mountain View Cemetery. [There have been several efforts to mark her grave, but none have yet come to fruition.]

1915 meeting of California State Federation of Colored Women

In life, she served as a nanny, nurse, midwife, and community volunteer — and became a respected figure in Oakland’s African-American community, including as a leader of the Federated Negro Woman's Club.

When Jenny Prentiss died, she left behind a legacy interwoven with that of Jack London — and a life story far richer, tragic, and dignified than the “Mammy” caricatures that later portrayals often reduced her to.