Entry 3 Form the Bible of John Polk Pryor
Family Memoranda, Script 1867, continued…
It follows from the facts stated in the first part of the foregoing paragraph, that, beyond my immediate family, I have no near relatives of my own name. My half-brother, Sam, and my children, are the only Pryors (living in 1867) whose “kinship” I can trace. Roger Pryor of Virginia sojourning in New York (1867), sent me word once by my old partner, Dr. Georgelya) that he and I were certainly kin, for that his father, The Pryor (a Presbyterian clergyman) possessed a “Family Tree” upon the branches of which he had found the names of my father and myself.
Uncle Peter Pryor died in my native Lauderdale Co., Alabama, near Florence. He was a gay, extravagant, fast living, impulsive young man, very fond of pleasure — in all which respects he was the very reverse of his only brother, my father, who was gentle, grave, prudent, and of a religious turn from his earliest youth. And yet these two brothers loved each other with a more than brotherly affection, the younger being generally taken for the elder, and indeed, watching over his welfare with the interest and affection, joined to the prudence and fondness of a father. A year or two after Uncle Peter’s death, my aunt (his then still young and beautiful widow) married Col. Wm W. Crawford, (a nephew of Gen. Andrew Jackson) by whom she had some 9 or 10 children. Col. C. becoming dissipated, the family reduced to comparative poverty, and was only rescued from absolute want by the friendly intervention of my father and cousin G. W. Perkins. Indeed, my father did more for his poor kinfolk, generally, than any man of moderate fortune I ever knew. For example, he mainly supported for twenty years his half-brother, Alfred Stone, with his large family, his foster-brother William Stone with his large family, his brother-in-law and half sister Walter and Agnes Jenkins with their 8 or 9 children — educating several of the latter; — besides contributing largely to the support of his half-brother Nicholas P. Stone after the latter lost his property and many others whose names escaped me. Economical and self-denying to a degree seldom surpassed, he was nevertheless always liberal and bountiful to the loved ones at home, and to every unfortunate neighbor; indeed, he came as near living up to the “two great commandments” on which “bring all the — and the prophets,” as perhaps any Christian in this country ever did. Assuredly, if ever man did, he loved God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself. A devoted communicant of the Presbyterian Church for 25 or 30 years, he assuredly contributed largely of his means to church purposes, and to every educational or charitable object that —— his assistance. Born in 1796 in Pittsylvania Co., VA: reared in Williamson County, Tenn; married in Maury County, where we resided a few years; thence recurring to Lauderdale County, Ala., where he remained about four years; thence to Hardeman County in Tennessee where he sojourned seventeen years (til 1842) and thence to Marshall County, Miss. 18 miles S. W. of Holly Springs, where he resided to the day of his death in 1852; — in all these places, after he attained to man’s estate, he left behind him a reputation as a perfectly good and true man, of which his children may be justly proud, and by which one of them, I am sure, has been a thousand times and in a thousand ways incalculably benefited. He was, beyond questions, “A righteous man.” I never met one of his contemporaries, who had known him well, who was not ever enthusiastic in praise of his integrity, his piety, his benevolence, and the rare gentleness and goodness of his character generally; some of the sweetest enjoyment of my life has occurred from listening to these eulogies of my father by his old friends. A warmer heart than his, I think, never beat in a human bosom, and it seemed that he loved his children with a love passing that of women. And the great regret of my life since his death has been, that, although, I did indeed love him deeply and truly, yet I fear I did not show him my heart as much or as often as I ought while living
[signed]
J. P. P.
TN Pryor Notes:
Green and Peter Pryor are on the 1820 Census in Maury Co., TN
https://tennesseepryors.com/pryor-website/tn-records/tennessee-counties-m/#Maury
Green Pryor was in Marshall County, MS for the 1850 Census. Also in the same county were his step-sister Angnes Stone Jenkins, son James Polk Pryor, his daughter Martha Elizabeth Pryor Alexander.
https://tennesseepryors.com/pryor-website/state-records/mississippi/#Marshall
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