In my last post I brought up David Pryor and his wife a Miss Cunningham. That relationship was news to me so I’m detouring to Buckingham County in this post.
I thought a letter to President Thomas Jefferson opened up a question in the family tree of the Buckingham County Pryors [see Thomas Jefferson Letter Leads to Questions in the Pryor Family Tree], but really there seems to be people missing from the Buckingham County Pryor tree.
Susannah Ballow Pryor (wife of David) died in Nashville in 1832. An obit from the National Banner and Nashville Daily Advertiser said she was 89 years old [see thenashvillecitycemetery.org (Wayback Machine link)]. That means she was born about 1743. But in that darned The Pryor Family article published in 1899 in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 7, the author states Susannah died in 1831 at age 94 (that’s a birth year of 1737). The wide-spread differences in her reported age could simply mean she was an old woman and no one knew exactly when she was born. If she was really 94 she would have been 52 when Nicholas B. Pryor, her youngest son, was born. It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem likely.
And it gets messier. The first child attributed to Susannah is Mitchie Pryor who married President Jefferson’s brother John Randolph Jefferson. Mitchie was born about 1759. I don’t know who calculated her year of birth because it would have made Mitchie 56 when her son John Randolph Jefferson was born in 1816 and about 60 when she gave birth to another son, James Monroe Johnson, born to her second marriage to Josiah Johnson. IF Susannah was Mitchie’s mother she was about 16 years at old at that time which really isn’t that unusual. However, all the other children attributed to David and Susannah were born at least 14 years after Mitchie… beginning with Langston Pryor in 1774. That’s a heck of a gap. I don’t feel everyone’s ages and dates of birth are sitting on solid ground. There were 8 known sons attributed to David and Susannah… possibly a 9th hinted at in the letter to Thomas Jefferson. Were there daughters who were born in the 14 years before Langston? Women seem to get lost to genealogy through marriages and name changes. Was Mitchie Pryor younger than the reported 1759 year of birth. I suspect so.
The questions keep coming after Nicholas moved his family to Nashville:
- Is Benjamin W. Pryor b. 1788 in VA and counted in Nashville in 1830 related?
- Who is Lain B. Pryor who witnessed the will of Alexander Donelson while Nicholas Pryor was appointed the executor of Donelson’s estate.
- Who is Charles B. Pryor buried in Nashville City Cemetery?
Do we have missing Pryors in this line? Looks like we might… An online post speaks of Elizabeth Pryor, wife of Charles Archer of Rockingham County, NC and Pittsylvania Co., VA was a daughter of David Pryor — but her mother was a Mary Cunningham. The marriage source is reported as History of St. Charles, Montgomery and Warren Counties, Missouri, reprinted 1969 by Paul V. Cochran, St. Louis, MO) pp. 1084-1085 — the biography of Judge Creed T. Archer states his mother was Elizabeth Pryor, a daughter of David Pryor of Buckingham County.
OK, I think I’m convinced that Elizabeth Pryor Archer is related to the Buckingham County Pryors. Alas, accepting Elizabeth Pryor Archer into the family tree opens up a ONLY MORE QUESTIONS!
Who is Mary Cunningham her mother? Squeezing in another wife for David Pryor doesn’t work well with Susannah’s age and the children’s ages.
Could there have been ANOTHER David Pryor in Buckingham County?
Cunningham is interesting because David’s brother, John Pryor, witnesses a deed for Murrell Cunningham in Campbell Co., VA in 1790. There’s a Revolutionary War pension application for Murrell that states he was born in Cumberland County, VA, served in the Revolution out of Buckingham County, and in 1800 moved to Sumner County, TN (same place that John Pryor’s suspected son moved to).
Elizabeth Pryor Archer was already a widow when she was counted as a head of household on the 1820 Census. The stunner is that she was recorded one line from Thomas Pryor on the Rockingham County, NC census. Yes, the same Thomas Pryor who looks to be a nephew of Major John Pryor of Richmond [see And There’s More on the Kin of Major John Pryor of Richmond]. Thomas was born in 1792 in NC, so I don’t believe he’s a son of David Pryor and Susannah Ballow (Susannah was over 50 and maybe nearing 60 in 1792). So we’re still missing the brother of Major Pryor.
Lots of questions and some nifty Jefferson connections — David’s daughter married Thomas Jefferson’s brother, David’s sons corresponded with the President, and Major John Pryor had the President’s “cousin” living in his Richmond, VA household [see post]. Thomas seems to carry on the Jefferson connection by naming his son “John Randolph”.
