Tag Archives: Major Pryor

John and David Pryor, Orphans of David Pryor – Another Look

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I’ve been going back and forth discussing Christopher, John and David Pryor with a couple of other Pryors. The chart in an older post (Connecting Major John Pryor of Richmond to More Pryors!) was gnawing at us. We decided to play with the the relationships to see if there is a way to make better sense out of these Pryors. Maybe it will feel less like a bowl of spaghetti?

We decided to move John Pryor of Richmond right up next to David Pryor of Buckingham County and Christopher Pryor of Gloucester — all brothers.

  • “Major” John married Anne Beverly Whiting. Christopher Pryor’s son was the administrator of Thomas Whiting’s estate, Anne’s father.
  • “Major” John housed the cousin of President Jefferson during a scandal. David’s daughter married Jefferson’s brother.

Now, you know what that would mean? John and David are the orphan sons of David Pryor who died in 1747 in Goochland County. Hmmm. That would certainly steer some Pryor research in another direction.

One of the naggy questions we mulled over was why in the senior David’s estate different guardians were bestowed on John and David: Samuel Taylor was John’s guardian and Abraham Childress was David’s grandfather and guardian. One of my Pryor cousins thinks it was to divide duties. I think it was because John and David had different mothers. David’s mother was obviously a Childress, but if we look at this John as his brother, then he may have dropped a clue while serving in the Revolutionary War — he wrote a letter indicating his mother was still alive:

October 10th, 1782, Richmond.
Capt. John Pryor to Col. Davies
Asking leave to visit his mother “in great distress with a probability of losing her husband, who is my Father in Law, by sickness, and wishes much to see me.
— Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, pub. 1883

There is also a Carrington connection that wends its way through these Pryors:

  • In May 1778 David Pryor was serving with Lt. Mayo Carrington (Mayo, son of George Carrington). see post
  • “Major” John Pryor of Richmond attended the marriage of Capt. Dandridge in 1782 with Col. Edward Carrington (Edward, son of George Carrington, brother of Mayo Carrington, and the foreman of the Aaron Burr jury). see post
  • “Major” John Pryor received land grant in 1785 in KY, near C. Carrington (Codrington, son of George Carrington) see post
  • 1747 George Carrington deeded land to John and David, their father had already paid him for the land. see post

You know I’ve got my pencil out and I’m working around the Pryor chart testing out new relationships. Autosomal testing, as annoyingly hard to decipher as it can be, showed a connection between testers in my line to the Childress family (see post).  As I said… Hmmm.

Category: Virginia Pryors | Tags: , , , , , ,

Pryors Who Were Revolutionary War Soldiers of Virginia

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Last week while looking at David Pryor and the Amherst Pryors it got me wondering about trying to figure out if we can come up with a list of the VA Pryors who served in the Revolutionary War. The most concise source is a 1912 book I found in Google Books.

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Category: Virginia Pryors | Tags: , , ,

Murder on the Racetrack – The Death of Beverly Pryor (1836)

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I tell you, I find more deaths of Pryors that take place around gambling and horse racing.  A warm day in the South, the passions of a horse race, probably some  high-stakes gambling, top it off with perhaps a bit of alcohol and what you’ve got is a recipe for disaster. And so goes the story of the death of Beverly Pryor in 1836.

A Mr. Beverly Pryor, a young man from the neighborhood of Huntsville, Alabama, suspecting there had been foul play in the race, attacked and knocked down one of the trainers. Mr. Eli Abbott, of this town, the Proprietor of the Race Course, remonstrated with him on such conduct, and told him that a race-ground was not a proper place for such disturbances. Upon this Pryor drew a pistol, pushed the muzzle into the face of Abbott, so violently as to take off the skin, telling him at the same time to draw and defend himself. Abbott declared that he had no pistol. Just at this time, a man by the name of McRhodes, Pryor’s friend, snapped a pistol at Abott, which momentarily drew off the attention of Pryor. Abbott taking advantage of the occasion, instantly drew a large knife, plunged it into the breast of Pryor, turned and severely wounded McRhodes, who made off, and Abbott followed him. Pryor, though mortally wounded, pursued Abbott some fifteen or twenty paces, snapped his pistol repeatedly at him, then fell and expired without a groan.

We saw young Pryor early in the day, riding about town, in all the flesh and pride of youth, and in a few brief hours, we saw him borue (sic) back a corpse, his father attending him, covered with the blood of his son, which he had got on his clothes in supporting him on the ground in his death struggle! What a spectacle! And what a sudden and awful transit from all the gayety and buoyancy of youth to the cold an unrelenting arms of death! The grieved and disconsolate father has had the corpse carried to Alabama, to be buried at his family residence….
— Miss. Free Press, re-published in the Adams Sentinel, Gettysburg, PA on 13 June 1836

These stories fascinate me. Which Pryor was involved? What was the story of their lives? How were they all involved in horse racing.  Oh, I would certainly like to know who Beverly Pryor was! Remember the Beverly’s were one of the wealthy tidewater families in VA. Major John Pryor (of Richmond) — his first wife was Anne Beverly Whiting. The Major was a horse breeder (ie. the horse Federalist).

When I searched for more information on Eli Abbott I found an article on a Sumner Co., TN site that reports he owned a horse named Zelina in 1833 with J. B. Jones, Johnson & Tayloe and Henry H. Tayloe of Alabama (see article). Isn’t it interesting that Major Pryor also had a horse/Tayloe connection? (read my post Captain Pryor in the Revolutionary War?)

I haven’t seen it yet, but there’s an obituary for Beverly Pryor in the Huntsville, Democrat published on 17 May 1836, which means that perhaps Pryor died a month or so before the article made it into the Gettysburg newspaper.

There’s only one Pryor family in the Huntsville, AL (Madison County) area in 1830. That’s Richard Pryor. If Richard is the  father of Beverly Pryor, Beverly may have been the only son in his household on the census, making the story more poignant.

And if Richard Pryor is related to Beverly Pryor, the is he the Richard Pryor who had a racetrack in  Nashville?

Category: About TN Lines, Alabama Pryors | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Major John Pryor of Richmond… And Gloucester

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OpponentsDirty, dirty, politics. If you think things are bad now, well, they were no better in the distant past. On August 27th, 1856 The Weekly Wisconsin published an article titled “The Slanders on Col. Fremont’s Mother.” Apparently this was published about the time that John C. Fremont was considering a run for the White House. His opponents were making accusations that he had been born out of wedlock.

Remember this article was written about 30 years after the death of Maj. John Pryor of Richmond… we’re now almost 200 years from his death.  Perhaps there is some accuracy in this being closer to the events. It states Fremont’s mother was from Gloucester, and Maj. Pryor, her first husband, was also from Gloucester.

I found that interesting because of the connection I’ve pondered between Major Pryor and Christopher Pryor of Gloucester.  It states that the Major was 62 years old when they married (in 1796), but I think they added about 20 years on to his age, perhaps to make him look bad and to make Fremont’s mother look less culpable for leaving the Major. The article states that a divorce was granted before Major Pryor and his wife remarried, yet there is a document that shows the divorce was rejected and no later order granting the divorce. The writer states Pryor remarried his “housekeeper”, when in fact he married the grand-daughter of a well-respected officer of the Revolutionary War who probably had ties to Pryor’s own family.

I suspect Major Pryor has been maligned in history as a slovenly, elderly husband to the young Anne Whiting (later Fremont).  But I’ll take the Gloucester County connection as an interesting lead!

Category: Virginia Pryors | Tags: ,

Captain Pryor, Lewis and Clark, and the Welsh Indians

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I need to change a guess I made in an earlier post [see Captain Pryor Among the Wabash Indians?] I still believe I was correct in the conclusion that Major Pryor of Richmond is the Major referred to in the document with Edward Carrington. However, I suspect that Captain Pryor is someone else.

I found a wonderful old diary entry for 14 Mar 1793. It’s the diary of Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale University, published in 1901 [see diary entry].  This is the kind of stuff I get really excited about because it captures a snippet of time and some intriguing pieces from history.

From his entry we can tell it had snowed the day before. A nifty day of the week calculator tells me that the 14th was a Thursday. So, around noon on a snowy day when lectures had been cancelled, Dr. Stiles received 8 Native American visitors who were from tribes along the Mississippi River— the distance between New Haven, CT and the Mississippi is not a day ride! The area west of the Mississippi was still Spanish territory (France gained the land in 1800). He took them on a tour of the college library and museum. They didn’t even speak English so there was an interpreter. What a unique visit. This visit sounds so diplomatic and civilized — a far cry from the feathers and war paint version of history.

The Native visitors were escorted to “Bo” (is that perhaps Boston?) by Captain Pryor. Any ideas of who this Captain Pryor might be?

It’s not Nathaniel Pryor. Nathaniel joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 10 years after the diary entry with the rank of sergeant, not a captain.

Could it be Nathaniel’s father? I don’t think so. In 1791 (2 years before the diary entry) Nathaniel was reported in a court document as a orphan of John Pryor, deceased.

Wouldn’t it make sense for Lewis and Clark to take a Pryor with them who knew what to expect? Could this Capt. Pryor be a relative of Nathaniel Pryor?

There is another Captain Pryor to consider. Joseph Pryor of Botetourt County, VA was known as Captain Pryor and commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Would he be too old to be riding off to the Mississippi River and up to Boston and back to Virginia in the 1790’s? Possibly not. He seemed to have the energy to move his family from VA to KY in about 1800. And of course it could be a northern Pryor from PA or CT.

One very quirky thing I need to point out and it makes me wonder what the conversation entailed on that day in 1793. Stiles wrote, and I’ll clean it up a bit into readable sentences:

These Indian(s) knew nothing of white or Welsh Indians west of the Mississippi (River). The interpreter, a German, told me he had traveled 1200 miles up the Missouri River to where the Spaniards have Gold mines, but never saw white Indians, and knew nothing and believed nothing of the Welsh Indians. I read (to)  them from Williams &co. They believed nothing of it.

If you’ve ever seen the TV show America Unearthed, there was a belief that the Welsh had arrived in America before Columbus. The episode I recall said that when President Jefferson sent off Lewis and Clark in 1803 he wanted to know if they found any evidence of the Welsh or what were known as “White Indians”.  Apparently Gen. George Rogers Clark (uncle of Clark of the Clark in  Lewis and Clark) claimed to have met White Indians in southern Illinois in the late 1770’s (see Footprints of the Welsh Indians)

Welsh Indians sound like one big ol’ tall tale to me, but it is kind of fun to see how this stuff gets all tangled together in history.

Category: In Context of History | Tags: , , ,
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