Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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terian pastor, eminent for piety, eloquence, and usefulness. His mother was Lucy Eppes Atkinson, a name borne by many men and women distinguished in church, law, literature, and education. Through his grandmother Pryor, who was Ann Bland, he traces back lineally, collaterally, or connectively, to all the Lllands and Randolphs who figured so actively in the Colonial and early State history of Yirginia and of the Cnited Statesg to Thomas Jefferson, to Chief justice Marshall, and to many others whom an admiring people have declared on Fame's eternall bead-roll worthie to be fyledf' There were: The original Theodorick Bland, of XYestover, who came to Yirginia as early as 1650: the brothers Theodorick and Richard Bland of Revolu- tionary fameq Peyton Randolph, president of the hrst Colonial Congress: Edmund J. Randolph, first Attorney-General of the United States: later, john Randolph of Roanoke, the incomparable. All of these, who lived at the time, were active Revolutionists during that struggle, and after it most of them were ardent State's Rights interpreters of the Constitution as opposed to the Federalists. This pedi- gree in blood and politics, registered on the pages of American history, foretold very plainly where the younger shoot, Roger Pryor, would stand amid the agita- tions of his day. lllr. Jefferson said of Richard Bland, his lineal ancestor, that he was the ablest man south of James River, and his learning and historical writings gained for him even in England the name of Virginia Antiquaryf' General Pryor has been known to say that the Pryors got their brains from the Blandsg his father used to say that he thought they had some brains before the Blands came in. Srrhirra. He was born for dI.Sfl.lIC'fI'0l1 in service. His talents, energy, and capacity for work fitted him for it: the varied and momentous movements of his day have given him opportunities for it. XVithout detracting from the past, it may be said that his life has sustained and added to the reputation of his ancestry. Follow that life. His mother died when he was still an infant, less than two years old. After his father's entry into the ministry and second marriage, he settled in Notto- way County, Virginia. as pastor of the Presbyterian Church. Much of the son's earlier years was spent in the father's home here, the Old Place, and his earlier education was received in the old-held schools of the county and at the Classical Academy of Ephraim Dodd Saunders, in Petersburg. In 1843 he entered Hampden-Sidney College and graduated with distinction in ,45, being valedictorian of his class, the pride of the Union Society, in whose hall his portrait now hangs, and noted for love of general reading. II

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as if they could still hear the sheriff calling him into court for a case or to the court-house steps for a speech, the rostrum of the hustings of the common people then. As a judge he belongs to New York. His Alma Mater points with pride to this older child and her younger sons look up to him with admiration. His many moods and phases, his versatile talents, rapid action, and impetuous temperament make him in much an unknowable man. lint: Iivrannalitg. He was born I0 d1'sf1'11cl1'm1 in his personality by nature. No one, who hears him or sees him once, ever forgets him. He is a man of Ere that never abates: of Ere in a figure, ever in motion, of restless, rapid gait 1 in the pose of a head crowned with long, tossing, glistening, raven hair: in the flash of the steel-gray eyes: in the expression of a mobile, classic face, of high forehead, indicative nose, prominent cheeks, clean of beard and moustacheg in the lines of a strong, large, and strangely nervous mouth and chin from which, when stirred deeply, torrents of eloquence issue so rapidly as to defy stenographic report: in a voice that vibrates often like a trumpet blown by tiowing thought or the escape of compressed pas- siong and his figure is commanding, full six feet high, slim and elastic in middle life, always erect as a shaft: a rejected Irish applicant before his court spoke of him as that confounded Injun of a Pryor. Of fire in a sparkling mind of quick decision. ever in action with vigorous thought and positive convictions: of fire in tiaming passions of ardent patriotism, of strong devotion to the people and scenes of his boyhood, of love of literature from his childhood, of love of politics, of love of law. Of tire too in ambition, but the best of this fire is in a determined purpose to be the thorough master of that which is undertaken, a trait of character which he did not prove, even to those closest to him, till he was well advanced into the second part of his double life, but which he early expressed, when a boy of twelve, saying to a kinswoman Cas kinswomen were counted in Virginiaj I I am going to make my mark at whatever I do: if it is blacksmithing, I will be a good blacksmith. YVith his fire, there is gentleness: gentleness to children, consideration of the lowly, tenderness with suffering, deference for age. Anrwtrg. He was born of d1'sf1'11cz'1'011 by ancestry, as each of his names indicates: Roger Atkinson Pryor. His birth was in Dinwiddie County, Yirginia, July 19th, I828. His father, Theodorick Pryor, was a lawyer then. but afterwards became a Presby- IO

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In the autumn of 1845, he went to the University of Virginia and combined with other courses the study of law under Professor John B. Minor. He married there Miss Sara A. Rice, a brilliant and beautiful woman, November 8th, 1848, when himself just twenty years of age. A rash act for a young man without an inheritance? lint Pryor will be rash. It was election day, a coincidence that takes the color of an omen in the light of after years. Their Golden XVedding is now nearly tive years past, and she has been a helpmeet for him, through struggles and triumphs, and can be called the weaker vessel only frm furnza. The felicity of his married life is rellected in a court utterance when this event was approaching: My observation is, that disagreements are most frequent at first in married life: with time the yoke wears easier, and the true honeymoon is from the twenty-fifth to the fiftieth year. After offering for the practise of law for a short time at Charlottesville, his predilection for politics and equipment in miscellaneous reading led him to turn to editorial work, and he founded the Sdllffljlldt' Dvllzocrat, Petersburg, Virginia, in 1850. He was in XVashington City in 1851-5.2, with John NV. Forney on the XVash- ington C7lII'UII, the administration organ of the Democratic party at the time, but returned to Virginia in 1855, and was associated for several years with the Ritchies on the Richmond E11q111'rcr. His journalistic career, begun at twenty-two, was phenomenal, and he became eminent, when almost a boy, as an editor upon these papers, which were leaders in forming the policies of the Democratic party during that most stirring decade of United States political history. An editorial in the Washington Union, on the Crimean XVar then in progress, favorable to Russia, won him distinction abroad. It received attention in England, and was copied and translated into European papers of several languages. His editorials in T110 Ellf11llil't'I' during the Virginia campaign of 1855 against the Know-Nothing party furnished the campaign thunder of the canvassers of the State. They were the argument and text of the Democratic party. He also him- self appeared frequently on the stump. VVhen Governor W'ise was elected as the result and the Know-Nothing party, which had had a great run, was broken, Governor VVise wrote him that he owed him more than any man in Virginia, and the Democracy of the State presented him with a silver service as a public testi- monial of appreciation of his services. His work on the XVashington Union, especially the editorial on the Crimean XfVar, led to his appointment by President Pierce, as special commissioner to Greece, in 1884, to adjust a controversy relating to the status of missionaries and American citizens residing in that country: which mission he executed with diplomatic credit, recognized at home and abroad. I2