Sara A. Pryor

Sara Agnes (Rice) Pryor (1830-1912) was an American writer from Virginia who began publishing when she was over 70 years old. She wrote and published two memoirs of her Civil War years, two histories, and a novel between 1903 and 1911. In 1848 she married Roger Atkinson Pryor (1828-1919), a lawyer and journalist who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia before the Civil War and became a Confederate General during the war. She moved to Brooklyn with the family in 1868, three years after her husband had moved to New York City and started a legal practice. He became a judge and was a Justice of the New York Supreme Court from 1894 to 1899. Sara was involved in civic and heritage organizations, helping to found several of them including the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her writings emphasized that the Civil War was not about slavery but that the Confederate soldiers were fighting off the invasion from the North.