[2] Born in Brunswick County, Virginia to Philip Pryor and Susan C. Wilkes,[3] his Pryor lineage is traceable through a line of affluent colonial Virginians.

Samuel Pryor would have been in his early teens at the time of his father's death.

Pryor was in the first graduating class of cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in 1839-1840.

During the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate States Army.

[2] Samuel B. Pryor lived a life of public service.