Born and reared in Virginia, she moved north after the American Civil War with her husband and family to rebuild their life.

[5] On her father's side, Sara was a granddaughter of William Rice of "Greenwood", Charlotte County, Virginia, and his wife Mary Bacon Crenshaw.

[7] On November 8, 1848, Sara Agnes Rice married Roger Atkinson Pryor of a Virginia Tidewater family.

[8] When Roger joined the Confederate States Army as a commissioned officer, Pryor traveled with his company and worked as a nurse.

After Roger resigned his commission to join Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry, Pryor returned to Petersburg to keep their family together.

[13] In her memoir, Pryor noted that following the 1889 United States Centennial celebration in New York, interest greatly increased in historical items, buildings, and collections.

Among her fundraising activities, Pryor wrote that she "managed a great ball at the White Sulphur Springs to help build a monument over Mary Washington's grave.

[16] She joined other Southern women at the time who began to publish work reflecting their own experiences and "contributed to the public discourse about the war.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) encouraged southern women to write about their experiences and publish their work, which enlarged their cultural power.

[16] In her Reminiscences of Peace and War (1904), Pryor wrote about antebellum society, but she also defended the Confederacy, as did fellow writers Virginia Clay-Clopton and Louise Wigfall Wright.

[16] Like her husband in his speeches[18] Pryor argued the war had nothing to do with slavery, suggesting that the average Confederate combatant fought to resist an invasion by the North.

Perhaps because of her status in New York, she had continued success in getting her books published at a time when Southern women writers had difficulty achieving this.

After her death, Sara Agnes Rice Pryor was buried at Princeton Cemetery, near her sons Theodorick and William.