The Pryor family’s journey to America begins in Ireland, where James Daniel Pryor was born on 16 March 1830, the son of John Pryor and Anne Kiernan. The Pryor surname itself speaks to the family’s roots, an anglicized form of an occupational title historically associated with monastic or clerical roles in Irish life, carried by families who had inhabited the island for generations before the catastrophes of the nineteenth century reshaped its population. Like hundreds of thousands of their countrymen, the Pryor’s were swept into the great wave of Irish emigration that followed in the wake of the Great Famine and the land displacement that accompanied it.
You can view the Pryor Family Tree Here: Pryors
On 19 December 1853, James Daniel and his wife Margaret Robinson, born in Ireland in 1833, stepped off the ship James Fitz in New York Harbor, beginning a new chapter in a new world. They made their way to Oneida County in upstate New York, settling near Kirkland Iron Works in the Clinton area, where James established himself as a farmer and found his footing in the tight-knit Irish Catholic community anchored by Saint Mary’s Church in Clinton. He had already married Margaret on 8 January 1853 at that same church before they sailed, a detail that speaks to the couple’s deep faith and their determination to begin American life with their bond formally blessed. James Daniel Pryor lived to the remarkable age of 91, dying on 16 October 1921 at the family home in Lairdsville, Oneida County, and was buried three days later in Section 2, Lot 19 of St. Mary’s Cemetery in Clinton. His obituary in the Clinton Courier remembered him as “one of the pioneer residents and one who enjoyed the esteem and respect of all who knew him.”
The second generation of the American Pryor line took deep root in the same Oneida County soil their parents had chosen. James Daniel and Margaret raised a large family, and among their children was Daniel Henry Pryor, born 20 April 1872 in Westmoreland, Oneida County, a son of the immigrant household who came of age as the family transitioned from newcomers to established members of the Clinton community. Daniel Henry lived his entire life in the Kirkland and Clinton area, dying 15 September 1953 at Kirkland Iron Works at age 81. His sister Margaret E. Pryor, born 4 November 1863 in Westmoreland, outlived them all — she died 13 March 1958 at the Summit Nursing Home in Utica at the extraordinary age of 94, a living thread stretching nearly back to the family’s first years on American soil. Another sibling, Mary Elizabeth Pryor, known as Minnie, was born 13 October 1877 in Clinton and died 27 December 1950; it is through her daughter Margaret Caraher O’Connell and granddaughter Evelyn Kapeller that many of the family photographs preserved in this archive were identified and donated, a reminder that women were often the quiet keepers of family memory even when the documentary record centered on the men.
From Daniel Henry Pryor descended James Houston Pryor, born 5 April 1907 in Clinton, Oneida County, a man whose life would connect the world of Irish immigrant farmers to the mid-twentieth century America his children would inhabit. He married Lorretta Mary Welch, also born 19 January 1907 in Clinton, on 28 October 1936, with Joan McCabe and Howard Clute as witnesses. The Welch family was itself woven into the same Clinton parish community, and the marriage represented the kind of close-knit Catholic Irish American world that had sustained these families across generations. Lorretta died on 3 April 1964 at St. Luke’s Hospital in Utica at age 57, far too young, leaving James Houston to live on until 28 January 1995, when he died at his home on Floyd Avenue in Rome, New York, at age 87. Among their children were Anne Marie Pryor and her brother Joseph Daniel Pryor, whose tireless dedication to gathering, verifying, and sharing Pryor family records would prove essential to everything the imhoff.us archive contains about this line.
Joseph Daniel Pryor is acknowledged on imhoff.us as one of the foundational contributors to the Pryor genealogical record. His personal knowledge of family stories, his access to photographs and documents passed down through the generations, and his willingness to share that knowledge with the broader family effort made him indispensable to the depth and accuracy of the archive. It is largely through Joseph’s contributions, census records, obituaries, photographs, family recollections, that the Pryor line is as richly documented as it is today. His sister Anne Marie Pryor, born 10 March 1938 in Utica and christened on 27 March 1938 at Saint Mary’s Church Clinton with Clarence Brady and Agnes Welch as godparents, embodied the intelligence and determination of her generation. She graduated from Clinton High School in 1956 and went on to earn her Registered Nurse degree through the three-year program at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Utica in 1959, a professional achievement of real significance for a woman of her era. On 28 November 1959 she married Richard Joseph Imhoff at Saint Mary’s Church Clinton, the same church that had witnessed every important milestone of the Pryor family’s American life for over a century. Anne Marie died on 14 September 2002 in Verona, Oneida County, at age 64, and was buried on 17 September 2002 in St. Mary’s Cemetery Clinton, returning, in the end, to the same ground where James Daniel and Margaret Robinson Pryor had been laid to rest generations before.
The Pryor story, from the ship James Fitz docking in New York Harbor in December 1853 to Anne Marie’s burial in the Clinton churchyard in 2002, is a story of faith, community, and perseverance across one hundred and fifty years of American life. Today that story is carried forward by Dan Imhoff, son of Anne Marie, who maintains the imhoff.us archive as a permanent record of both his mother’s Irish heritage and his father’s German roots. The research gathered by Joseph Daniel Pryor and preserved in this database ensures that the names, dates, and lives of the Pryor family, from James Daniel stepping off the boat in 1853 to the generations that followed, will not be lost to the passage of time.
This article was compiled from records in the imhoff.us genealogical database. If you have additional documentation, photographs, or research related to the Pryor or connected surnames, contributions are welcomed through the Contact page.