Elizabeth Brown Pryor
Elizabeth Brown Pryor (* as Elizabeth Brown, March 15, 1951 in Gary, Indiana ; † April 13, 2015 in Richmond, Virginia ) was an American diplomat and historian.
Elizabeth Brown's father worked as a manager at the telephone company ATT and the family moved frequently for work. Most recently she went to high school in Summit (New Jersey) and then studied at Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in 1973. She then worked as a ranger (with a first job at the Washington Monument ) and historian for the National Park Service , continued but also continued her studies, with a second bachelor's degree in history from the University of London and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1983 she worked for the Foreign Ministry as a career diplomat. She was one of the first US diplomats in Sarajevo after the civil war in the 1990s, was involved in disarmament negotiations and was spokeswoman for the US mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels (speaking English, German, French and Spanish). She was the author of the State Department's official statement (Pryor Paper), which led to the US re- joining UNESCO in 2003 after twenty years of absence . From 2002 to 2005 she was Foreign Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for members of Congress.
Her biography of Robert Edward Lee was based on the first evaluation of newly emerged family documents, which Lee`s daughter Mary Custis Lee deposited in a bank (Burke & Herbert) in Alexandria (Virginia) in 1917 and only became accessible in 2002. She also goes into detail about Lee's role in slavery and how he treated his own slaves. Her biography also shed new light on the difficult, vulnerable, and complex character of Lee who was revealed in his letters. Among other things, the documents showed that shortly before his death, he deeply regretted having ever embarked on a military career. The biography received the Lincoln Prize in 2008 , the Jefferson Davis Award in 2007, the Richard B. Harwell Book Award in 2008 and the Richard S. Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography in 2007. In 1987, while she was a diplomat in South Africa, she wrote a biography of Clara Barton , founder of the American Red Cross during the Civil War, and most recently of Abraham Lincoln .
She died in a car accident in Richmond caused by a mentally disturbed driver who rammed her car from behind at high speed.
She was married to Anthony Pryor until the divorce and then to Frank Parker, from whom she was also divorced.
Fonts
- Clara Barton, Professional Angel, University of Pennsylvania Press 1987, 1989
- Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, Penguin Books 2008, ISBN 978-0143113904
- Six Encounters with Lincoln: A President Confronts Democracy and Its Demons, Viking 2017
Web links
- Matt Schudel, Elizabeth Brown Pryor, biographer of Robert E. Lee and Clara Barton, dies, Washington Post , April 18, 2015
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pryor, Elizabeth Brown |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American diplomat and historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 15, 1951 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gary (Indiana) |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 13, 2015 |
| Place of death | Richmond, Virginia |