John Benjamin Pryor
John Benjamin Pryor (1812 – December 26, 1890), was a noted Thoroughbred racehorse trainer. He was the trainer of Lexington, a top racehorse of the 1850s and whose excellence in competition and as a sire stud continued well into the 20th century earning the horse induction into the United States' National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1955.
Born in 1812 in Virginia to parents Luke Pryor and Ann Batte Lane. His brother was US Senator Luke Pryor from Alabama.1
John Benjamin Pryor was counted in Adams County, Mississippi on the 1850 and 1860 US Census.2 He was a slave owner and horse trainer, employed by the prominent Mississippi politician Adam Lewis Bingaman. He became the trainer of Lexington, the most famous race horse of the 1850s, after racing entrepreneur Richard Ten Broeck and his syndicate purchased the horse "in no very long time Lexington was shipped south to Natchez, where he was placed in charge of Adam Lewis Bingaman, whose stable was trained by the veteran J. B. Pryor, then at the head of his profession."3 Lexington's skeleton is displayed at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC and in the 1950s he was entered into the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga, New York.
By the 1861 UK Census Pryor had traveled to England, where he continued his employment as a horse trainer at Chesterfield House in Woodditton, Cambridgeshire, living with his wife Frances, sister in law Cordelia Bingaman, and 7 children.4 Pryor's family was still in England in 1871 and counted on the census at another racing establishment, Roden House in Compton, Berkshire.
...
Wikipedia