Pryor Lea, early Texas public official and railroad promoter, was born in Knox County, Tennessee, on August 31, 1794, the brother ofAlbert Miller Lea. He graduated from Greenville College, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1817, and began his practice in Knoxville. In 1824 he became United States attorney for Tennessee and was elected to the Twentieth and Twenty-first United States congresses, 1827–31. He moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1836 and to Goliad, Texas, in 1846 to promote railroads.

Believing Aransas Bay would make the best port for East Texas, Lea made preliminary surveys for a railroad to connect San Antonio with Lamar on the coast through Goliad. He worked withJames W. Byrne and other Lamar proprietors to build a port and promote the railroad. On February 12, 1850, Byrne sold Lea one-fourth interest in Lookout Peninsula (Point), Goose Island, and the unsold sections of the Lamar townsite. The deed reconveyed the property to Byrne, however, on March 1, 1853, when Lea was unable to make payments. On February 14, 1852, Lea incorporated the Aransas Road Company to establish a "commercial emporium" at Aransas Bay connected to Goliad and the Texas interior by turnpike and railroad. In September 1856 the state legislature granted the company the right to extend the turnpike from the mainland to the bay's deep-water channel through a series of bridges connecting the various islands. This act was amended in February 1858 to substitute a railroad for the turnpike and ferries for the bridges. As president, Lea publishedCircular Concerning the Aransas Road Company (1858) to promote the venture. Although the turnpike was surveyed from Goliad to Aransas Bay, construction on it and the railroad was never completed, largely because of theCivil War, and the project was still struggling as late as 1879. Aransas Pass, Texas, now occupies the site Lea chose as his port on the bay. Lea, visualizing a transcontinental railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast that utilized the Aransas Road Company project, joined United States senator Luke Lea andAlexander H. Phillips in incorporating the Central Transit Company on November 7, 1866. Lea publicized the venture inAn Outline of the Central Transit (1859), but the plan never materialized.

In 1861 Lea served in theSecession Convention and chaired the committee authorized to publicize the proceedings of the convention and the new 1861 Confederate state constitution.John Henry Brown andJohn D. Stell were on this committee, which printed itsAddress to the People of Texas (1861) in English, German, and Spanish. Lea also served a term in the state Senate. During the war he was an incorporator of the Goliad Aid Association, founded to aid indigent families, and served as a commissioner in the Aransas Salt Works Company, established near the site of present Rockport. GovernorJames W. Throckmorton appointed him state superintendent of public instruction on November 10, 1866. Lea was an original trustee of Aranama College in Goliad. InCircular. Address to the People of Texas on Education (1867) he stressed the importance of education to the cultivation of morals. The governor later removed Lea from office, however, as an "impediment to Reconstruction." He was highly esteemed in Goliad County, where he was unanimously elected as the district representative to theConstitutional Convention of 1875, but his "extreme age" induced him to decline the honor. Nevertheless, the eighty-four-year-old jurist publishedThe Great Question of the Hour! What Constitutes the Money of the Constitution? in 1878 as an "aid in finding the truth, to counteract tendencies to political error." Lea died in Goliad on September 14, 1879.