Hiss, Priscilla, 1903-1984

Priscilla Hiss (October 13, 1903 – October 14, 1984), born Priscilla Fansler and first married as Priscilla Hobson, was a 20th-century American teacher and book editor, best known as the wife of Alger Hiss, an alleged Communist and former State Department official whose innocence she supported with testimony throughout his two, highly publicized criminal trials in 1949.

Priscilla Harriet Fansler was born on October 13, 1903, in Evanston, Illinois. Her father was Thomas Lafayette Fansler and mother Willa Roland Spruill. She had two older brothers Dean Fansler (a teacher of English at Columbia University and acquaintance of Mortimer J. Adler, a classmate of Whittaker Chambers) and Henry Fansler (who as the Hiss Case began had moved recently to Preston, Maryland, and whom the FBI reported was a "something of a drunkard"). In 1924, she graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College. Her roommate Roberta Murray (of Murray Hill, Manhattan) became for a time her sister-in-law as Roberta Fansler. Later, she obtained an MA in English literature from Yale University.

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