Ida Pritchett was born in San Marcos, Texas about 1888. She graduated from Coronal Institute in San Marcos and did two years of postgraduate work there, majoring in piano and language. She studied piano and harmony at the Chicago Conservatory, attended piano artist classes under the direction of Victor Heinz at the School of Music and Dramatic Art in Chicago, and took additional coursework at University of Texas at Austin. After teaching for awhile in Louisiana, she returned to San Marcos, where she served as organist for the First Methodist Church. She next went to George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1918.

After college Ida Pritchett went first to Columbia, Tennessee, where she was Head of the Department of Music at the high school for one year. From 1919 to 1921 she served as Director of Music at Central High School in Nashville, Tennessee. Then from 1921 to 1923 she taught in the department of Public School Music and Piano at South Georgia State Woman's College. She joined the faculty of Stephen F. Austin State University when the college opened in 1923, serving as head of the Music Department until 1947. During the summers she took additional coursework at Northwestern University, University of Southern California, and the University of Texas at Austin. She was also the organist at Christ Episcopal Church in Nacogdoches.

While at SFA, Ida Pritchett directed the music for commencement ceremonies, senior vesper services, baccalaureate services, Christmas carol and vesper programs, Easter sunrise services, National Music Week, Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, and dramatic cantatas. In 1930 she organized the college choir which was originally called the Merry Music Makers, later became the Madrigal Club, and about 1940 changed its name to the SFA Choir. She was the sponsor and director of the musical club which presented the popular Olde English Christmas Festival from 1939 to 1941. At the request of SFA president A. W. Birdwell, she composed the music for the first official song of the college, "The Pine Tree Hymn." In 1941 she directed the community choir in a performance of excerpts from ''The Messiah." She retired from the Music Department in 1953.

("Pritchett, Ida." Control File, East Texas Research Center. Ralph W. Steen Library. Stephen F. Austin State University)