Edmund Rice (colonist)

Edmund Rice's rough birth date of 1594 is reckoned from a 3 April 1656 court deposition in Massachusetts in which he stated that he was 62 years old.

[24] There is no record in Berkhamsted of Rice paying taxes on his land in 1638, possibly due to its sale to finance his trip to America.

[nb 6] There is no surviving record of Edmund Rice's voyage to America with his family, but it was surmised to have occurred between the 13 March 1638 baptism of his son Joseph in Berkhamsted and the petition to the Great and General Court to found Sudbury, Massachusetts 6 September 1638, showing all the Sudbury petitioners residing in Watertown, MA.

[nb 8] The first documented record of his presence in Massachusetts is in the Township Book of Sudbury prior to 4 April 1639 in which he was already serving as a selectman.

Sumner Chilton Powell wrote in his 1964 Pulitzer Prize-winning Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, "Not only did Rice become the largest individual landholder in Sudbury, but he represented his new town in the Massachusetts legislature for five years and devoted at least eleven of his last fifteen years to serving as selectman and judge of small causes.

After selling his 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land and homestead near the Sudbury meetinghouse on 1 September 1642 to John Moore,[49][nb 11] Rice established his residence on 13 September 1642 on his 20 acres of land abutting Henry Dunster's farm near the Old Connecticut Path in southeastern Sudbury.

[50] Within a year, Philemon Whale and Thomas Axtell, former town mates and kin from Berkhamstead, England established their homesteads on adjacent lots nearby.

[64] The tract of land was 8 square miles (21 km2) west of Sudbury that, in addition to becoming Marlborough, eventually became Northborough, Westborough, Southborough, and Hudson as well.

Upon being granted a maximum allotment of 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land in Marlborough, Rice was one of the three largest initial landholders of the new town.

Probate records show that his wife, Mercy, was executrix and that his estate including lands and homes in both Sudbury and Marlborough was valued at £743, 8s, & 4p, which was a considerable sum for the time.

The bible box was donated to the Worcester Historical Museum by Thomas Brigham Rice (1817-1914) in 1910, and it is recognized as one of the earliest known pieces of furniture with a New England history.

The maiden name of Mercy Brigham, often cited as Hurd, is uncertain due to lack of any primary documentation.

[96] Despite the difficulties of communication and transportation in the 1850s, Ward was able to document over 6,200 Edmund Rice descendants and spouses, mostly in the New England region.

[100][101] Beginning in the early 20th century, and partially aided by the compilation and publication of Massachusetts vital records by Franklin Pierce Rice (1852-1919), among others, the ERA undertook the task of building upon Ward's pioneering genealogy by verifying and better documenting Edmund's descendants.

[nb 20] Beginning in December 1960, the ERA began publishing a quarterly newsletter to disseminate genealogical and historical information about Edmund Rice, his ancestors and his descendants.

[106] During the 1970s and 1980s, the ERA published further genealogical research findings in three additional volumes,[107] and in the mid-1990s, the Association began transferring all of their print records into an electronic format.

[109][nb 21] In 1980, Edmund Rice descendant Corinne M. Snow (1925-2008) wrote a historical fiction novella titled The Deacons based upon the primary historical records of Edmund Rice and his family and Powell's (1963) Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town.

[nb 22] The story covers the life of the Rice family in the time period beginning about 1621 in Suffolk, England, through their immigration to Massachusetts in 1638, until the 1713 founding of Worcester by Edmund's grandchildren Jonas, Gershom, and James.

It provides an interpretation of the family's experiences in Stanstead, Suffolk, as well as in Berkhamsted, and it offers a purely fictional account of their departure from Southampton Harbor aboard the Confidence to Watertown, Massachusetts.

[112] Since 2000 with the initial leadership of Robert V. Rice,[nb 24] the ERA has conducted extensive haplotype DNA testing on males known to or believed to have descended from seven sons of Edmund.

[121] In addition to confirmation of surname changes in the direct patrilineal lines, formerly presumed descendants of Edmund have been ruled out by way of genetic mismatching.

The tested individuals are most probably descended from Silas Rice,[114][124] one of four Rice boys from two families who were captured during Queen Anne's War by an Indian raid on 8 August 1704 in Marlborough (in the part of town then known as Chauncey that later was renamed as Westborough), Massachusetts, and taken to Kahnawake, Canada, where they were adopted and raised by Mohawk families.

Edmund Rice Homestead built about 1643 by Rice in saltbox style by the spring feeding the Sudbury River near the Old Connecticut Path in southeastern Sudbury (now Wayland). It stayed in the Rice family many generations until it burned down sometime around 1910. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] [ nb 3 ] The house was located at 42°20′42″N 71°22′00″W  /  42.344897°N 71.3666763°W  / 42.344897; -71.3666763 off present-day Charena Rd. in Wayland.
Signature of Edmund Rice on a 1659 land survey record of his estate purchase of the "Dunster Farm" property near Old Connecticut Path in old Sudbury. Original in Harvard University Archives, Cambridge.
The Edmund Rice Memorial designed by Arthur Wallace Rice [ 1 ] was erected 29 August 1914 by Edmund's descendants at the Old North Cemetery, site of the First Sudbury Meetinghouse in Wayland, Massachusetts. [ 71 ] ( 42°22′15″N 71°22′09″W  /  42.370943°N 71.369046°W  / 42.370943; -71.369046 )
Andrew Henshaw Ward's A Genealogical History of the Rice Family: The Descendants of Deacon Edmund Rice , financed by members of the Rice family and published in 1858.
Plaque memorializing the death of one and capture of four Rice boys from a flax field in Marlborough (later to become Westborough ) with the inscription, "In the Field South of this Spot 8 August 1704 Indians Killed Nahor and Captured Ashur, Adonijah, Silas and Timothy Rice." The monument was placed by the Westborough Historical Society in 1904 on the occasion of the capture bicentennial. [ 113 ] It is located near Westborough High School at 42°15′57″N 71°37′05″W  /  42.265712°N 71.617979°W  / 42.265712; -71.617979 .