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Spottswood Rice (1819 - 1907)

Spottswood Rice
Born in Madison, Virginia, United Statesmap
Son of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]
[sibling(s) unknown]
Husband of — married 6 Oct 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri, United Statesmap
Husband of — married 7 Oct 1888 in Albuquerque, Bernalillo, New Mexico, United Statesmap
Descendants descendants
Father of , , and
Died at age 87 in Colorado Springs, El Paso, Colorado, United Statesmap
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Profile last modified | Created 26 Apr 2022
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Contents

Biography

Notables Project
Spottswood Rice is Notable.

Spottswood Rice was born enslaved Nov. 20, 1819, in Madison County, Virginia.[1] When he was very young, his slave owner moved with Spottswood and his parents to Howard County, Missouri.

In 1843, Spottswood Rice was sold as part of the estate of his deceased slave owner, John Collins, to slave owner and tobacco plantation owner Benjamin Lewis in Howard County, Missouri.[2] Lewis and his partners were major tobacco growers, at one time enslaving as many as 500 "hands."[3]

Spottswood Rice worked as a tobacco roller. He married Ara "Arry" Ferguson in an unrecorded "slave marriage,"[4] in July 1844. The couple had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. (Ara also had an older daughter, Cora Ferguson.) Ara and her children were enslaved by the Digges family in Glasgow, Howard County, Missouri.[5]

Rice's daughter Mary A. Bell gave an interview to Grace E. White of the Federal Writers' Project in 1937.[6] She reported that her father was only allowed to see his family two nights a week, Wednesday and Saturday. Mary said, "So often he came home all bloody from beatings his old . . . overseer would give him. My mother would take those bloody clothes off of him, bathe de sore places and grease them good and wash and iron his clothes, so he could go back clean." After a particularly brutal and undeserved beating, Spottswood Rice ran away. His wife tried to persuade him not to go, but he said he would die first. He hid for three days and nights under houses and in the woods until he was so weak and hungry that he gave himself up to a slave trader that he knew. The trader offered to buy him from Benjamin Lewis, but "Lewis said dere wasn't a plantation owner with money enough to pay him for Spot." Rice told his slave owner that if he was whipped again, he would run away "until he made de free state land."

Mary said, "My father was de head man on dat plantation. He cured all de tobacco, as it was brought in from the field, made all the twists and plugs of tobacco. His owner's son taught him to read, and dat made his owner so mad, because my father read de emancipation for freedom to de other slaves."[7][8] With the help of the slave trader, Spottswood Rice negotiated an agreement with his slave owner, Benjamin Lewis. Rice was such a valuable worker that Lewis "promised my father if he would stay with him and ship his tobacco for him and look after all of his business on his plantation after freedom was declared, he would give him a nice house and lot for his family right on his plantation . . . but Lewis had been so mean to father, dat down in father's heart he felt Lewis did not have a spot of good in him. No place for a black man."

Spottswood Rice stayed on Lewis's plantation for six months, then with 11 other enslaved people, went to Kansas City to join the Union Army. In February 1864, Rice enlisted in Company A of the 3rd Missouri Colored Infantry, later the 67th Regiment Infantry U.S. Colored Troops.[9] Lewis and other slave owners pursued them but were turned away by Union officers. Lewis may have been compensated for the loss of his "property" since he officially supported the Union.[10] An 1843 bill of sale included in Spottswood Rice's military record recorded his sale for $500 by the estate of John Collins to Benjamin W. Lewis, both of Howard County, Missouri.[11]

In March 1864, Spottswood Rice was injured while out on inspection and hospitalized at Benton Barracks[12] in St. Louis, Missouri, where he recuperated from wounds and chronic rheumatism and served as a military nurse. Ara Rice and her sons, Noah and Spottswood Jr., joined him in St. Louis, but her daughters, Cora and Mary, remained enslaved in Howard County.

Civil War Letters of Spottswood Rice

In September 1864, Rice wrote two impassioned letters to Miss Kitty Digges, of Glasgow, Howard County, Missouri, demanding the release of his daughter Mary and stepdaughter Cora, who were still enslaved—Mary by Kitty Digges and Cora by Kitty's brother, F.W. Digges. (See also Digges Family Plantation.) Mary had been "hired out" to a man who refused to break his contract with Kitty Digges.[13] Rice's letters were featured in Episode 6 of Ken Burns' documentary "The Civil War."[14]

To his daughters, Rice wrote: "I take my pen in hand to rite you A few lines to let you know that I have not forgot you and that I want to see you as bad as ever . . . be assured that I will have you if it cost me my life . . . Your Miss Kaitty said that I tried to steal you But I'll let her know that god never intended for man to steal his own flesh and blood. . . You tell her from me that She is the frist Christian that I ever hard say that a man could Steal his own child especially out of human bondage . . . Give my love to all enquiring friends tell them all that we are well and want to see them very much and Corra and Mary receive the greater part of it you selves . . . Spott & Noah sends their love to both of you Oh! My Dear children how I do want to see you."[15]

To Kitty Digges, Rice wrote: "I received a leteter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal to plunder my child away from you now I want you to understand that mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own and you may hold on to hear as long as you can but I want you to remembor this one thing that the longor you keep my Child from me the longor you will have to burn in hell and the qwicer youll get their . . . my Children is my own and I expect to get them and when I get ready to come after mary I will have bout a powrer and autherity to bring hear away and to exacute vengencens on them that holds my Child."[16]

Kitty Digges's brother, F.W. Digges, forwarded Rice's letters to General William Rosecrans, Commander of the Department of the Missouri, demanding that Rice be sent out of the state. Instead, according to Deborah Keating, "Filed away in the military records, the three documents survived to inform history and testify to the hostility between slaves and their former owners during the tumultuous Civil War experience. They also demonstrate the deep bonds that African American families formed, even when forced to endure the separations of 'abroad marriages,'[17] as well as the battles these families undertook to reestablish their families during and after the Civil War."[18]

Post-Civil War Life

On Oct. 6, 1864, Spottswood Rice and Ara Ferguson were officially married at Benton Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri.[19] In 1865, after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Rice's whole family was reunited at Benton Barracks. Mary said, "My father . . . was a nurse in Benton Barracks and my mother taken in washing and ironing. I had to help her in de home with de laundry."

By 1870, the Rice family was living in St. Louis, Missouri, where Spottswood (46, listed as "Spotsford") was working as a tobacconist. Ara (52, listed as "Orie") was keeping house. Their children Mary (18), Noah (13), and Spottswood ("Spotsford") Jr. (11) were living with them.[20] Rice was ordained by the African Methodist Episcopal Church as a deacon in 1870 and as an elder in 1874.

In June 1880, Spottswood Rice (56) and Ara ("Orry") Rice (59) and their family lived on Elliott Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. Spottswood was a clergyman. Spottswood reported that his father had been born in France. The household also included Cora Bonnot (39, Spottswood's widowed stepdaughter); his sons, Noah (23) and Spottswood Jr. (21); his daughter Mary A. Bell (28), her husband Joseph Bell (37), and their children, James (8), Cora (5), Willie (2) and Ernest (5 months). Mary was a washerwoman. Noah, Spottswood Jr., and Joseph Bell worked in a tobacco factory.[21] A second census report taken in November 1880 listed Spottswood Rice (55) as a minister and his wife Ara ("Arrah") Rice (55) living on Elliott Avenue in St. Louis with their sons, William (23) (instead of Noah) and Spottswood Jr. (21), and their daughter Mary (28) and her family (see Research Notes).[22]

Spottswood Rice served A.M.E. congregations in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado. In 1871, he had charge of the Savannah Mission. In 1875, he served in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, helping to build a brick church. From 1876 to 1879 he was pastor of the Washington Circuit in Missouri. From 1879 to 1880, he served in Canton, Missouri. In 1881, he was pastor of St. Peter's Chapel, St. Louis. In 1882, he was transferred to the Kansas Conference and had charge of the State Line Church in Kansas City. In October 1882, he became pastor in Parsons, Labette County, Kansas. [23] In June 1883, he applied for an Invalid pension, with Kansas as residence.[24] Later in the 1880s, Rice was the minister of the first A.M.E. mission in New Mexico, which became Grant Chapel A.M.E.[25]

Ara Ferguson Rice died March 19, 1888. She was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Hillsdale, St. Louis County, Missouri.[26] Spottswood Rice was at that time the presiding elder of the New Mexico, California Conference of the A.M.E. church.

On Oct. 7, 1888, Spottswood Rice married Eliza Lightner in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By 1889, the Rices had moved to Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado. He was pastor of Payne Chapel A.M.E. church, where he began a $6,000 stone building project. "The U.S. Corps of Engineers hewed the stones from the quarry in Bear Creek Canyon at no cost and the stones were then transported by horse and wagon by the members."[27] Spottswood's son Noah followed him to Colorado. Mary Bell and Spottswood Jr. remained in St. Louis.

Spottswood Rice passed away Oct. 31, 1907, in Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado. His obituary describes him as "rugged and hearty."[28] He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado.[29]

Slave Owners

Research Notes

  • In the June 1880 U.S. census, Spottswood Rice reported that his father was born in France and his mother in Virginia.
  • The date reported on Spottswood Rice's Find a Grave memorial is Nov. 20, 1819. The bill of sale from 1843 gives his age as 17, which would make his birth year 1826. His military record gives his age at enlistment as 39, which would make his birth year 1825.
  • Mary Bell said that her older brother died in the Civil War. His name may have been William. Several soldiers in the 67th Regiment USCT were named William Rice.
  • Mary Bell said that she had two sisters and three brothers. The identified children of Spottswood Rice are Mary, Noah, and Spottswood Jr. Cora Ferguson was their half-sister, Ara's daughter.
  • There are two 1880 U.S. census reports for Mary Bell. The earlier report (June 1880) lists her son Willie as a three-year-old.[30] The later report (November 1880) lists her son William as three years old, but in the "Sick" column, he is reported as "Dead." In Mary's "Sick" column, the report says, "Childs-Birth."[31] Mary reported that she had borne seven children. William A. Bell, who was living at the time of her 1937 interview, may have been born in 1880 and named for a brother who died that year.

Sources

  1. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Spottswood Rice," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spottswood_Rice (accessed April 26, 2022).
  2. ↑ The USCT Chronicle, Angela Y. Walton-Raji, March 29, 2012: The Words, Actions and Life of Spottswood Rice - Freedom Fighter (Part 1): http://usctchronicle.blogspot.com/2012/03/words-actions-and-life-of-spottswood.html : accessed 9 Jun 2022
  3. ↑ History of Howard and Cooper counties, Missouri by National Historical Company, Publication date 1883, pp. 452-453: https://archive.org/details/historyofhowardc00nati/page/452/mode/2up : accessed 9 Jun 2022
  4. ↑ "Marriages such as this were not legal, since slaves could not acquire marriage licenses." Kristen Epps, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016, p. 106. https://www.kristenepps.com/publications : accessed 15 May 2022
  5. ↑ Keating, Deborah. "Rice, Spotswood" Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. The Kansas City Public Library. Accessed Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - 11:38 at https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/rice-spotswood
  6. ↑ Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 10, Missouri, Abbot-Younger. 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn100/: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.100/?sp=30&st=image : accessed 20 Apr 2022
  7. ↑ Missouri's enslaved people were excluded from the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. See On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 by Diane Mutti Burke, page 282: https://books.google.com/books?id=Zu8rf7maK60C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&hl=en#v=onepage&q=rice&f=false : accessed 27 Apr 2022
  8. ↑ The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples' status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.
  9. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "List of United States Colored Troops Civil War units," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_United_States_Colored_Troops_Civil_War_units&oldid=1076543549 (accessed April 22, 2022).
  10. ↑ Index to "Descriptive Recruitment Lists of Volunteers for the United States Colored Troops for the State of Missouri, 1863-1865" (NARA Microfilm Publication M1894 - 6 rolls), Index by slave owner's name | K – L: https://www.slcl.org/content/index-slave-owners-name-k-%E2%80%93-l : accessed 27 Apr 2022 (Because Missouri remained in the Union, slave owners were required to declare their loyalty in order to be compensated. The status of Missouri's enslaved people remained confusing until after the end of the Civil War.)
  11. ↑ The USCT Chronicle, Angela Y. Walton-Raji, March 29, 2012: http://usctchronicle.blogspot.com/2012/03/words-actions-and-life-of-spottswood.html: accessed 15 May 2022
  12. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Benton Barracks," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benton_Barracks&oldid=1084244894 (accessed April 27, 2022).
  13. ↑ Burke, Diane Mutti, On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865, University of Georgia Press, December 1, 2010, pp. 268–269: https://books.google.com/books?id=Zu8rf7maK60C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&hl=en#v=onepage&q=rice&f=false: accessed 27 Apr 2022
  14. ↑ 1864: "Valley of the Shadow of Death"/"Most Hallowed Ground": https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-civil-war/ : accessed 22 Apr 2022
  15. ↑ Spotswood Rice, “Letter of Spotswood Rice to His Children and Kittey Diggs,” Textbook, accessed April 27, 2022, http://historymaking.org/textbook/items/show/88.
  16. ↑ Spotswood Rice, “Letter of Spotswood Rice to His Children and Kittey Diggs,” Textbook, accessed April 27, 2022, http://historymaking.org/textbook/items/show/88.
  17. ↑ "Abroad marriages—unions where the man and woman lived on different farms—were a common feature of slave life on the [Missouri-Kansas] border." Kristen Epps, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016, p. 72. https://www.kristenepps.com/publications : accessed 15 May 2022
  18. ↑ Keating, Deborah. "Rice, Spotswood" Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. The Kansas City Public Library. Accessed Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - 11:38 at https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/rice-spotswood
  19. ↑ Missouri, U.S., Marriage Records, 1805-2002: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1171/images/vrmmo1833_c6135-0642?pId=10127030 : accessed 26 Apr 2022
  20. ↑ 1870 United States Federal Census: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7163/images/4273878_00256?pId=3030234 : accessed 20 Apr 2022
  21. ↑ 1880 United States Federal Census: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4242058-00512?pId=48755415 : accessed 20 Apr 2022
  22. ↑ 1880 United States Federal Census: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4242108-00009?pId=34441945 : accessed 26 Apr 2022
  23. ↑ William G. Cutler's History of Kansas, pub. 1883: https://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/labette/labette-co-p10.html#BIOGRAPHICAL_SKETCHES : accessed 27 Apr 2022
  24. ↑ U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/4654/images/32959_033057-02437?pId=1733950 : accessed 3 May 2022
  25. ↑ Grant Chapel A.M.E. Church: https://ame-aznmd.org/directory/new-mexico-ame-churches/grant-chapel-ame/ : accessed 15 May 2022
  26. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/66723984/ara-rice : accessed 20 April 2022), memorial page for Ara Rice (1817–19 Mar 1888), Find a Grave Memorial ID 66723984, citing Greenwood Cemetery, Hillsdale, St. Louis County, Missouri, USA ; Maintained by Susan Ing (contributor 47043987) .
  27. ↑ Brief History of Payne Chapel A.M.E Church: https://paynechapelamechurch.org/about-pcamec/history-of-payne-chapel-a-m-e-church/ : accessed 27 Apr 2022
  28. ↑ Clipped from Franklin's Paper the Statesman, Denver, Colorado, 08 Nov 1907, Fri, Page 4: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/100494752/spottswood-rice-obituary-statesman-nov-8/ : accessed 26 Apr 2022
  29. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35146577/spottswood-rice : accessed 26 April 2022), memorial page for Rev Spottswood Rice (20 Nov 1819–31 Oct 1907), Find a Grave Memorial ID 35146577, citing Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado, USA ; Maintained by Joe & Connie, and Mariah (contributor 46889617) .
  30. ↑ 1880 United States Federal Census: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4242058-00513?pId=34579789 : accessed 20 Apr 2022
  31. ↑ 1880 United States Federal Census: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4242108-00009?pId=26094883 : accessed 24 Apr 2022

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Bill of Sale from Estate of John Collins to Benj. Lewis
Bill of Sale from Estate of John Collins to Benj. Lewis


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Categories: African Methodist Episcopal Church Ministers | 67th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry, United States Civil War | Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs, Colorado | Colorado Springs, Colorado | El Paso County, Colorado | Albuquerque, New Mexico | Parsons, Kansas | St. Louis, Missouri | Lewis Family Tobacco Plantation, Howard County, Missouri | Collins Family Plantation, Howard County, Missouri | Howard County, Missouri, Slaves | Madison County, Virginia, Slaves | US Black Heritage Project Managed Profiles | African-American Notables | Notables