John Rice Sr. (1646 - 1730)

Born 1646 in England

Husband of Elizabeth (Holden) Rice — married 16 Jul 1674 in Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island

Descendants

Died 6 Jan 1730 at about age 84 in Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island

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Biography

John Rice was the first of his line to come to America. He was born in England and came to Massachusetts. By 1661, John and his friend, Mr. Edmund Calverly went to Rhode Island. He was one of the early founders of Rhode Island. John led a quiet and simple life. He worked hard and amassed a very large estate, He allied himself well with other leading citizens of Rhode Island and became a prominent member of society. By the end of his life, the Rice family in Rhode Island was permanently situated among the most prosperous and prominent members.

There is no reference in any history to John Rice's father or his place of birth. We know from DNA that he was from the UK, but nothing specific. Any reference to John's place of birth or his parents is misleading and most likely not accurate. Researcher's attempts to place him in the UK, have not been successful. Hopefully through DNA we can find the European connection, but until then any parentage is merely speculation and attaching anyone as his parents is misleading and harmful to the accuracy of the lineage.

This is all we Know:

John Rice, b. 1646 and d. 6 Jan 1731^[1]. He was born in England and came to the colonies with Mr. Edmund Calverly in 1661. He married Elizabeth Holden ^[2] daughter of ^[3] They had two sons:

1. John Rice, 1675-1755

2. Randall Rice, b. 1677- 1742.

To establish a birth date. John Rice, Jr. swore in a lawsuit in 1747 that his father died 12 January 1733, which could have meant either 1732/33 or 1733/34.^[4] If the death occurred later, then the birth date would have to be correspondingly advanced. Austin accurately cited the same Warwick record as authority that John Rice "was born in old England and came with Mr. [Edmund] Calverly."^[5] Elsewhere in his book Austin dated Calverly's arrival in Warwick in 1661. This date appears to be roughly correct: the name John Rice (actually "John Riss") occurs in Warwick Records for the first time 13 January 1661, presumably 1661/2, when he joined Edmund Calverly and Randall Holden in witnessing an indenture^[6].

Edmund Calverly was much older than Rice, having been born around 1613. He was literate, legally astute, and above all comfortable with organizing and managing. He had almost certainly been in the military. Rice and Calverly were close, although John Rice in no way emulated the mentor in assuming public office or positions of leadership.

They bought land together in what is now East Greenwich with two other men in 1673, and Calverly made a deed of gift of his portion to John and Elizabeth (Holden) Rice on 18 November 1676 "in consideration of the Love and affection Which I have." The deed of gift contains no mention of relationship. Calverly made a second, also unexplained deed of gift 23 January 1677/8 to John Rice alone. Given the age difference between the two men, one wonders whether Rice might have been an apprentice (both men were cordwainers) or the son of one of the residents at Ely House. Perhaps so-far unexplored resources in England may in the future resolve this question. The exact connection between Rice and Calverly is but one of many gaps in our understanding of John Rice's life. No source has identified his parents or birthplace. We have no proof of when his wife Elizabeth (Holden) Rice died or whether he remarried, though we can suspect that she died very young and that he never remarried. No birth records of his children appear in Warwick. He had two sons to whom he made deeds of gift, but it is possible that he may have had daughters unknown to us. No connection has yet been established with another John Rice then in Rhode Island, a "Welshman now living in Providence," who was married to "Katherin" as of March 1674.

Study of John Rice and Warwick and his descendants through the mid-19th century shows no relationship of any sort with the well-documented Rice family of Sudbury, Massachusetts. Despite all these lacunae, the few certain facts set in the context of the time and place in which John Rice lived go far to constructing a rich picture of his life.

The Rhode Island that John Rice found when they arrived in early 1660s as not for the faint of heart. Although it was developing from a loose, often unhappy federation of settlements toward a united colony, the process was far from complete. Warwick's English inhabitants included both Gortonists, who were on the fringes of religious though even by liberal Rhode Island standards and secular residents quite indifferent to religion.

Many settlers had lived through the struggle in 1643 between Rhode Island and Massachusetts Bay Colony. Warwick, having sought the protection of Massachusetts against its antagonists within Rhode Island, found it self besieged by Massachusetts's soldiers. It's principal citizens - including John Rice's future father-in-law Randall Holden - had been captured and taken to Boston for trial. The village lay abandoned until 1647. By the 1660's Warwick's vague and controversial borders encompassed all of what is now Kent County. They stretched all the way to Connecticut on the west, to "Narragansett County" on the south, and up into Pawtuxet on the north. Despite the apparent size of the town, all the settlers were huddled into tiny "old Warwick," with their backs metaphorically against Narragansett Bay. They faced increasingly exasperated Cowesett Indians within their town, Connecticut claimants and Pequot Indians to the west, the Atherton purchasers and Narragansett Indians to the south, and entrepreneurial Pawtuxet men to the north. The Dutch in New Amsterdam posed a less immediate but still a real threat. When Rice arrived, the particular dispute agitating Warwick's inhabitants was a struggle with William Harris of Providence over the Pawtuxet area claimed by both Harris as part of Providence and by Warwick. John Rice belonged to a group of Warwick men who opposed Harris, one of the most eccentric and litigious men in the colony. In helping them to clear fields and to build a house on the disputed land, he ran afoul of the law.

On 15 May 1663 William Harris procured an arrest warrant for the group of men - John Harrud, Thomas Relfe, Roger Burlingham, Thomas Hedger, Jr., Ebenezer Moone, John Rice, and Laurance Pinnicke - and arranged for a special constable, Valentine Whitman, to serve it. To put it mildly, the Warwick men did not take the constable's effort with good grace. "the saide persons all went into the howse which they were building upon ye land aforesaid, and stood with axes in their hands againste the doore it being open and holding them up ready to strike, and saide to the Constable & his ayde stand off at yor perell John Harrud aforesaide & the rest of his Company stod in a desperate posture, holding their Axes up at the Constable and ye saide John Harrud did vow and proteste as he was a living man that if the Constable did sett his foot within the doore he would knocke him downe".^[7]

Sources

1. ↑ James N. Arnold. Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850. Providence Rhode Island: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1891-1912, 1:1:197.
2. ↑ Ancestry.com. The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, 1847-2011 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

   Name: John Rice

   Event Type: Marriage

   Father's Name: John Rice

   Marriage Date: 25 Jul 1695

   Marriage Place: Warwick, Rhode Island, USA

   Spouse Name: Elnathan Whyppoll

   Spouse Father Name: John

3. ↑ Shotwell, Ambrose Milton; Published 1897. Annals of our colonial ancestors and their descendants, or, our Quaker forefathers and their posterity embracing a genealogical and biographical register of nine generations of the Shotwell family in America, together with the pedigree and near kindred of the author's parents, Nathan and Phebe B. (Gardner) Shotwell.
4. ↑ Copy of the case of John Rice vs. John Pierce and Thomas Pierce. Papers of the Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize and General Goal Delivery for Providence County, September Term, 1750, file papers at Judicial Archives, Supreme Court Judicial Records Center, Pawtucket, RI.
5. ↑ The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island; John Osborne Austin; 1887; page 162; Digital Image, Google Books
6. ↑ Rhode Island Historical Society Manuscripts 10:125.
7. ↑ Bamburg, Cherry Fletcher. John Rice. Rhode Island Roots Rhode Island Genealogical Society- v. 24, no. 3/4 (Sept/Dec. 1998) Page 153-198.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to Robert Harter for creating WikiTree profile Rice-3843 through the import of nancy.ged on Sep 8, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Robert and others.

• John Owen Carter Family Title: John Owen Carter Family - GEDCOM file imported on 25 Jul 2002.