Edmund RICE, Deacon

1594 - 1663  (69 years)

• Name	Edmund RICE
  Suffix	Deacon
  Birth	1594	Barkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England
  Gender	Male
  Baptism	11 Aug 1600	Buckinghamshire, Sudbury, England
  Immigration	1638	Sudbury, Massachusetts
  Burial	May 1663	Wayland, Middlesex County, Massachusetts   [1]
  Death	3 May 1663	Marlboro, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
  Notes	Edmund Rice arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1638. The first record of his presence is in Township Book of the Town of Sudbury in the year 1639. Knowing the names of Edmund Rice's children at Sudbury, family historians have traced his family back to England using church baptismal records for his children and, eventually, to his marriage to Thomasine Frost on 15 October 1618 at Bury St. Edmunds. However, no record has been found of his baptism or any other record that names his parents. Edmund Rice was one of the prominent leaders of his community at both Sudbury and Marlborough. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Puritan Village, The formation of a New England Town, Sumner Chilton Powell sums up the high regard that his fellow citizens had for Edmund: "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." and "Two generations of Sudbury men selected Edmund Rice repeatedly as one of their leaders, with the full realization that they were ignoring men of far more English government experience who had come with him." Although much respected by his fellow townsmen, Edmund seems to have had an independent side to his nature. In 1656 Edmund Rice and others petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a new town which became the City of Marlborough. Edmund moved his immediate family and was elected a Selectman at Marlborough in 1657. Later generations of Rices were founding members of many new communities, first in New England and Nova Scotia, and later across the United States and Canada. Like many early New England families, Edmund Rice's family was a very large one. Deacon Edmund Rice was born circa 1594. Deacon Edmund Rice married 1st Thomasine Frost, daughter of Edward Frost and Thomasine Belgrave, on 15 October 1618 at St Marys Church, Bury St. Edmunds, Co of Suffolk. He married 2nd Mercy Hurd on 1 March 1655/56 at Sudbury, Middlesex Co, MA. He died on 3 May 1663 at Sudbury, Middlesex Co, MA. He was buried at Old Burying Ground, Wayland, Middlesex Co, MA. The grave is marked by a monument designed by Arthur Wallace Rice of Boston, MA. It was dedicated by the Rice Association on 29 August 1914. A boulder with a bronze tablet was also erected by the Association and it marks Edmund's homestead on the Old Connecticut Path in Wayland. Burial is recorded in Marlborough, MA vital records as "at Sudbury." Twice in the 20th century nationally recognized research genealogists have attempted to determine the parents and ancestors of Edmund Rice. Mary Lovering Holman described the negative result of her search for records in the parishes near Stanstead and Sudbury, Suffolk County, England in "English Notes on Edmund Rice … ", The American Genealogist, Volume 10 (1933/34), pp. 133 - 137. Mrs. Holman is considered by many to be one of the best research genealogists in the 20th century. In 1997 the Edmund Rice (1638) Association commissioned Dr. Joanna Martin, a nationally recognized research genealogist who lives in England only a few miles from Stanstead and Sudbury to search again for records of Edmund Rice's parents. Dr. Martin reported in 1999 that she found no record that identified Edmund's parents or ancestral line. Several authors of published works and computer data sets have claimed names for Edmund Rice's parents. Regrettably they have not given sources that would assist in definitive genealogical research. For example, the Ancestral File and International Genealogical Index, two popular computer data sets widely distributed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, offer parent candidates that include: Henry Rice and Margaret Baker, Henry Rice and Elizabeth Frost, Thomas Rice and Catherine Howard, and Thomas Rice and Elizabeth Frost. From Mrs. Holman's paper we have an excellent record of one Henry Rice's marriage to Elizabeth Frost in November 1605 at Stanstead. Mrs. Holman also documents the baptism of Edmund's first child on 23 August 1619 at Stanstead. If this is the Henry Rice and Elizabeth Frost to which the LDS records refer, the LDS records must be erroneous. Our researchers have not been able to find records that support any Henry Rice and Elizabeth Frost, Henry Rice and Margaret Baker, Thomas Rice and Catherine Howard, or Thomas Rice and Elizabeth Frost as parents of Edmund Rice. A scholarly investigation by Donald Lines Jacobus, considered by many as the dean of modern American genealogy, appeared in The American Genealogist, Volume 11, (1936), pp. 14-21. Jacobus traced many of the false accounts to the book by Dr. Charles Elmer Rice entitled "By the Name of Rice … ", privately published by Dr. Rice at Alliance, Ohio in 1911. Sudbury, England includes three parishes, two of which do not have complete records for the years near 1594, which is Edmund's most likely birth year. Edmund Rice deposed in a court document on 3 April 1656 that he was about 62 years old. Sudbury, England includes three parishes, two of which do not have complete records for the years near 1594, which is Edmund's most likely birth year. Thus, if he were born in Sudbury, England his records have been lost and we may never know his origin. In his address to the 1999 annual meeting of the Edmund Rice (1638) Association, Gary Boyd Roberts, Senior Researcher, New England Historic Genealogy Society, reviewed all of the genealogical sleuthing on Edmund's parentage. Mr. Roberts is well known for his research on royal lineage. He concluded that there was no evidence whatsoever that supports the published accounts of Edmund Rice's parents and no evidence that Edmund Rice was from a royal lineage. The Edmund Rice (1638) Association is very interested in proving the ancestry of Edmund Rice.
  Person ID	I871	Ellingboe
  Last Modified	28 Jul 2012

  
  

• Sources

  [S159] Vital Records, Marlborough, Middlesex County, Massachusetts (Reliability: 3).