 1646 - 1731 (85 years) Submit Photo / Document
Has no ancestors but more than 100 descendants in this family tree.
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| Name |
John Rice |
| Birth |
6 Jan 1646 |
England  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Death |
6 Jan 1731 |
Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States |
| Initiatory (LDS) |
21 Aug 1896 |
SGEOR |
| FamilySearch ID |
LCJG-6JL |
| Headstones |
 Submit Headstone Photo |
| Person ID |
I175746 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Family |
Elizabeth Holden, b. Aug 1652, Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States d. 6 Jan 1730, Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States (Age 77 years) |
| Marriage |
16 Jul 1674 |
Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States |
| Children |
| + | 1. John Rice, Jr, b. 25 Jul 1675, Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States d. 9 Jan 1755, Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States (Age 79 years) |
| | 2. Randall Rice, b. Abt 1677, Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States d. 30 Aug 1742, Coventry, Kent, Rhode Island, United States (Age 65 years) |
|
| Family ID |
F9267 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
20 May 2024 |
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| Notes |
- John Rice was the first of his line to come to America. He was born in E n gland and came to Massachusetts. By 1661, John and his friend, Mr. Edmu n d Calverly went to Rhode Island. He was one of the early founders of Rh od e Island. John led a quiet and simple life. He worked hard and amass e d a very large estate, He allied himself well with other leading citize n s of Rhode Island and became a prominent member of society. By the en d o f his life, the Rice family in Rhode Island was permanently situate d amon g the most prosperous and prominent members.
There is no reference in any history to John Rice's father or his plac e o f birth. We know from DNA that he was from the UK, but nothing specif ic . Any reference to John's place of birth or his parents is misleadin g an d most likely not accurate. Researcher's attempts to place him in th e UK , have not been successful. Hopefully through DNA we can find the Eu ropea n connection, but until then any parentage is merely speculation an d atta ching anyone as his parents is misleading and harmful to the accur acy o f the lineage.
This is all we Know:
John Rice, b. 1646 and d. 6 Jan 1731[1]. He was born in England and ca m e to the colonies with Mr. Edmund Calverly in 1661. He married Elizabe t h Holden daughter of. 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 th a t his father died 12 January 1733, which could have meant either 1732/ 3 3 or 1733/34.If the death occurred later, then the birth date would ha v e to be correspondingly advanced. Austin accurately cited the same Warw ic k record as authority that John Rice "was born in old England and cam e wi th Mr. [Edmund] Calverly." Elsewhere in his book Austin dated Calver ly' s arrival in Warwick in 1661. This date appears to be roughly correct : th e name John Rice (actually "John Riss") occurs in Warwick Records fo r th e first time 13 January 1661, presumably 1661/2, when he joined Edmu nd Ca lverly and Randall Holden in witnessing an indenture.
Edmund Calverly was much older than Rice, having been born around 1613 . H e was literate, legally astute, and above all comfortable with organi zin g and managing. He had almost certainly been in the military. Rice an d Ca lverly were close, although John Rice in no way emulated the mento r in as suming public office or positions of leadership.
They bought land together in what is now East Greenwich with two other m e n in 1673, and Calverly made a deed of gift of his portion to John an d El izabeth (Holden) Rice on 18 November 1676 "in consideration of the L ove a nd affection Which I have." The deed of gift contains no mention o f relat ionship. Calverly made a second, also unexplained deed of gift 2 3 Januar y 1677/8 to John Rice alone. Given the age difference between th e two men , one wonders whether Rice might have been an apprentice (bot h men were c ordwainers) or the son of one of the residents at Ely House . Perhaps so-f ar unexplored resources in England may in the future resol ve this questio n. The exact connection between Rice and Calverly is bu t one of many gap s in our understanding of John Rice's life. No source h as identified hi s parents or birthplace. We have no proof of when his wi fe Elizabeth (Hol den) Rice died or whether he remarried, though we can s uspect that she di ed very young and that he never remarried. No birth re cords of his childr en appear in Warwick. He had two sons to whom he mad e deeds of gift, bu t it is possible that he may have had daughters unkno wn to us. No connect ion has yet been established with another John Ric e then in Rhode Island , a "Welshman now living in Providence," who was m arried to "Katherin" a s of March 1674.
Study of John Rice and Warwick and his descendants through the mid-19t h c entury shows no relationship of any sort with the well-documented Ric e fa mily of Sudbury, Massachusetts. Despite all these lacunae, the few c ertai n facts set in the context of the time and place in which John Ric e live d go far to constructing a rich picture of his life.
The Rhode Island that John Rice found when they arrived in early 1660 s a s not for the faint of heart. Although it was developing from a loose , of ten unhappy federation of settlements toward a united colony, the pr oces s was far from complete. Warwick's English inhabitants included bot h Gort onists, who were on the fringes of religious though even by libera l Rhod e Island standards and secular residents quite indifferent to reli gion.
Many settlers had lived through the struggle in 1643 between Rhode Isla n d and Massachusetts Bay Colony. Warwick, having sought the protectio n o f Massachusetts against its antagonists within Rhode Island, found i t sel f besieged by Massachusetts's soldiers. It's principal citizens - i ncludi ng John Rice's future father-in-law Randall Holden - had been capt ured an d taken to Boston for trial. The village lay abandoned until 1647 . By th e 1660's Warwick's vague and controversial borders encompassed al l of wha t is now Kent County. They stretched all the way to Connecticu t on the we st, to "Narragansett County" on the south, and up into Pawtux et on the no rth. Despite the apparent size of the town, all the settler s were huddle d into tiny "old Warwick," with their backs metaphoricall y against Narrag ansett Bay. They faced increasingly exasperated Coweset t Indians within t heir town, Connecticut claimants and Pequot Indians t o the west, the Athe rton purchasers and Narragansett Indians to the sout h, and entrepreneuria l Pawtuxet men to the north. The Dutch in New Amste rdam posed a less imme diate but still a real threat. When Rice arrived , the particular disput e agitating Warwick's inhabitants was a struggl e with William Harris of P rovidence over the Pawtuxet area claimed by bo th Harris as part of Provid ence and by Warwick. John Rice belonged t o a group of Warwick men who opp osed Harris, one of the most eccentric a nd litigious men in the colony. I n helping them to clear fields and to b uild a house on the disputed land , he ran afoul of the law.
On 15 May 1663 William Harris procured an arrest warrant for the grou p o f men - John Harrud, Thomas Relfe, Roger Burlingham, Thomas Hedger, J r. , Ebenezer Moone, John Rice, and Laurance Pinnicke - and arranged fo r a s pecial constable, Valentine Whitman, to serve it. To put it mildly , the W arwick men did not take the constable's effort with good grace. " the said e persons all went into the howse which they were building upo n ye land a foresaid, and stood with axes in their hands againste the doo re it bein g open and holding them up ready to strike, and saide to the C onstabl e & his ayde stand off at yor perell John Harrud aforesaide & th e rest o f his Company stod in a desperate posture, holding their Axes u p at the C onstable and ye saide John Harrud did vow and proteste as he w as a livin g man that if the Constable did sett his foot within the door e he would k nocke him downe".
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