John Rice, of Wiltshire & Warwick

• John Rice - Find A Grave - ID 65178366

John RICE

• Birth: 1645 in England
• Death: 06 JAN 1730/31 in Warwick, Kent Co., Rhode Island

Marriage

1. 1 Elizabeth HOLDEN b: AUG 1652 in Warwick, Kent Co., Rhode Island Married: 16 JUL 1674 in Warwick, Kent Co., Rhode Island

Children

1. John RICE b: 1675 in Warwick, Kent Co., Rhode Island. Married Elnathan WHIPPLE

Links

• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=jonsaunde...

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GEDCOM Note

Immigrated to the colonies with Edmund Calverly, arriving approx 1661.

GEDCOM Note

[Note: I include the following with neither proper attribution nor reference sources. I believe all or most comes from the article mentioned at the beginning of the article.] �b�AFN: 8HDD-2J John1 Rice of Warwick, Rhode Island By Cherry Fletcher Bamberg (*) The article "Major Henry Rice of Warwick and His Family"�/b� in the proceeding issue of Rhode Island Roots (24:1-60) mentioned briefly the well-established Rice family in Warwick, Rhode Island into which Henry was born. (1) When Henry4 Rice was a boy, his great-grandfather John1 Rice, Sr. the progenitor of the family in Warwick, Rhode Island was still alive. He was one of the very last survivors of his generation. His long life linked Warwick's first settlers, many of whom he had known, with the more numerous and more secure inhabitants of the 1720s and early 1730s. The present article will look at the life of the great grandfather John1 Rice, Sr., the immigrant, from a biographical rather than genealogical perspective. Future articles will be devoted to each of his two sons, John2 Rice, Jr., and Randall2 Rice, and their numerous descendants. The outline of John Rice, Sr.'s life has been available since 1887 when John O. Austin published a biographical sketch, based on Warwick town records, in his Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. (2) In Austin's version, John Rice, the immigrant, was born in England about 1646 and died at Warwick, RI 6 Jan. 1731. (3) He married at Warwick 16 July 1674 Elizabeth Holden, (4) born at Warwick August 1652, second daughter of Randall and Frances (Dungan) Holden. (5) He had two sons John, Jr., born in 1675, and Randall birth date unknown. These fundamentals have stood up well over the last century. The birth and death dates are probably slightly in error. Austin was using town clerk's note of his death, "Mr. John Rice Senr of Warwick Decast ye 6th Day of January 1730/31 in ye 86 year of his age,"(6) 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. (7) If the death occurred later, then the birth date would have to be correspondingly advanced. Austi n accurately cited the same Warwick record as authority that John Rice "was born in old England and came with Mr. [Edmund] Calverly." (8) Elsewhere in his book Austin dated Calverly's arrival in Warwick in 1661. (9) 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. (10) Calverly was one of the early Warwick's most interesting figures, from the autumn of 1661 when he first bought property, through King Phillip's War when he supervised the defenses of the town. Unlike most newcomers who come into a community quietly, buying land and slowly being trusted with town offices, Calverly burst onto the scene. He bought 5 acres of land in Warwick with a house and orchard together with a meadow share and a 12-acre township near a little pond for £25 worth of "English cloth linen and woollen" from Henry Reddock of Patuxett 27 September 1661. (11) He became a freeman three days later on 30 September 1661. (12) In a meteoric rise he became town clerk, constable, surveyor, jury foreman, appraiser, arbiter of disputes, repairer of bridges and highways, all-purpose witness, keeper of liquor excise records, legal advisor, etc., in the space of a few years. (13) A prior relationship with Samuel Gorton may have been the key to his rapid ascent to power. (14) He may also have been in the town some years earlier, long before his permanent settlement. Edmund Calverly signed the "submition to ye Stat of England with out ye Kings magisty," signed by many settlers on or just after 23 January 1648. The page being filled, he signed on a much later page of the records, but apparently before the restoration of the monarchy in England. (15) Edmund Calverly was much older than Rice, having been born around 1613. (16) He was literate, legally astute, and above all comfortable with organizing and managing. H e had almost certainly been in the military. Austin saw at the Warwick town clerk's office a "little memorandum book dated at Ely House, London 1659" that showed he had "been in the army" (the Parliamentary army). (17) Warwick town records contain a half-page memorandum concerning a "letter Attorney unto Edmond Calvarie Keeper of the Ely house London" which was in Warwick 26 October 1657. (18) Ely House, previously the London residence of the Bishops of Ely and then the Earls of Hatton, was used during the Parliamentary period as both a jail and a home for injured soldiers and their families. (19) With the Restoration imminent, a committee was appointed 1 March 1660 to make other provisions for "widows, orphans, and maimed soldiers at Ely House.""(20) Even supposing that Calverly retained his position as keeper (i.e., warden or director) to the end, he was at the Restoration an unemployed supporter of the losing side. 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, (21) 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." (22) 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. (23) Given the age difference between the two men, one wonders whether Rice might have been an apprentice (both men were cordwainers) (24) 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. (25) 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 Edmund Calverly and 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. (26) By the 1660s 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 the ir 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. (27) 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. (28) 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. (29) 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 redy to strike, and saide to the Constable & his ayde stand off at yor perellJohn Harrud aforesaide & the rest of his Company stod in a desperate posture, holding their Axes up att 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.

GEDCOM Note

John was a Deputy in Warwwick multiple years: 1705, 1714-1716, 1718-1719, 1721-1722, and 1727.

GEDCOM Note

John Rice was "born in old England and came with Mr. Calverly," the Warwick records declare. (Edmund Calvery (a London inn-keeper) was in Warwick as early as 1661.) "His name first appears on the colony records in a deposition given during a land title controversy between William Harris and the Town of Warwick. He is here mentioned as among several Warwick men who were clearing timber at Paquabuck in May, 1663. In 1673 and 1674, John Rice and others purchased land near Potowomut and Coweset Bay from the Indians. By order of the town dated May 22, 1674 a home lot of six acres was granted him at Warwick Cove adjacent to the Edmund Calverly lot. At Newport, on May 4, 1675, he was admitted a freeman of the colony. He served on the Grand Jury in 1687 and was deputy from Warwick in 1710." "Pedigree Resource File," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:9HQ7-WWT : accessed 20 July 2018), entry for John RICE; file (2:2:2:MM9T-QN3), submitted 2 August 2003 by plockard2768319 [identity withheld for privacy].