Ann Eliza Rice

ANN HOPKINS, daughter of John Hopkins and Jean Gordon, was born August 21, 1780, four miles northeast of Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, Va. (this was then part of Augusta County). She married about April 3, 1802, James Rice, a Virginian, of Rockingham County (son of John Rice and Mary Rice, n‚e Finney), formerly a student of Jefferson Medical College, but at this time engaged in mercantile and land investment. They moved about 1805 to Greenup County, now Boyd County, Ky., where Mr. Rice continued his land investments, and under Robert Poage, his wife's brother-in-law, was appointed surveyor of Greenup County.

Here six children were born to them, five boys and one girl. In the winter or early spring of 1815, her husband was drowned, near Catlettsburg, Ky., while attempting to cross the Ohio River in a skiff, attended by a negro servant. The boat capsized; he was an expert swimmer, but it is probable that he was seized with a cramp or that the weight of his clothing overpowered him.

Ann Hopkins Rice, a little frail woman, so unexpectedly left with six children (the youngest being born after the death of his father) in a comparatively new country, with her husband's rather extended business interests and plowed lands in the embryo of development, with a brave spirit accepted the trust. When her boys had come to manhood, people used to say, "I would like to see the mother of those young men." She was delicate and small, with a spirit sweet and pure, and the Gordon blood in her veins. This picture was given me largely by my mother, her erstwhile daughter-in-law, so that old-time legend of inharmony is broken.

In 1815, soon after the birth of the youngest child, she removed from Greenup County to Christian County, near Hopkinsville, to be in touch with her brother, Thomas Hopkins. The estate in Greenup had been intrusted to friends, whose administration was unsuccessful, and the children came to majority with nothing except a remnant of old slaves. This deprived them of all opportunities of advanced education, a great regret to them. With Southern inheritance, tradition, and blood in their veins, they had come to young manhood just in time to be caught and swep, away by the moral wave of abolition of the slave, and they did not hesitatet though at a great personal sacrifice, to salute the flag of freedom that it might long wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave, nor to question between personal sacrifice and duty to humanity; even though it were exteriorly a black humanity, the blackness would be no darker because of their making. Twenty-five dollars each secured outfit membership and transport to a Liberian colony. One old colored man, faithful to the tradition, refused "to leave missus and the boys," and with them, in the spring of 1835, came to Henderson, then a part of Warren County. Ill., traveling in wagons, stopping at wayside inns or hospitable pioneer hearthstones, and occasionally being forced to camp out, but thinking no discomfort a hardship that brought them nearer to a state of freedom. There was no bitterness in their memories of "the old Kentucky home." They were born and bred there, and to this day they know "you're mighty lucky when you married a girl like Sue."

In 1841, after her son George was married, Ann Hopkins Rice made her home with him for a number of years, though her last years were with her son Cyrus William, at Oquauka, Henderson County, Ill., where she died February 16, 1850, tenderly regretted by her children and friends.

Written by James Montgomery Rice, Peoria Ill.