Edmund Rice (1638) - Biography

Biography

Edmund Rice's rough birth date of 1594 is reckoned from a 3 April 1656 court deposition in Massachusetts in which he stated that he was 62 years old. His likely birthplace, somewhere in Suffolk in East Anglia, is found through the town of his marriage and of his earliest children's birth. Many of the church records from 1594 in Suffolk are lost, so any record of his birth or the names of his parents or any of his forebears is unknown. Edmund Rice had a presumed brother, Henry, who married Elizabeth Frost (sister of Edmund's wife Thomasine) on 12 November 1605 at St. James Church, Stanstead, Suffolk 52°06′42″N 0°41′26″E / 52.111652°N 0.690641°E / 52.111652; 0.690641. Repeated attempts to find record of Edmund Rice's birth or the birth of his presumed brother Henry in church or civil records of the Stanstead, Sudbury, Haverhill, and Bury St. Edmunds region of Suffolk have not been successful.

Considerable information about the early life of Edmund Rice in England can be gleaned from his children's baptismal records and land ownership and other public records in Stanstead, Suffolk and Berkhamsted, Hertsfordshire. He moved from Stanstead to Berkhamsted sometime in 1626, based upon the baptismal dates of his children Thomas and Lydia. That same year as a newcomer in town, Rice was named as a joint trustee along with Rev. Thomas Newman of a £50 grant for the benefit of the poor from King Charles I given on the occasion of his coronation. As a result of a royal inquisition held on 1 April 1634, funds remaining in the custody of Rice and Newman were to be transferred to the bailiff and burgesses of Berkhamsted as part of an effort to consolidate several royal charity grants for administration under civil authority. While living in Berkhamsted, Rice acquired and was taxed on 3 acres (12,000 m2) of land in 1627, and on 15 acres (61,000 m2) from 1633 to 1637.

There is no surviving record of Edmund Rice's voyage to America with his family, but it is known to have occurred between the 13 March 1638 baptism of his son Joseph in Berkhamsted and the petition to the Great and General Court to found Sudbury, Massachusetts 6 September 1638, showing all the Sudbury founders residing in Watertown, MA. However, the 1638 petition to the General Court to found Sudbury did not explicitly mention Rice's name, so there is in actuality poor documentation of Rice's presumed short-term residence in Watertown. The first documented record of his presence in Massachusetts is in Township Book of the Town of Sudbury in the year 1639.

Between 1638 and 1657, Rice resided in Sudbury where he became a leader in the community. He was appointed on 4 September 1639 by the General Court to lay out the roads and lots of Sudbury, and he was granted 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land near the original Sudbury meetinghouse 42°22′26″N 71°22′21″W / 42.373835°N 71.372609°W / 42.373835; -71.372609. He served as a selectman in Sudbury in 1639 and subsequently for several years between 1644 and 1656. He was designated a freeman on 13 May 1640, and was elected as a deputy (representative) of the Great and General Court in October 1640. He was later appointed as a Judge of Small Causes by the Massachusetts General Court for the Sudbury district on 2 June 1641. Sumner Chilton Powell wrote, in his 1964 Pulitzer Prize winning Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, "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."

After selling his 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land and homestead near the Sudbury meetinghouse on 1 September 1642 to John Moore, Rice established his residence on 13 September 1642 on land leased from Henry Dunster near the Old Connecticut Path in southeastern Sudbury. Within a year, Philemon Whale and Thomas Axtell, former town mates (and probably kin) from Berkhamstead, England established their homesteads on adjacent lots nearby. In October 1643 Rice sold Philemon Whale 9 acres (36,000 m2) of land and a house near the Old Connecticut Path in southern Sudbury and also that same month he sold 6 acres (24,000 m2) of adjacent land to Thomas Axtell. But only three years later in 1646, Rice purchased back the land from the Axtell estate, pledging to care for the "widow Axtell." In 1648, Rice was ordained as a Deacon in the Puritan Church at Sudbury. He was reelected as a deputy of the Massachusetts General Court in 1652 through 1654. And by 1659, Rice had acquired about 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land in southeastern Sudbury (present day Wayland and Cochituate), including nine acres of land and the homestead purchased back from Philemon Whale (see image of the homestead), and the probated estate of Henry Dunster.

The issue of land tenure was highly contentious in 17th Century Massachusetts Bay Colony and in Sudbury in particular. Open field or communal farming was practiced in most of Sudbury, following traditions of the commons and governance practices brought from central and western England during the early 17th Century. Rice and twelve other dissenters from Sudbury who were interested in 'closed field' or owner-operator farming as it was practiced in southeastern England petitioned the Great and General Court in 1656 to create the town of Marlborough where individual ownership of farmland was to be exclusively practiced. The tract of land was 8 square miles (21 km2) west of Sudbury that, in addition to becoming Marlborough, eventually became Northborough, Westborough, Southborough, and Hudson as well. Rice was elected as selectman of Marlborough in 1657 as the town was being established. The town was formally chartered on 12 June 1660 by the General Court. Upon being granted a maximum allotment of 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land in Marlborough, Rice was one of the three largest initial landholders of the new town. According to Powell (1963) the founding of Marlborough with exclusive closed-field land tenure was a seminal event in establishing the predominant freehold or fee simple land tenure system of America. Rice was reelected as selectman in Marlborough every year after 1657 until his death.

Edmund Rice died on 3 May 1663 in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and is presumed to be buried at the Old North Cemetery (site of the first Sudbury Meeting House) in what is now Wayland, Massachusetts 42°22′15″N 71°22′09″W / 42.370877°N 71.369052°W / 42.370877; -71.369052. Probate records show that his wife, Mercy, was executrix and that his estate including lands and homes in both Sudbury and Marlborough was valued at £743, 8s, & 4p, which was a considerable sum for the time.