Spring 2004 Newsletter

I moved in the past year from temperate, rainy Seattle, to South Hadley in western Massachusetts. Suddenly, I'm experiencing winter again, and I'm loving it. There seems to be only a moderate amount of snow, and some extremely cold temperatures. I used to say that cold without snow was wasted, but that was before I discovered genealogy.
So I've been spending the frigid evenings and weekends in front of my computer, with a view of the snow in my backyard, doing genealogy projects. This newsletter contains an article by Terry Reigel on using the internet genealogy sites, which I found very helpful. I wish I'd known all that before.
Not being retired yet, with what seems like a very long time to go, I am constantly thankful that these internet resources exist. The time and money saved by not having to travel around to get all this information is extraordinary. Of course, a lot of it is undocumented, inaccurate, or inconsistent, but I've learned not to accept anything at face value. I often write an email to whoever submitted a family tree. I don't always get a response, and some I do get aren't very helpful, but occasionally I find someone who proves to be a genuine treasure. One woman took the time to scan and email me at least 20 documents over the period of a week; others have sent me bulging packets of photocopied material. Wills, deeds, marriage records, military records, pictures and maps. And those bits of information that open up more and more questions. "She was illegitimate, but my files are in boxes so I can't tell you how I know" - that one was frustrating. But it is all worth it, and a great way to hide from the cold weather.
-Lynn McLaughlin

The Internet, the boon or bane of serious genealogy? Some would argue that as far as genealogy goes, there is nothing of value on the Internet. I suggest that they would throw the baby out with the proverbial bath water, and in doing so ignore one of genealogy's most valuable tools. In this article I hope to illustrate just one aspect of how the Internet can be used as a resource to achieve results that would be much more difficult, perhaps even impossible with traditional tools. I'll cite some real examples, and provide some tips I've found helpful.
There are several distinct types of useful genealogical data available on the Internet. They include images of original documents, transcriptions and extracts of source records, and indexes and finding aids. These can be very helpful and convenient aids locating useful sources. But it's the most maligned of Internet sources, user-contributed databases, that I will focus on in this article.
Published genealogies have long included fanciful, careless, and even fraudulent information. Careful researchers know they need to regard with suspicion anything that is not well documented, and to check even that which appears to be supported with source citations. The advent of the Internet has made it much easier to publish the results of one's research, and as a result there is much more family history information published. And, sometimes encouraged by the practices of some vendors, a disproportionate share is published by novice researchers with little understanding of sound research practices. Does this mean that all family histories on the Internet should be dismissed? Not at all. But it does require that those who would seek to make use of these sources adopt strategies for separating the nuggets that might be there from the abundance of distracting data.
On the Internet, published genealogies are found primarily in three forms: 1) submissions to commercial genealogy sites where they are offered together with the work of others, generally with helpful search facilities, 2) the Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and 3) personal websites created by individual researchers. Collectively, these are often called user-submitted genealogies. Like their counterparts published on paper, the quality of the information they contain varies widely.
Just what might we hope to find of use in this vast array of data? "Instant" family history, as the advertising of some commercial interests might suggest? "Proof" of those difficult ancestral links? Of course not, no more than we would expect that of most published genealogies. Rather, consider these genealogies as clues, finding aids, and gateways to collaboration. They can suggest theories to research, provide aids to finding source information, and provide a means to identify others researching the same lines.
How do you find worthwhile information among the torrent of questionable data being provided? Some traditional tools are still helpful in identifying reliable contributors. Are sources cited? Does the data reflect care, for example are the place names appropriate for the time period? But Internet genealogies, especially those published on the major family history sites, offer additional helpful clues.
The most useful, I think, is whether the data is unique. When the same individual is listed dozens, or even hundreds, of times in a site index, it may be nearly impossible to tell which data reflects actual research, and which was simply copied off similar submissions. But information appearing only once or a few times suggests a submitter who has found something others haven't.
An example may illustrate the point. I was researching an ancestor who immigrated in the mid-19th century with a number of siblings. The father's given and surname was known from several sources, but the mother, who apparently had died when the children were young, was completely unknown. From family notes, we knew of the father's second marriage. A search for the father on a popular user-submitted database yielded a single entry for the father and the second wife. Good news - absence of multiple postings for this person suggested the submitter might have some unique sources. I contacted the submitter, who lives in Germany, and is a distant relative of the second wife. He had two things I did not - the full four names of the father, and knowledge of the villages around the family's home community. This enabled him to locate in the IGI (International Genealogical Index, accessible on FamilySearch.org) a likely marriage record from a nearby town, a task I would likely never have accomplished with such a common surname. There were four marriages in the time period of men matching all four names, so knowledge of the places, not shown on maps I've found, helped too. Examination of the source of the IGI entry, a parish record, revealed a note that the groom was from the expected village, substantiating that we had found the correct marriage. Through further research of that parish register, several additional generations of ancestors were found.
The technique of looking for submittals with unique information can be helpful in other contexts as well. Rather than seeking persons posted rarely, one can look for unusual information about a person listed many times over. Another example demonstrates this approach. I was researching the ancestry of a female ancestor who lived in 17th century Virginia. Her second husband was erroneously identified as her father in published works in the late 19th century. Even though this error was disclosed by 1901, some published works, and many Internet genealogies, continue to perpetuate it. A 1984 social science text purports to identify her father, but offers no source information. I searched the user-submitted databases, focusing on those that claimed to identify her father, and rejecting those with the known error. There was a manageable number remaining, and I contacted each submitter. Most, as expected, had nothing to offer, but a few had done serious work on the line. I received information helpful in identifying original sources that documented the ancestor's three marriages and other facts, but no definitive proof identifying her father. Finally, one contact revealed the repository of the authors' notes for the textbook with the tempting identification. Unfortunately, a search of the voluminous notes showed that no source was shown for the key information. But at least I knew I hadn't overlooked a source that had been found by the authors.
These are but two examples that show how user-submitted genealogies, when carefully screened for clues, may lead to finding helpful fellow researchers and locating useful source information. After locating potentially useful submissions, the key is to contact the submitter. Many will be able to offer nothing more than "I got that from someone, but don't recall who," if they respond at all. But a few will lead to valuable contacts. Of course, always verify from original sources. Even apparently careful researchers make errors in reading or transcribing sources, or simply overlook something. This is true for information published on the Internet just as with any other source of information.
An alternate way to use user-submitted data sites is to turn the tables, that is, submit your own data and let helpful people find you. I have an extract of my data posted both on a popular user-submitted database site and also on my own website. I recommend posting on both because I find active researchers tend to use the known genealogy sites, while cousins casually browsing the Web tend to use regular Internet search engines. These search engines cannot search the commercial databases, but do find personal websites such as mine. I find both types of contacts helpful, but in different ways. As one would expect, I find most of the resulting contacts produce little of value, but occasionally a real gem appears in my email inbox. One such contact lead me to a previously unfound second cousin who was able to relate fascinating stories about her early years, and thus shed light on the circumstances of my father's life in the years between leaving home and his marriage, a period I knew little about.
Sometimes these contacts can yield significant research breakthroughs. In another example, I received an email from a researcher who had found familiar names in my posted database. They were the children of an ancestor who we knew only by her given name. My correspondent provided a transcription of a will naming those children as the testator's grandchildren. Once this document established the mother of the children was the testator's daughter, my correspondent provided information on three generations of additional ancestors and a marvelous story of the will-writer being captured and held by Indians. While I might have someday found the connection had I focused on this ancestor long enough, it is much more likely I would never have searched diligently enough to find it. And my correspondent solved the puzzle of the daughter's marriage that had stumped her for years.
If you decide to post some of your information as a means of contacting cousins and fellow researchers (as opposed to doing so for the purpose of simply sharing your work) I suggest posting only minimal information. I include only birth, marriage, and death dates and places. And, contrary to many recommendations, I do not include source information. Rather, I include a prominent notice that source information is available, and invite correspondence to share information. All this is to encourage dialog with my readers, rather than encouraging them to simply copy my information anonymously. For an example of this approach, see my website, at www.reigelridge.com/roots.htm and use the two links at the top of the page. One leads to the pages on my site, and the other leads to my data on Rootsweb.
Hopefully, these examples suggest how even that most "useless" of Internet sources, user-contributed data, can be a very useful aid in doing sound genealogical research. Of course there are other, much more robust, sources available on the Internet, but they are the subject of another article.
So, now that you have all these clues on how to use these user-submitted genealogies, how do you find them? I know of three that provide access without a subscription: Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, and GenCircles.com. There are several others available by subscription, but I haven't seen that they offer any advantage over the free sites. Of the free sites, I favor RootsWeb, as it seems to me a bit easier to use. Since RootsWeb and Ancestry share this data when users search either one, submitting to either is equivalent to submitting to both. To find the sites created by individual researchers, I suggest your favorite Internet search site, such as Google, and the Gendex.com genealogy index.
-Terry Reigel

This third installment follows yet another family that is closely interwoven with the descendants of Edmund Rice. The previous two articles covered the families of William Ward of Sudbury and Marlborough and Thomas Brigham of Cambridge. Now, we turn to another early settler who played an important role in the founding Sudbury and Marlborough: John How.

John How was relatively young when he arrived in Massachusetts, and, as far as we know, all his children were born there. Like Edmund Rice and William Ward, John How was present at Sudbury in 1639 for the first division of land to the town's proprietors. Also like the others, he had a large family (12 known children), and all three men were among the Sudbury petitioners in 1656 for a grant of land to the west to allow room for their children to settle down on farms nearby. That grant is what became the town of Marlborough. What sets How apart from the others is that he obtained a license in 1661 to keep a tavern, thereby starting an institution that lives on to the present day as the Wayside Inn (built by John's grandson David). The Wayside Inn, of course, was the site of our 2002 Reunion and of many other Reunions in past decades.

As in the previous articles, not all of the featured family are included in the on-line database -- in this case, only four are -- but at least four others are present in the Master database. Of the remaining four, three died in infancy, and one was a shadowy figure now often confused with another How born near the same time (more about him in a moment).

1. John (1640-1676) married Elizabeth___ and had a son John, Jr. who had a daughter Hannah who married Jacob⁴ Rice (Jacob³, Edward², Edmund¹) and a daughter Elizabeth who married Matthias⁵ How (Deliverance⁴ Rice, John³, Edward², Edmund¹). John Jr. also had a son John 3rd whose son Cyprian married Dorothy⁶ How (Ruth⁵ Brigham, Jonathan⁴, Mary³ Rice, Henry², Edmund¹). Note that Mary³ Rice's husband Thomas Brigham was featured in the previous article.

2. Samuel (1642-1713) married Martha Bent and had a son David (builder of the Wayside Inn) whose sons Israel and David married sisters Elizabeth⁵ and Abigail⁵ Hubbard (Joseph⁴, Hannah³ Rice, Samuel², Edmund¹). David's grandson Ezekiel Howe married Sarah⁷ Read (Patience⁶ Goodnow, Sarah⁵ Rice, John⁴, John³, Edward², Edmund¹). Samuel also had a daughter, Hannah, who had four children who married Rice descendants. Daughter Dorothy Barnes married Deacon James⁴ Woods (Lydia³ Rice, Edward², Edmund¹); son Daniel Barnes married his cousin Zeruiah⁵ Eager (Lydia⁴ Woods, sister to Daniel's father James⁴); daughter Hannah Barnes married Andrew⁴ Rice (Joshua³, Samuel², Edmund¹); and son John Barnes married Ruth⁴ Rice (Edmund³, Samuel², Edmund¹). Note that another sibling of the two Hubbard sisters, Joseph⁵, was mentioned in the previous article as marrying a Brigham.

3. Sarah (1644-1707) married Samuel Ward, son of immigrant William, as described in the first article of this series. In case you don't have that issue of the newsletter at your fingertips, I repeat most of that description here. The Wards had a daughter Mary who married Caleb³ Rice (Joseph², Edmund¹). They also had a son Joseph whose granddaughters Ruth and Mary Ward married, respectively, Ithamar⁶ Brigham (yes, another Brigham) and Jonas⁶ Morse (Lucy⁵ Eager, sister to Zeruiah⁵ mentioned in section 2) and whose grandson Daniel Ward married Anna⁵ Rice (Andrew⁴, mentioned in section 2). Their son Samuel had a granddaughter Abigail Ward who married Josiah⁷ Bridges (James⁶, Hachaliah⁵, Sarah⁴ Brewer, Elizabeth³ Rice, Henry², Edmund¹).

5. Isaac (1648-1724) married Frances Woods and had a son John who married Deliverance⁴ Rice (mentioned in section 1) and a daughter Elizabeth who married Nathan⁴ Brigham (Mary³ Rice, Henry², Edmund¹). In short, another Brigham!

6. Josiah (1650-?) is the only How child whose birth is not found in the vital records. He married Mary Haynes and had a son Daniel whose son Jotham married Priscilla⁵ Rice (Luke⁴, Daniel³, Edward², Edmund¹). Daniel had a grandson Jonah Howe who married Prudence⁷ Bowker (Charles⁶, Martha⁵ Eager, sister to Lucy⁵ mentioned in section 3 and Zeruiah⁵ mentioned in section 2) and a granddaughter Lucretia How who married Artemas⁵ Wheeler (Lois⁴ Wheelock, Lydia³ Rice, Henry², Edmund¹).

7. Mary (1653/4-?) married John Witherby and had a son Thomas who married Hannah⁴ Woods (sister to James⁴ and Lydia⁴ mentioned in section 2) and a granddaughter Elizabeth Witherby who married Nathan⁴ Rice (Caleb³, mentioned in section 3).

8. Thomas (1656-1733) married Sarah Hosmer and had a son Jonathan whose daughter Prudence married Isaac⁵ How (Deliverance⁴ Rice, mentioned in sections 1 and 5) and a son Thomas whose daughter Sarah married Simon⁵ Gates (Sarah⁴ Woods, another sister to James⁴ and Lydia⁴ mentioned in section 2 and Hannah⁴ mentioned in section 7).

11. Daniel (1661-?) is a mysterious figure. He may have lived to a ripe old age (that is, if he is the Daniel who died in Marlborough in 1739/40), or he may have died young, but he is also sometimes confused with another Daniel How, son of Abraham Howe, another early Marlborough settler. This other Daniel had no fewer than five grandchildren who married Rice descendants, but we must leave them for another article.

12. Eleazar (1663-1737) married Hannah Howe (daughter of Abraham) and had a son Ephraim who married Elizabeth⁴ Rice (Benjamin³, Edward², Edmund¹).

As before, these are just the most obvious connections. There are many more. One example may be worth mentioning here because it ties into the Brighams. In the previous article, I mentioned an indirect connection between the Brighams and a certain Jonathan Morse of Marlborough whose great-grandson Peabody Houghton married a Rice descendant. Here, I note that David How mentioned in section 2 had another son Eliphalet who married Hepzibah Morse, the daughter of this same Jonathan, and these were the grandparents of Peabody Houghton.

Book Review - John Winthrop, America's Forgotten Founding Father

By Francis J. Bremer

Oxford University Press, 2003

478 pages including 12 plates, 76 endnote pages, an Epilogue and Index.

$ 39.95; Amazon.com $ 27.97

John Winthrop was the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was elected governor subsequently many times before his death 26 March 1649. He led a large fleet of immigrants from England arriving off Salem Harbor, 6 June 1630 and shortly thereafter to a narrow neck of land that became Boston - the beginning of the great migration. The author writes about John Winthrop's ancestors, his life in England and the voyage for half of the book, with the remainder devoted to New England.

Francis Bremer, the author, earned his Ph.D. in history at Columbia University and is now Professor of History at Millerville University, Pennsylvania. He is also the Editor of the Winthrop Papers for the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. He will speak at the Rice Reunion September 18, 2004.

In the process of describing Winthrop's early life before emigrating at age 42, Bremer gives us the results of his extensive investigations into the "early modern era" of England, particularly of Suffolk and Essex Counties and especially the Stour River Valley. Since this region is exactly where Edmund Rice and Thomasine Frost spent the first years of married life and where the Frosts, at least, go back to the 1450s, it is of great interest to Rice cousins.

The author's main thrust though is to also describe Winthrop's Puritanism. The Introduction states, "I therefore employ "hotter sort of Protestant,'' "evangelical," "reformed," "godly," and "puritan" as being roughly synonymous." He continues to spell puritan without capitalization. This is a religious book in the sense Bremer describes in great detail the religious strife that was part of the scene both in England and America. It was, after all, a time just after Henry VIII had banished Catholicism from England, which opened up land for yeomen with the sale of monastery lands (Edmund Rice moved his family in 1627 from Stanstead to Berkhamsted because of newly available land). The puritans wanted much more reform than the Church of England represented.

John Winthrop was born in Edwardstone, an adjoining town to Groton, grew up there and in Groton, went to Cambridge just after Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, but never finished his degree because he married at 17. Bremer discusses this unusual situation but he emphasizes the religious turmoil rather than the emotional states of the participants.

In addition to his descriptions of Groton Manor that John eventually owned, Bremer in an endnote directs the reader to his web site for additional description of the 15th and 16th century physical structure. Dr. Bremer sent me a booklet containing many photographs of the Manor and other images of Winthrop-owned buildings when I couldn't find them at the website. He spent many months in Suffolk and even participated in the services of the Groton church which is Church of England today not Puritan or Congregational.

Professor Bremer's account of the Stour Valley's agricultural, governmental and religious world in the 15th and 16th centuries should be of great interest to descendants of Edmund Rice and Thomasine Frost. This book, in addition to describing the lives of the Winthrops, gives us more general insight into the lives of people of that time. In that sense it is supplementary to Sumner Chilton Powell's, Puritan Village, and Roger Thompson's Mobility and Migration. I highly recommend it to my Rice Cousins even though it never mentions Edmund Rice.

2004 Rice Reunion - September 17 and 18, 2004, Radisson Hotel, Marlborough, MA

Mark your calendars for Friday 17 September 2004 when we will start our reunion at 1:00 p.m. at the Radisson. That afternoon will be devoted to the 300th year anniversary of the capture of four Rice boys in a part of Marlborough that became Westborough.

That night we will meet for a Dutch Treat Supper at the hotel. The Board of Directors meeting will follow, starting at 7:30 PM.

On Saturday from 9 AM to 11:30 will be time for socializing, buying Rice Genealogy books, and checking genealogies from nine Rice generations on laptop computers.

After lunch, Dr. Francis Bremer will speak on John Winthrop and the Stour River Valley of Suffolk, England. This is the region that Edmund Rice and Thomasine Frost came from. His biography of Winthrop is reviewed in this newsletter.

The Rice Association business meeting will follow. Afterwards, we can journey a few miles to Wayland (East Sudbury) to visit Edmund's grave site and the Peter Rice house very close to the Radisson Hotel.

Welcome to New Members

Alexandra E. Stocker, New York

Scott McKay, Michigan

Jean W. Groves, Virginia

William A. Sullivan, New York

Mary B. Sullivan, Ontario

Richard Harrison, Illinois

Dana R. Cobb, New Jersey

John Morrow Rice Jr., Missouri

The Master Genealogist, Version 5

Late last fall WhollyGenes completed the release of The Master Genealogist (TMG), version 5. Our association has selected TMG as the computer database for all of the descendants of Edmund Rice. At our September reunion we demonstrated a nine-generation report of Edmund Rice's descendants that was produced from our TMG database. Our master database in now using TMG 5, we urge all TMG users to upgrade to the latest version of this program.

Each year several cousins submit copies of their ancestral lines in computer format. TMG accepts direct imports from most popular genealogy computer programs. We edit your database to conform with our editorial conventions and add the new information to our master data base. In exchange for your recent ancestors, we can provide authoritative reports from our master database about your more distant Rice ancestors. If you are uncertain about submitting your database, George King will be glad to help you.

Some cousins have excellent paper records, but are not using a genealogy computer program. Some have submitted their Rice ancestral line to our newsletter. These paper records are gathering dust. We need your help to get your paper records get into our master database. George has several folders of well-researched lines in his file cabinet, waiting for someone to do the data entry into TMG. If you are a TMG user and can volunteer a few hours a month, you can help us to add these excellent records to our computer database.

Questions and Answers:

Lynn: What nice new, useful features does TMG 5 have?

George: Direct import from more, and more recent, competing genealogy programs. More customization for power users.

Lynn: What, if any, problems does it have?

George: More complex interface and options for non-power users. Steeper learning curve for new users.

Lynn: What are the compatibility issues? Can you read a TMG 4 file with TMG 5?

George: Yes, one imports TMG 4 files into TMG 5 seamlessly.

Lynn: Can you read a TMG 5 file with TMG 4.x?

George: No, TMG 5 is not backward compatible.

- Lynn McLaughlin and George King

Dan Rice, A Famous Clown

Thanks for Peggy Grosser for the article on which this is based.

Who was one of the 19th century's most famous entertainers? Who was called the "prince of waggery" and the "excruciating jester"? Who was the first clown since the Roman era to use a trained rhinoceros in an act? Who was the only man able to turn a triple somersault and land clear of a line of eight elephants? Why, Dan Rice, of course. You've probably never heard of him, but you would have back then. He even ran briefly for president in 1868. His story has been published in Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard of" (Public Affairs, $30) by David Carlyon. He was born in 1823 in Manhattan, NY, and died in 1900.

Was he a descendant of Edmund Rice? An article in the New York Times on April 27, 2002 states that Rice's name was originally Daniel McLaren. Elsie Hawes Smith, in her book, More About Those Rices, says that although his descent from Edmund has not yet been traced, "it is almost a certainty".

Genetics Committee Report

(for current information about our genetics project, visit our Rice Family Project DNA Web Page)

There are now 21 Rices who have the Edmund Rice set of markers with good to excellent documentation. One other Rice DNA analysis is discussed below.
Two men with Rice surname who are also Kahnawake Mohawks have had their DNA samples analyzed for 25 markers. One who lives at Kahnawake village has 24/25 match with Edmund Rice's Reconstructed Ancestral Haplotype. He is now trying to search the Tribal Council records for a conventional genealogical pedigree with the aim of determining which of the three Rice boys he descends from. The good match means that in all likelihood he descends from one but DNA cannot tell which one.
The other Mohawk did not have Edmund's set of genetic markers but his DNA analysis showed a typical Amerindian marker set. This is quite distinctive and is found only among Native Americans. We think he descends from a Mohawk woman who acquired the Rice surname in addition to her Indian name. From what we have learned so far, names apparently follow the woman's clan for both males and females but in addition, oral tradition includes the Rice surname as well. This has made searching in microfilm records for the parish church, which are available at NEHGS, very difficult. However, Beth McAleer, who has been helping us, found a record of the second Mohawk's grandfather, whose baptismal certificate with his Indian name was made available to us. Neither Beth nor Bob Rice found any Rice surnames in the parish records.
In correspondence with another Kahnawake Mohawk who is now a professor in British Columbia (and claims descent from the Willams' girl captured from Deerfield, MA) we learned that many thousands of Rice surnames were found by him when he did some genealogical research a few years ago. These were found in another set of records controlled by the Mohawk Tribal Council. The question is whether or not anyone other than a Kahnawake Mohawk Nation member will be allowed to search such council records.
Other Rice families
Slowly we have been getting additions to the remaining groups with Rice surnames. Four groups are from the south, with from three to eight members. None have finished their paper genealogies, but recently a couple of new Rice males have given hope that at least one group is zeroing in on their Rice patriarch.
The last Rice group (8) has 22 members with only two of them in agreement and none have come close to finishing conventional genealogies. One Royce male whose markers do not match that of Robert Royce brings the total to 23.
We can conclude again that many different Rices immigrated and started families in what became the United States of America. Other single DNA surname studies are coming to the same conclusion.
FTDNA has made additional genetic markers available for very reasonable cost. The addition of 12 new markers to the former maximum 25 markers costs only $59 and may prove useful in clearing up ambiguities. We have ordered several of these additions but have not yet received any results.

Send $10 for a CD-ROM containing both a TMG 4 file and report in web page format to Bill Drury.
Work in Progress as of September 2003.
The information is copyrighted by the Edmund Rice (1638) Association and is restricted to the.personal use of association members.
For purchase only by association members who agree to its terms of use.

Ephraim Rice was born Feb. 20, 1792 in Somerset, VT, and died there Apr. 20, 1859. He married, September 11, 1814, Virtue Johnson, daughter of Joab Johnson and Jemima Ball (Ephraim's mother's sister). I am compiling Virtue's ancestry, back to the Mayflower. If you're intersted in a copy, contact Lynn McLaughlin.