Edmund Rice (c. 1594 – 3 May 1663) was an early English settler to Massachusetts Bay Colony born in Suffolk, England. He lived in Stanstead, Suffolk and Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire before sailing with his family to America. He landed in the Colony in summer or fall of 1638, thought to be first living in the town of Watertown, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter he was a founder of Sudbury in 1638, and later in life was one of the thirteen petitioners for the founding of Marlborough in 1656. He was a deacon in the Puritan Church, and served in town politics as a selectman and judge. He also served five years as a member of the Great and General Court, the combined colonial legislature and judicial court of Massachusetts.Powell. (1963).
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 most likely birthplace was in Suffolk is found through the town of his marriage and of his earliest children's births. 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.Holman, Mary Lovering. (1934). "English notes on Edmund Rice." The American Genealogist 10:133-137.Jacobus, Donald Lines. (1936). "English Ancestry of Edmund Rice, Sudbury, Massachusetts." The American Genealogist 11:14-21. Edmund Rice had a presumed brother, Henry (c. 1580-1621), who married Elizabeth Frost (sister of Edmund's wife Thomasine) on 12 November 1605 at St. James Church, Stanstead, Suffolk . 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 and the records are presumed to be lost.
Considerable information about the early life of Edmund Rice in England can be gleaned from his children's baptismal records, as well as land ownership and other public records in Stanstead, Suffolk and Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. 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.p. 197, The Charities of Hertfordshire, In: Anon. Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries, Volume IV. F.E. Robinson Publishers, London. 1898.p. 45 In: Cobb, J. W. (1883). Under the incumbency of Rev. Newman, Rice served as a churchwarden at St. Peter's Church and acted as overseer of the poor for eight years. 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 transfer and consolidate several royal charity grants for administration under civil authority.p. 198, The Charities of Hertfordshire, In: Anon. Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries, Volume IV. F.E. Robinson Publishers, London. 1898. While living in Berkhamsted, Rice acquired and was taxed on of land in 1627, and on from 1633 to 1637.Berkhamsted land records, Appendix III, p. 178 in Powell (1963) op. cit. There is no record in Berkhamsted of Rice paying taxes on his land in 1638, possibly due to its sale to finance his trip to America.
There is no surviving record of Edmund Rice's voyage to America with his family, but it was surmised 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 petitioners residing in Watertown, Massachusetts.p. 74, in Powell (1963). op. cit. However, the 1638 petition to the General Court to found Sudbury did not explicitly mention Rice's name, so documentation of Rice's presumed short-term residence in Watertown is poor. The first documented record of his presence in Massachusetts is in the Township Book of Sudbury prior to 4 April 1639 in which he was already serving as a selectman.
Between 1638 and 1657, Rice resided in Sudbury where he became a leader in the community. 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."p. 21 in Powell (1963) op. cit. He was appointed on 4 September 1639 by the General Court to lay out the roads and lots of Sudbury, and he was granted of land near the original Sudbury meetinghouse . On 3 April 1640, Rice was granted in southeastern Sudbury near the Old Connecticut Path. He served as a selectman in Sudbury in 1639 and 1640, and subsequently for several years between 1644 and 1656. He was designated by the General Court as a freeman on 13 May 1640,p. 17 In: Paige, L.R. (1849). and was first elected as a deputy (representative) of the Great and General Court in October 1640.p.301 Shurtleff (1853) op.cit. He was later appointed by the General Court on 2 June 1641 as a Judge of Small Causes for Sudbury, serving until 1648 in the appointed position. Then from 1648 until 1654 he was elected and reelected locally in Sudbury as one of the municipal judges.p. 108 in Powell (1963). He was reelected for another year term as a deputy of the General Court in 1643.p. 328, Shurtleff (1853) op. cit.p. 41, Hudson(1889) op. cit. In 1644 Rice and two other Sudbury residents (Peter Noyes and Thomas Mayhew) were appointed to survey the farm properties of the estate of the deceased Joseph Glover near the southeastern boundary of Sudbury to be transferred to Harvard College President Henry Dunster who had married Glover's widow Elizabeth and assumed responsibility for the Glover children. On 18 June 1645, Rice and his colleagues reported to the General Court on their survey.p. 38 In: Shurtleff, N.B. (1854). In 1648, Rice was ordained as a Deacon in the Puritan Church at Sudbury.p. 1 In: Ward, A.H. (1858). He was appointed by the General Court on 22 May 1651 as a member of a commission to settle a boundary dispute between Watertown and Sudbury, and he was reelected as a deputy of the General Court in each of the three years from 1652 through 1654.pp. 259, 297, & 340. In: Shurtleff, N.B. (1854). Again in May 1656, Rice and Peter Noyes were called upon by the General Court for their expertise to survey of land purchased by John Stone of Sudbury from the Indians, which was supplemented by a grant of the General Court to Stone of an additional in what is now Framingham.p. 404, Shurtleff, N.B. (1854). Stone erected a gristmill on his property of Stone's End in 1656 that would later become the village of Saxonville. Again in 1662 at the behest of the General Court, Rice and John Howe of Marlborough were called upon to survey of land in the area now known as Framingham that they deemed to be worth £10 to be awarded by the General Court to Thomas Danforth as compensation for his services to the Colony and Harvard College.p.92 In: Temple, J.H. (1887).
Edmund Rice was particularly successful in his own real estate transactions. After selling his of land and homestead near the Sudbury meetinghouse on 1 September 1642 to John Moore,p. 3 In: Bolton, E.S. (1904). Rice established his residence on 13 September 1642 on his 20 acres of land abutting Henry Dunster's farm near the Old Connecticut Path in southeastern Sudbury.Dunster, Henry 1609-1659? Papers of Henry Dunster and the Dunster and Glover families. "Agreement between Henry Dunster and his farmer, Edmund Rice, 1642 September 13". UAI 15.850 Box 1, Folder 8, Harvard University Archives. web access Within a year, Philemon Whale and Thomas Axtell, former town mates and kin from Berkhamstead, England established their homesteads on adjacent lots nearby.p. 41 In: Hudson (1889). op. cit.p. 189 In: Powell (1963) op. cit. In October 1643 Rice sold Philemon Whale of land and a house near the Old Connecticut Path in southern Sudbury and also that same month he sold of adjacent land to Thomas Axtell. But only three years later on 6 May 1646, Rice, along with his son Edward Rice and Philemon Whale, administered the estate of the deceased Thomas Axtell and he purchased back the land from the estate shortly thereafter. On 8 April 1657, Rice purchased the "Jennison Farm" in the southeastern part of Sudbury.p.41 in Hudson (1889) op. cit. And by 1659, Rice had acquired about 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 that included the former Glover family lands.p. 33. In: Smith, E.H. (1938). The General Court made grants of land to Rice in what is now Framingham, in 1652 and in 1659.p. 681 In: Temple, J.H. (1887). These lands in Framingham were passed on to Rice's son Henry in 1659, and became known as Rice's End.p.28 In: Parr, J.L and K.A. Swope. (2009).
As the Enclosure Movement was a contentious political issue in England, the issue of land tenure was also highly contentious in 17th-century Massachusetts Bay Colony and in Sudbury in particular.p. 116 In: Powell (1963) op cit. 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 west of Sudbury that, in addition to becoming Marlborough, eventually became Northborough, Westborough, Southborough, and Hudson as well.p. 160 in Hudson (1889) op. cit. 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 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.pp.133-138. In: Powell (1963) op. cit. Rice was reelected as selectman in Marlborough every year after 1657 until his death.