Rice Family
Our story starts in New England and moves to New York, Michigan, and points west. We were active in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Our family trekked across the American plains to pioneer in Utah and Nevada.
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Hyrum Smith Rice
Hyrum Rice was born in 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois. Hyrum traveled across the plains to Utah with his siblings in the Heber C. Kimball Company. His sick mother died soon after her children left for Utah. Hyrum married Olive Smith in 1865. They first lived in Cache County, Utah before moving to a ranch at Round Mountain near Almo, Idaho. He died around 1906.
Edwin Buckwalter Rice
Edwin Buckwalter Rice was born on December 20, 1861. He married Sylvia Lovina Drake in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah. The couple first lived in Corrine, Utah, from which Ed freighted goods to Montana. The family moved to Conant and Parker, Idaho before moving east to the Teton Valley in 1889. Ed died in St. Anthony, Idaho on October 6, 1939.
Richard Drake & Phoebe Lovina Beecher
Richard Drake and Phoebe Lovina Beecher married in July 1864 and they settled in northern Utah and southern Idaho before pulling up stakes and moving to the wild Teton Valley to help settle Victor and Cedron, Idaho. Richard passed away in 1912 after suffering from a stroke eight years earlier. In 1915 Phoebe decided to help her daughter and son-in-law homestead a dry farm north of St. Anthony, Idaho. She seemed to enjoy the adventure, but pluresy hit her and her health rapidly deteriorated. She passed away in July 1915, having been a pioneer her entire life.
Sylvia Lovina Drake
Sylvia Lovina Drake was born in Willard, Utah on March 3, 1867. She married Edwin Rice on her 17th birthday and they made their home in Conant and Parker, Utah. Later they moved to the Teton Basin where she operated a hotel and a millinery shop. She passed away in St. Anthony, Idaho on November 13, 1944.
Jane Clarissa Miller
Jane Clarissa Miller was born on August 1, 1841 or 1842 in Adams, Illinois. The Miller family first moved to Kanesville, Iowa, and then Farmington, Utah. Jane married Oscar North Rice on April 25, 1859, and they settled in what is now Providence, Utah. She died at the age of fifty-four on February 15, 1896.
Elizabeth Almira Babbitt
Elizabeth Almira Babbitt was born in 1830 at Painesville, Ohio. Her family joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and lived near both Kirtland, Ohio and Nauvoo, Illinois. She married Leonard G. Rice in 1849 and crossed the plains with her new husband to settle in Farmington, Utah. Later she moved her family to southern Idaho, where she died in 1907 at the age of 77.