Family: Rice

Oscar North Rice was born on October 19, 1835, in a frost-bitten, rattlesnake-infested country called Washtenaw in the wild territory of Michigan, where Indians lived, wolves prowled and bears were known to snooze beside the schoolhouse on hot spring days. It was a land without roads or bridges, and transportation was by foot, horseback, or waterways. The Rice family hunted bear and deer, and other wild game in the normal course of events in order to feed themselves. In 1842, the family made the long trip from Ypsilanti, Michigan to Nauvoo, Illinois because they had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Oscar knew nothing of ease or comforts in his day-to-day life, but he did know a lot about the Prophets and leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ and would have followed them to the ends of the earth, as well as to the end of time. He was seven years old when the Prophet Joseph and brother Hyrum Smith were killed. His father left a large family, the last one a baby brother, and crossed the Mississippi in February 1846 in a raging blizzard to satisfy the persecuting mobs.

In the spring of 1848, Brigham Young brought a message back from far-off Deseret (Utah), in which his father Ira Rice had said for them to come with the large companies crossing the Plains to their new home. Oscar was then
thirteen years old. His mother’s health had been destroyed by hardships of the flight from Nauvoo, Illinois and she could not follow the family to Utah. Consequently, Oscar left her, three sisters and baby brother Ephraim
to face 1,100 miles of wilderness without the support of his parents. What he found upon his arrival in Utah was of little comfort—the emptiness of a cabin shelter at the end of the journey with no mother to greet or care for
them. Soon after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Oscar North was called to be a scout to help with the Indian troubles in the Lemhi Valley of Idaho. During that time, Indians killed one of his best friends.

He with his father and brothers were the first to try to make a settlement in North Ogden, Utah. He had little formal schooling, but he learned how late frosts, bad winds, crickets, and Indians could dash the hopes of any person. From there he labored in Smithfield, Utah (1861-62), but trouble with Indians convinced him to return to Providence.

To supplement his income, he began freighting from Utah to Salmon, Idaho, after gold was discovered there. He loved to teach the Gospel to all who would listen and many times he preached to miners and others when away from home. Goods brought back on these trips he and his brother Dell sold in the first store in Providence, known as the Rice Brothers Store. On one of these trips, he had an accident, from which he suffered the rest of his life.

By 1870, he had taken up a homestead along the south side of the Logan River where tall willows grew far from the banks. Once when he was grubbing them, he met a bear. Later when cutting hay with a scythe, he came face to face with a mother bear. He wanted to cut her in half, but he succeeded only in snagging a bit of her hair on his scythe blade. One of his great desires was for his children have more schooling than he had. He helped build more than one public building, roads, bridges and canals. He also helped pay teachers to teach in Providence and Logan, Utah.

Oscar North married Jane Clarissa Miller in the spring of 1859. They were listed as being among the first families to go to Providence, Cache, Utah, to establish a new settlement. No Latter-day Saint group was ever without a place of worship and hold school. He helped to supply logs in 1859, and they had a flagpole from which flew the stars and stripes for the flag they loved. He hated to think about how he had taken sweet Jane from a good home in Farmington and asked her to live in a wagon box all summer while he helped in the plowing and planting and the gathering of logs needed to build shelters for everyone. That fall they went to father Daniel Miller’s place for the winter, where their daughter Alice was born in February 1860. Undaunted, they drove back to the log cabin with willows and sod for a leaky roof, rough floorboards, and no glass windows. Like all the rest of the pioneers, a fireplace provided the heat in their log cabin.

Oscar married a second wife—Margaret Mathews—which marriage was solemnized in the Endowment House by the authority of God in 1869. She was a faithful daughter in Zion who took an active part in the church in Providence, Utah. Oscar North Rice died on 17 September 1880 in his forty-fifth year. He was followed in death by Jane Clarissa on February 15, 1896, and Margaret on 18 February 1926.

The Oscar Rice family knew all about going hungry and sacrificing for others. He could never tell of leisure or having plenty of anything, but dangers. His chief satisfaction was in doing the best he knew how and living up to the Priesthood he held and honored. He firmly believed in all of the teachings and commandments made by God through his authorized leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was a faithful tithe payer, he gave freely to the Church. Like Abraham of old, who would have sacrificed his son if God required it of him. Oscar was willing to obey every requirement of God—even the law of plural marriage. It was not an easy law to obey and only a few entered into that covenant.

Introduction

Leonard Gurley’s parents, Ira and Sarah Ann Harrington Rice, were living in Northville, Wayne County, Michigan, when he was born September 3, 1829. Missionaries came to their home in Michigan while Leonard was a young child, and the family became members of the newly restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and soon joined the body of the Church at Nauvoo, Illinois. He remembered well, watching his father and other men helping on the building of the Temple there. He remembered, too, those sorrowful days surrounding the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum Smith. He stood with the thousands of Saints in that hot summer sun when their bodies were returned to Nauvoo in an open wagon.

The Rice home was burned by mobs the year the Latter-day Saints crossed the Mississippi River in 1846. Leonard’s father and two of his older half-brothers had preceded him to Utah to prepare ahead for the rest of the family. By this time his mother, Sarah Ann, had given birth to twelve children, ten of whom were living. Leonard, who was then 19, and the oldest son of the remaining children, carried the responsibility of bringing part of the family, Oscar North, 15; Adelbert, 9; Hyrum Smith, 4; Adeline, 11; and Caroline, about 7; across the plains to Utah. It was a great disappointment to Ira that not all of his family came with Leonard. Sarah Ann, the wife, and mother, had, no doubt, died, for no mention is made of her. The motherless children were often placed in the custody of someone in the family until they were old enough to sustain themselves.

A Family of His Own

Leonard Gurley returned the next year to help other emigrant trains. He met and married Elizabeth Almira Babbitt at Kanesville, who was already planning to travel West with the next company. Their honeymoon was spent driving teams along the pioneer trail to Utah. Leonard was made Captain over ten wagons and his wife did much of the driving of their own wagon. They made their home in Farmington, Utah.

Leonard had proven himself to be an expert horseman and one who could drive an ox team with skill. He had learned the advantages of friendliness and patience with people and he had empathy for them that made him
humble, as well as noble, and he knew how to keep the wagon train moving. These attributes of leadership put him in high demand as a wagon master for many trips back and forth across the pioneer trail.

In 1851, Leonard returned again to Iowa, hoping to bring the rest of his father’s family. In a letter to his wife, Elizabeth, he wrote that he had seen his older sisters who had married and preferred not to join the Saints in Utah and that his younger brother, Ephraim, who would have been 5 or 6 years of age, had drowned. This loss grieved Leonard much, for he had been most anxious that all of his mother’s family be reunited in Utah. Again, he
made no mention of his mother in his letter, so we have to assume that she had died earlier.

On a later trip, he met his wife’s dear girlhood friend, Margaret Buckwalter, who had been widowed, but who had remained firm in her determination to get to Utah. Upon their arrival in Utah, a sweet experience saw Leonard and Margaret married as Elizabeth placed Margaret’s hand in Leonard’s in marriage on 2 January 1853. Leonard’s two families, Elizabeth’s 11 and Margaret’s 7 (though not all of these children grew to maturity) lived close for many years to enjoy a unity seldom found in single families.

Mission Call and a New Wife

Leonard’s life was one of sacrifice for others. Between the years of 1848 and 1867, there are repeated incidents of calls to assist not only the pioneers on their trek westward but rescue missions to destitute areas in outlying colonies. Leonard had the faith and courage of his families in Farmington while he was away from them so much of the time. Because of his skillful handling of teams, wagons, and people, he was in demand as a wagon master and Captain. He was a frequent companion of President Young on his many “preaching tours” to new colonies as the Church spread to outlying areas. He was called upon to help in the rescue of the Martin Handcart Company. He, with other elders, took six wagonloads of supplies to the stranded company under the leadership of Edward Martin.

He was one of a party of men called to assist in the Green River Expedition to Wyoming in 1853. In 1854, he again went with Brigham Young to settlement outposts in Southern Utah and into areas that later became Southern Nevada. There was also the time he was part of a rescue party sent to meet a company of pioneer Saints stranded in winter snows. They found and carried men too weak to walk, women almost frozen, and many children through the icy waters of the Sweetwater River. Never had men witnessed so much misery and suffering. That night, the bedraggled and freezing rescue party made camp for the destitute company five miles west of the Sweetwater River. It took almost a month to get back to Salt Lake City. Leonard took cold and became severely ill, from which he never fully recovered.

It is noted in Journal History of 1857 that Governor Young and a party of travelers left Salt Lake City to visit Idaho settlements along the way to the Salmon River Valley. The distance of this trip to Fort Lemhi was 380 miles. Their teams, carriages and wagons made the trip in 32 days. Leonard Gurley Rice was said to have driven Brigham Young’s carriage. Roads were non-existent. Fort Lemhi had only recently been established in 1855.

On 1 May 1865, soon after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Leonard was called on a European Mission by the Church. He left Elizabeth Almira, whose last child was due in September of that year, and Margaret, with her
family of young children, in Farmington, with instructions for the older children to carry on and help their mothers all they could. It was 5 July 1865, when he and Elders Nathaniel H. Felt and Aureleus Miner began their journey by Overland Stage. They reached New York City August 19, and boarded the S.S. Virginia for bound England. Leonard performed an honorable mission. Through prayer, his knowledge of the Gospel increased and he was able to overcome the temptations of discouragement and the things of the world. In a letter to his family he wrote,

“My heart and mind are upon my children more than all things else in this world … I am thankful to say of myself (God be praised) I stand firm … I hope to perform the balance of my mission as honorable as I have what is past … May God bless you all is the prayer of your husband and the children’s father.”

He was released from his mission on 21 March 1867.

Leonard’s return home did not end his calls from the Church. He was assigned to be in charge of relief wagon trains sent to meet companies of Saints coming to Utah. On his last wagon train trip in 1867, he had command
of foreign converts from many lands speaking different languages. In that last crossing was Lucy Jane Stevens, who became his third wife. Ruth May Fox was in this same company and some of her written words, expressing appreciation for Leonard Gurley as a Captain, were these:

“No one who has not had the actual experience of crossing the great plains … can realize what it meant to be a Captain of a large company of emigrants of different nationalities, various occupations and decidedly diverse habits of life, some of whom had never camped out at night in their lives, who had not so much as seen a yoke of cattle, and of course, did not understand the language which frontier oxen were accustomed to…There were weary ones to be encouraged, the over-zealous to be held back; order must be maintained, rations measured out, and men appointed to guard the cattle and the camp; many of these had never seen an Indian nor fired a gun … With Leonard as Captain, I remember him as a fine looking man, spoken of as an ideal leader who was not known to have lost his temper the whole of the journey, and of whom I heard few complaints…Oh, what could we have
done without a Captain? God bless his memory.”

Source unknown

Leonard and Lucy Jane Stevens were married in Salt Lake City on 11 January 1868. They became parents of seven children; the youngest was only two weeks old when Leonard passed away on 12 September 1886, having suffered from pneumonia he contracted in the penitentiary while awaiting trial as a polygamist.

He saw the Church grow from a small beginning to be well established in the Valleys of the Rocky Mountains. He left a large posterity and bore a strong testimony of the divinity of the restoration of Christ’s Church on earth. He was buried in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ann Victoria Rose was the sixth of eight children born to Abraham Rose and Catherine Nicholson Rose. She was born on June 4, 1839, in Howard, Steuben County, New York. Her parents had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1836. Her father was a prosperous, well-respected farmer in Steuben County. The spirit of gathering soon urged the Rose family to join the body of the Church in Nauvoo, Illinois. They left their comfortable home, loved ones, and most of their possessions, and traveled by covered wagon and ox team. Ann Victoria was a four-month-old baby at that time.

Arriving in the southern part of Ohio, late in the season, they remained at Carthage, Ohio until 1843. They obtained work manufacturing maple sugar and maple syrup. Two more children were born while the family resided at Carthage. They left Carthage in September 1843 and arrived in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois a month later. Here they met the Prophet Joseph Smith. His noble personality made a lasting impression upon the Rose family. They had arrived at a time when persecution was severe and they were among those who crossed the Mississippi River in the great exodus from that beautiful city and temple. Ann Victoria was a child of seven years. Her family crossed the Iowa prairies with one ox and cow yoked together, as the mob had killed one of their oxen to feed themselves.

They arrived at Kanesville, Iowa (present-day Council Bluffs) in August 1846. Here, a year later, their last child was born. They were destitute and remained in Kanesville until 1853 in order to obtain enough supplies to continue the journey across the plains. Ann Victoria was fifteen years of age when her family crossed the Missouri River with two wagons, five yoke of cattle, one horse, and provisions to last eighteen months. Ann’s younger brother, their herdsman, rode the horse, bareback all the way across the plains. They had fourteen head of cattle in all. On their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Rose family decided to settle in Farmington, about seventeen miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. By this time, the town had an organized ward.

Ann Victoria married William Kelsey Rice, the son of a Farmington pioneer. He had crossed the plains with his father, Ira Rice, and brother, Asaph Rice. Ann became the second wife of Kelsey on June 7, 1855. They had a large family of fine sons and daughters. Ann Victoria died following the birth of her twelfth child, on May 26, 1878.

In spite of suffering hardships, privations, and heartache, Ann Victoria never wavered in her faith and testimony of the Gospel for which she and her family had given their all. She had, like her parents, the blessed ability to smile through tears and spread sunshine about. Ann Victoria, like her brothers and sisters, was musically inclined and had an appreciation for the finer things in life. These fine qualities are found in the posterity of William Kelsey and Ann Victoria to this day. A love of a well kept and attractive home, good literature, and the various arts is a part of the distinctive heritage that has left its mark on their descendants.

William Kelsey Rice was born in Manchester, Ontario County, New York on the 27th day of October 1822, to Ira and Minerva Saxton Rice.  He was the fifth child and his mother died when he was just a baby in his second year.  One year later his father married Sarah Ann Harrington and she became the mother who raised him.  The Rice family lived about the same distance from the Hill Cumorah on one side as the Smith family lived on the other side.  When William Kelsey was three years old, the Angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith.  It is unthinkable that the Rices did not know the Smiths, for everyone in that neighborhood knew about Joseph Smith’s vision in the grove of trees near their home in Palmyra.  By the time the Book of Mormon was published, the Rices had moved and were living in Michigan, first at Northville and later at Ypsilanti in Washtenaw County. 

William Kelsey was approximately eighteen years of age when he, along with his father, stepmother and others of the family, was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and accepted Joseph Smith as a prophet, and leader.  The family then moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.  He and his brother, Asaph, and father, Ira, were among those who volunteered to make the first start of the Western exodus.  Father Ira Rice owned good horses and wagons, which allowed them to help move the Lorenzo Snow and Orson Pratt families to Winter Quarters. 

There must have been time for courting because the record states that on 6 October 1845, William Kelsey married Lucy Witter Geer at the home of Joseph Young in Nauvoo.  In 1846, this young couple joined the westward move, setting up a temporary camp at Council Bluffs, Iowa.  Because Ira and his sons had good teams, they were able to help other families move out of Nauvoo.  Ira, Asaph and William Kelsey went back to Nauvoo in late summer to recover more provisions from their vacated home.  Before they were able to return, William Kelsey’s first child, Ellen, was born 13 September 1846.  The Rice family had planned to join the first company leaving for the West, but because of the trip back to Nauvoo, they were assigned to the second company, which left Winter Quarters on 21 June 1847.  They were in Captain Hunter’s 100, C.C. Rich’s 50, and Shurtliff’s 10 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on  29 September 1847.  They spent the winter in the “Old Fort”, where William Kelsey, Jr. was born. 

In the spring of 1849, William Kelsey moved his little family to a log cabin he had built in Farmington.  Together they worked to raise everything they could to supply the family’s needs and to share with neighbors, who found a welcome place to stay and were often in need. 

William Kelsey was among those called to settle Indian troubles in Parowan, Iron County, Utah.  He saved a little Indian boy of six and a girl of three, who were about to be killed.  His wife, Lucy, raised the two with her own family.  At the time of the Johnston’s Army episode, the family was moved south until all danger subsided.  William Kelsey then joined the company led by Captain Lot Smith.  He had great faith in the power of the Priesthood and had occasion to rebuke Satan and disease on behalf of others.   

William Kelsey Rice, one of the first pioneers in Farmington, Utah, crossed the plains to be with those of his faith.  Though his father, Ira, and his brother, Asaph, left to help colonize southern Utah and southwestern Nevada, William established his families in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains.  Perhaps there was wisdom in his choice.  He became a stalwart community leader and was often consulted when there was a bridge or similar community project to be built.  In case of any town emergency, such as a fire, he was always among the first to respond.  He was a member of the first choir organized and was in the first town band.  In April and October, his yard was always filled with wagons and horses of people going to or coming from the Church Conferences in Salt Lake City. 

On 17 June 1855, he married his second wife, Ann Victoria Rose.  He took up a homestead south of Farmington, part of which he gave to the town of Farmington for a cemetery.  He built Ann Victoria a house on this homestead and she bore him twelve children.  The youngest, May, was only three weeks old when her mother, Ann Victoria, died in May 1877.  Uncle Leonard’s wife, Aunt Lib (not to be confused with Aunt Libby Bybee) took May and raised her as her own. 

William Kelsey lived a long life in Farmington.  In his last five years, he moved to Centerville, where he died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Olive Duncan, who cared for him tenderly in his last days.  He was 91 years of age when he died on 6 July 1913, and was buried in the Farmington Cemetery on July 10th.  A beautiful funeral service crowned his life with numerous tributes.  A later generation was reminded of a life well spent in generous deeds during a time of privation and hard work.  All present were reminded that there laid a man who had lived when the gospel was restored and the first Prophet in this dispensation gave his life a martyr for the truths he had proclaimed.  They were reminded, too, that William Kelsey helped to get out the logs and saw the lumber for the first meetinghouse, schoolhouse, courthouse, and mill in Farmington.  They were told that he had taken part in the Echo Canyon War and had been charged with the cattle seized by Captain Lot Smith from the approaching Johnston’s Army.  When the Mormons evacuated Salt Lake Valley, he was one of the guards left behind with orders to burn the homes of the Saints if the army proved hostile. 

William Kelsey Rice was given a tribute in words reminiscent of mutual pioneer adventures and the faith and integrity of all the pioneers, of whom he was deemed prominent.