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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Arvin Mitchell Stoddard & Caroline Sargent
Arvin Mitchell Stoddard was born at Bastard, Ludy County, Upper Canada in 1852. His wife, Caroline Sargent, was born in Jackson County, Missouri in 1834. They both joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and met in Provo, Utah after their families migrated west. They lived for a while in Farmington, Utah, and the settled in Milford, Utah, where they both died.
Martha Jane Stoddard
Janie Stoddard was born April 29, 1852 in Provo Utah to Arvin and Caroline Stoddard. She met Leonard Babbitt Rice at a dance in Farmington and they were married in December 1871. After several years in Utah, the couple moved to southeastern Idaho. Then they moved to southern Alberta, Canada to farm, though they eventually moved back to Idaho. She is buried in Parker, Idaho.
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.
Lucy Jane Stevens
Lucy Jane Stevens was born in Portsmouth, England, on January 1, 1848. Her father and brothers were shipwrights in England. At the age of seventeen, she ran away from home and traveled to Utah by handcart. A year later Lucy married Leonard Rice. She raised a family of seven children, and died in 1923.
Margaret Mathews
Margaret Mathews was born in Swansea, Wales on June 11, 1849. When she was seven years old, her family moved to Utah via the Edward Bunker Handcart Company. They settled in Providence, Utah. She married Oscar Rice in 1869 and passed away in 1926.
Olive Emily Smith
Olive Emily Smith was born in Lee County, Iowa on December 12, 1845. Her parents were Utah pioneers who settled in Farmington, Utah. She married Hyrum Rice in December 1865, and they lived in Cache County, Utah before homesteading near Round Mountain in Cassia County, Idaho. In 1886 she fell from a wagon and broke her arm. She died from blood poisoning shortly afterward.