Olive Emily Smith was born in Lee County, Iowa on December 12, 1845. Her parents were William Orville Smith and Emily Jane Spinning. They were Utah pioneers. Olive’s father died July 7, 1849, shortly after he had settled his family in Farmington, Utah. She came from a very religious family and so she may have had something to do with encouraging her husband to be baptized six months after their marriage. She married Hyrum Rice on December 25, 1865 in Salt Lake City and they made their home in Cache County, Utah until 1880. Five children were born to them in Farmington, Utah: William Hyrum Rice, Jr., born September 9, 1866; Nathaniel Abel, born July 31, 1869; Olive Emily, born March 7, 1871, died six years later on April 25, 1877, and was buried in Farmington; Mary, born November 7, 1875; and Jerry Mann, born December 6, 1878.
After Hyrum and Olive Emily moved north to settle on a homestead near Round Mountain, Cassia County, Idaho, two more children were born. One of these children, no sex given, was born in 1880 and died in 1880 or 1881, and Edna Ann, born March 7, 1883.
Round Mountain was never a town. When Hyrum owned the ranch that lay east from a very large hill that raises from the flatland floors of the area, it was a way station for travelers from Oregon, California, Idaho, and Utah. By 1884, after the railroad in southern Idaho, had been built, this traffic was reduced and Round Mountain became isolated. Hyrum and his family moved to the nearby town of Almo, where a few families were beginning to settle. They lived on a ranch in what is called “The Cove.” It was located at the mouth of the canyon directly west of Almo and just south of the ranch their son, Nathaniel, bought after he was married.
Olive Emily’s husband, Hyrum, was usually occupied breaking his colts for he was a lover of horses, as his father and brothers before him had been. Olive Emily was forty-one years old when an unfortunate accident caused her death. Hyrum had been training a team to drive and Emily asked that he take her and the children in the family wagon to some neighbors. As they prepared to return home, Hyrum held the horses while Emily climbed into the back of the wagon and bent to help the children into the wagon box. A chasing dog frightened the horses and they lunged forward suddenly. Emily fell from the wagon and suffered a mangled and compound fractured arm. After getting home, Nathaniel rode a horse to Albion for a doctor who traveled the long distance to Almo in a buggy. Help was too late. She died of blood poisoning on May 22, 1886. She was a very lovely lady—good and kind to everyone.
She was buried on the ranch, but afterward was removed, along with the baby who had been buried in 1880 or 1881, to a burial plot in Farmington, Utah.
