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.
