“I am the daughter of Pioneer parents. My grandparents before them crossed the plains with thousands of converts to our church. My mother and her twin sister were born in a wagon box on the bank of the Mississippi River. They both lived and one became my mother. I was born in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah on March 3, 1867. Later my parents moved to Conant, Cassis County, Idaho.
“I married Edwin Rice on my seventeenth birthday. He bought me a sewing machine and I was soon making dresses, which he sold while he was freighting to Montana. Three children were born in Conant, Idaho; then in 1888, we moved to Parker, Idaho for a short time. Our next home was in the Teton Basin. It was a lawless, lonely place to live. With my husband and neighbors, it was converted into a land worthy of our best efforts. We helped establish a branch of our church. I was set apart as a counselor in the Stake Relief Society. I saw my husband help build canals, public places, and take part in every way for the good of the place.
“Our first son lived five months and was buried in the first grave dug in Victor, Idaho for a white person. It was a great sorrow to us. Each fall I begged Ed to let me drive a team and wagon and meet him in Utah after he had taken the dudes back from their packhorse outing in Jackson Hole. He never would tell me I might try it. I knew it was a dangerous undertaking. I also knew I had faith strong enough in the protecting care of my Father in Heaven to do so safely. So the fall of 1899, I made that long journey alone with four children from Victor, Idaho and met Ed in Ogden. It was a happy meeting. We took our little girls and went to the Temple of God and were married for eternity.”
Sylvia was as undaunted as anyone who ever lived. In Victor, Idaho, she set up a millinery shop making hats by hand. When Ed was gone once, she and a hired man converted an empty building into a hotel. He found a flourishing business on his return. She played the piano in the dance hall he built and often she and her daughters made ice cream and sold it at dancing parties. She cooked and served borders for years and worked in the Church always.
On a camping trip, she sketched a picture of Mt. Moran. Later she copied it in oil for a front drop curtain in the amusement hall. After living in Provident City, Texas for four years, she gladly came back to Idaho on a train, staying in American Falls for a visit. The last twenty years of her life was spent near St. Anthony, Idaho. She is remembered as a woman of great faith and one who loved the beautiful refined things of life. Surely she laid up treasures in Heaven where moth and dust do not spoil her treasures of everlasting joy. She passed away in St. Anthony on November 13, 1944, at the age of 77.
