John Rice, of Dedham

Think of it this way: I have been drawing concentric circles around the person I believed was the father of John Rice and his father. The circle is now down to one man, why would I accept the results of a paternity I don't know for certain is the same? We need to know the values of Sir Robert's sons...who can say for sure who was his father? We believe they are the same, but that leaves an opening to wide for comfort in my my view. If we get to a result for Sir Robert's known sons that are within 4 or 5 single steps, then the story, the DNA, and the 9 faces will support the origional assertion, making the John Phillips I-1 values that match John Rice 1630 a far more likely event since the testimony/conversation says he fathered a child by his 1/2 sister.

sorry: too wide for comfort....

I think you missed the point, Dale. The reason I asked why you think they wouldn't match and why it matters was to get you to think a bit more.

One Dudley line is a partial match for the Rices, but not good enough to be real. Your theory depends on having it both ways -- that it points to something and that the something it points to is a break in the Dudley line.

And that's a fundamental flaw in your thinking. You can't have it both ways. There's no genuine match, so looking at the Dudleys is pointless. The partial match doesn't mean anything. If there's a break in the line somewhere, then the break is complete. A partial match is not a clue to solving an NPE.

!

http://www.geni.com/path/Rice-Edwards+is+related+to+Hackley?from=60...

Who is Rice Edwardes? Why is the name affiliated...anyone?http://www.geni.com/path/Samuel-Stevens+is+related+to+Ernest-E-Stev...

My uncle is connected to that family as well. There seems to be a positive Association of males Rice and Edwardes to Stevens but NPE is not clear to me. I also have an I-1 Edwardes who contacted me privately who states he is a male line descendent of John Edwardes alleged son by Henry VIII.

???

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/k/e/n/Donald-S-Kenney/WE...

FYI L3: In discovering that Rhys/Rice Edwardes connects with the Stevens family I wondered about him. This citation makes that more clear. He seems to have a distant link to Hackley and Stevens to Rice. Otherwise not known. I put up the relatedness incase someone knew of one of the connecting families...so fyi only.

. . .

I'll probably regret asking this question too, but . . .

Dale,
Do you forget each day as it passes?
I ask because we seem to always be going back over things we have already discussed.
Do you not remember that almost everything you say today was dis-proven yesterday?

It was challenged L3 not dis-proven. That would take an agreement on the whom the final authority would be. That is not at work on this site sir. You know better.

Some of you might remember that I promised before my vacation to go down to the local library and look at the books on the Beekman Patent. Finally did that today. Since the Rice Family chapter is still in print and being sold by the author for $10, I don't intend to upload copies to Geni. I can tell you, however, that there is no new information there. If you want details, contact me privately.

Dale, I deleted your question from this thread where it is really off-topic. We've been a bit lax lately but this thread is for documentary research into the ancestry of John Rice.

The search using your father's story and your DNA quest is here:
http://www.geni.com/discussions/137059

Aside from all of that I'm still wondering . . .

Dale,
Why is it so important to you that that there be a conspiracy or a Royal Secret?
What exactly is it that you are chasing after in such single-minded desperation that you allow yourself to willfully ignore the facts while insulting members of the very family you claim to belong to?
Do you think that you will be welcomed inside with loving arms after breaking down the door?

There is certainly no answer that can satisfy the mind of those who decry the search for truth. I have said, I will resign the effort when I know there is no hope of proof that the words spoken to me were not TRUE. What you are witness to here, is a single minded devotion to understanding a truth that may have been wrongly hidden.

I would use the same devotion to find a lost loved one of yours should I be so charged in duty as a sheriff's man. And that's what un-nerves the rabble, a devotion that includes one's own demise for the pure pleasure of knowing what is True.

Justin - thank you for the Beekman patent research. I take it there was nothing further on the confusing Earl sisters? That one is a nagger at me ...

Stop tagging me Michael.

point taken.

Erica Howton what naggs me is the profile that keeps dragging me into this every time I hit unfollow. .It must be one we both colaberate on.. can some one explain WHY?

Michael I don't know the answer. I'm sorry. Of course I'll ask.

I don't like begging asking a pro to submit a ticket every time i have a issue.. :(

L3 - please use the other thread for discussions about oral history, royal secrets, conspiracy theories, rightful Tudor heirs, geography of alternative universes, and pseudo-science ;)

Michael - I'm sorry you are being tagged, but no one here can help you. Posting here just takes us off-topic and increases the tension. As frustrated as you are, this is not the right place for those complaints.

Everyone - this thread is for a discussion about standard genealogical research into the ancestry of immigrant John Rice. Please, let's stay on topic.

Great reminder, Justin, thank you. I'm going to repost my "personal" take, thus far, on John Rice of Dedham, in hopes it will help this discussion refocus back to topic. Apologies for redundancy.

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And I would postulate John Rice "this" way.

- He was born about 1624 in a small village in the northeast of England
- he could not read or write
- his family was a farming family, not a trading or crafting family
- they were Dissenters

I am "personally" fond of the notion the whole family migrated together in the period between 1633 - 1636 to Roxbury MA, and then to the new settlement of Dedham, and they died unrecorded - or under names we have not correlated with John Rice because he was a stepson.

Another plausible scenario is that John Rice arrived in America as a single young man at the tail end of the Great Migration and settled, immediately or eventually, in Dedham.

It is still unlikely he was an "economic" emigrant for a single reason that says quite a lot: he settled in Dedham and didn't leave.

So he was a Puritan and a good one. And that was the compelling force driving so many of the emigrants.

If he had practiced a trade or craft I would be more open; the colony needed craftspeople & over looked "differences from the usual" to meet that need.

If he had been sighted in other communities I again would be more open. But he was in Dedham only in records, and Dedham was a colony of Roxbury, and Roxbury was one of the very first settlements.

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http://www.geni.com/projects/John-Rice-of-Dedham-Ancestry/14821

Thanks, Erica. I'm coming up with a very similar profile using other criteria.

- There is no evidence he had a trade or craft, therefore his only skill was probably farming.

- Boys of his time went to work at about age 14, and if his only skill was farming, then he was likely either an indentured servant or farmhand.

- Dedham was first and foremost a religious settlement, so it is likely he lived there some years before his marriage, working for one of the other settlers. Unlikely he came as a new settler at the time of his marriage.

- He had only the land the town gave him in connection with his settlement and marriage, so he probably did not have even the modest reserves of cash or family money that would have let him expand his holdings. That suggests a working class background.

- He never held local office, so he was on the lower end of Dedham society. He was not one of the wealthier citizens. It's also highly improbable that he came from a gentry family in England. This might be further evidence he couldn't read or write.

- He does not appear as a witness to local deeds or wills, so he was incompletely integrated into the social network. Witnesses in this period were often men who were either locally prominent or men who had a fringe interest in the transaction. (No better way to forestall litigation from potential heirs than asking them to be witnesses when the estate is distributed.) John was probably not prominent enough to choose as a witness. More importantly, he probably didn't have any family connections that would make him an interested party in land sales or estate settlements. In other words, he was more likely a farmhand than a stepson.

- His wife's ancestry is just as obscure as his, and his children didn't marry into locally prominent families. More proof that he was at the lower end of the social scale.

- As a Puritan in a famously Puritan settlement, he almost certainly came to America before the dramatic drop in Puritan immigration in 1640.

I don't think there's enough evidence to guess whether he came as a teenager with a master or came as a child with his family. That's something we won't know until we know, but I think Erica's instinct that he came from a family that immigrated together is worth noting. People like Erica, who specialize in a particular period, often make good guesses without being able to explain exactly how they arrived at the idea.

I really like your points about not being chosen as a witness. That's probably one of the key reasons I don't believe he was literate (which was not unusual - for a farmer).

I've been mentally contrasting John Rice with my ancestors Richard Rice (born about 1600) & his son in law, Dr. Philip Reade (born about 1623) both of Concord - that is, until Dr Reade bad mouthed the wrong family & had to remove himself, his medical practice, wife & children elsewhere.

Dr Reade immigrated as a single man, likely from London, and the strongest candidate I've seen for his parent was a Jacob Read, "waterman" (a kind of taxi driver on the Thames). Do you notice the contrasts with John Rice immediately? I sure do.

I had to peal off innumerable (I'm not kidding - there were 18 arriving Reeds in Massachusetts) "other" families to come to this understanding. And of course I could be wrong. But I am quite sure he was not of the noble Maidestone Kent Reade's .... :)

I want to be careful about playing guessing games, but there is a pattern I see often among my Swedish ancestors. I wonder if something like it might be at work here. Dedham society would have been very different than Swedish society, but one thing that would be the same is the centrality of the church and minister in local affairs.

Young woman works as a maid at the vicarage, the only servant of the minister and his wife. Her parentage never seems to be clear. Probably she is an orphan. She marries a local farmhand. The wedding takes place at the vicarage, reinforcing the impression that the bride has no other home, or at least no local family.

The groom is very often from a poor, local family, either an orphan himself or son of a widowed mother. Through the good offices of one of the local landowners, they become tenants at one of the local crofts almost immediately, which suggests that the timing of the marriage has been arranged to coincide exactly with filling the vacancy there.

This is very close to the scenario Erica has outlined for John Rice, where the Allins and local opinion might have matched John and Ann as being suitable for each because their station in life and future expectations were approximately similar.

In the cases I'm describing I always imagine, maybe somewhat fancifully, that the groom is probably a "good boy", a bit on the religious side compared to his peers, perhaps having a pious mother, and perhaps looking up to the minister as a father figure more than other young men his age.

And I imagine the young woman as being herself more than usually pious, from her teenage years of working at the vicarage if not otherwise.

In two cases where family tradition tells me something about the people behind the names and dates, I know that the young men wanted to be ministers but their families couldn't afford the education.

This is somewhat the way I picture John Rice and Ann Hackley. I want to caution, however, that this is just an exercise in imagination about what could have happened. I would be very distressed if someone comes back later to say that I said John Rice wanted to be a minister or that Ann Hackley was a servant of the Allins ;)

Well part of that scenario is because the Rev Allyn seems so immensely likable. :). I was thrilled for Katherine that she got to marry him after enduring horrible Gov Dudley.

You're raising good points about housing. Does anyone remember the PBS show, Colonial House? They actually went to live as these 1st arrivers might have. The pastor & his wife indeed the center of the community & 2 teenage girls of ambiguous family relationship to them as their live ins. The single men lived on the farms they worked on.

Ah, and I've forgotten to mention my instinct for family arrival. The death rate for men was on the high side. If you page through Pope's Pioneers of Massachusetts you'll see it. Widows remarried quickly or returned home to England "with" their children; this is not a time & place that abandoned children.

I should also note that I can only recall one (that's right - one) known family of "orphans" "taken in" by kindly ministers, and that's the tragic More children of the Mayflower.

Erica, on the Earl sisters, I didn't pull that article. Maybe next time.

The Rice article says Samuel (1689) "married 6 July 1717 at Pomfret, CT Sarah, born 18 December 1696, dau. of William (3) (Ralph (2-1) and Hepsibah (Butts) Earl.

A footnote for this Samuel's brother-in-law says "Benjamin Franklin and his brother John Franklin came to The Beekman Patent with the Rice and Earl families."

The citations show that this series of books has articles for the Earl and Franklin families.