John Rice, of Dedham

OK, good stuff! We've established then a three family connection

Franklin
Earl
Rice

In Windham county CT & then Dutchess

- The Earl daughter's first name is not known (hence the Mary / Sarah confusions)
- perhaps the elusive Mrs Charity Rice could be found among the Franklin's

Sorry - correcting myself - we have Sarah as the Earl daughter & from a good source. I'll check the tree.

I'll put on my list for next library trip to grab another article.

The Rice article says Samuel's wife was Sarah. It gives a blank for Charity.

One surprise for me was how modern these books are. Some of the footnotes cite, for example, queries on Rootsweb.

Unfair to discuss info I'm seeing when you aren't looking at the same pages.

I see this patent was settled 1 May 1737, and Samuel (1689) was taxed there Feb 1742/43 and Feb 1743/44. Son Edward was born 5 Sept 1732, so before his father came to Beekman.

Say Edward married Charity about 1753 (when he was 21) or bit later. Where was he living, and what do we know about his neighbors?

Ledger shows Edward's father Samuel settled on a (different?) 50 acre farm in 1744 with rents beginning 1746. There is a hard-to-follow paragraph that appears to involve a substitution of tenants. In 1749 William Price was in possession. In 1757 "Henry Cary in Std of Wilm Price or Samuel Rice 13 years in arrears from 1 lot." Whatever happened here, it seems Samuel Rice left the first lot in or about 1744 and his successors failed to pay the taxes.

After 1744 nothing about the Rices until Feb 1753 when Samuel's son John was taxed in the Southern Precinct. Edward was taxed there Feb 1758, "then in Fredericksburg Precinct (Patterson, Putnam Co., NY area) to 1779." I think it would be a fair guess that Edward married Charity shortly before 1758. It would be his neighbors then who would be the most likely clues to Charity's family.

In 1790 Edward was (still, I suppose) in Fredericksburg Pct. He was between Jacob Weld and Elias Gage. His son John was on the side of Gage, and Edward's son Edward Jr. on *his* other side.

Some good clues here, but some of the most relevant information is missing. For example, who were John's neighbors in 1753, and Edward's neighbors in 1758? If also the Welds and Gages that could be a big hint.

And where was Pa? The book says he might have been the Samuel Rice who married in Amenia Widow Mrs. Mary Carrier 5 May 1770, but a footnotes adds that he would have been 80, so it's questionable.

Isn't Gage already in the Rice tree?

http://www.geni.com/path/Dale-C-Rice+is+related+to+unknown-father-o...

Yes the are.

What is striking about doing genealogy on Geni is how often second/third/fourth marriages have been ignored on family trees obsessed with descent. I think I had a profile who had five wives, four of whom had previous husbands and one of whom had four previous ones. No wonder the step-child/step-parent relationship (alays difficult) is so prominent in fairy stories.In richer familes this may have been about property; in poorer ones it must have been about survival.

If this was true in England, it must have been even more true in early America; although our diseases which were much more lethal to native Americans than theirs were to us, it still took at least a year for the average immigrant to be "seasoned", in other words be capable of normal amounts of work.

Mark

I have many people in my tree who have several spouses and children by all of them. Plus cousins married cousins and aunts and uncle married nieces and nephews. It's all very mixed up.

Justin,

I'm very impressed by the tax records in British North America in the 18th century. We can only hope that Dale C Rice is not liable for a tax default of 13 years 250 years ago, with compound interest. It would of course help to reduce the USA's national debt, but would probably have an even worse effect on Dale's blood pressure than our sceptical comments on his family tradition.

Has he contemplated an alternative reason for his Hidden Ancestry other than that Very Powerful People went to great langths to erase it? That his family itself wanted to keep their serial tax defaults in private, where the tax authorities could not catch up with them? When you think you are pursuing an innocent enquiry into family ancestry, do not think that the tax authorities are not watching you like a hawk. No-one Expects the Spanish Inquisition (although a descendant of Henry VIII and his laundry-maid ought to do).

I am willing to rent out part of my garden shed if he needs a place of refuge, for a small part of his back taxes.

Mark

B^]

P.S. Since he will need something to occupy his time, it would be extremely convenient for looking after my tomatoes and aubergines. I expect that he would also enjoy getting my lawn weed-free, too.

And my wife woud finally have to concede that there was something useful about genealogy!

Mark

B^]

^ why you people are still bothering with this guy is beyond me

Dale, I removed your message because it is off-topic on this thread. This is for the *documentary* search.

Because Jason My family line is a previously unknown and under-reported line of Rice's in America. I am using the DNA trail in lieu of a paper trail because there is no paper trail. Thanks for your interest.

Jason, that's a very good question. I'm hearing from interested users that the discussion is valuable in its own right because it is an interesting as a search for the unknown parents of a Colonial immigrant. Some users also see it as a learning tool for modeling that type of search.

However, Dale seems unwilling to allow the discussion to proceed along normal research lines. He continues to spam the discussions with new variations on the tall tale he heard from his dad, his pseudo-scientific use of DNA, and his long, pointless relationship paths. All of these have been rejected by the community, in whole or in part, but he is not able to put them aside while we have a serious discussion.

I'm at a loss. Should we give up trying to have a discussion? Ask Geni to close this thread? What about the other thread? Close it too? Boycott Dale's messages? Ask CS to suspend Dale? Take our discussion private?

It seems a shame that one user can prevent a normal genealogical discussion on a genealogy website, but that appears to be where we are. I'm open to suggestions.

justin you are wasting your valuable time and effort on someone who is not taking on board anything you say. he does not understand DNA even on the most basic level even after being told dozens of times

I would say that if Dale gets off Geni, for a few months at least, and pursues his researches elsewhere, this will be be a better use of your time, The problem is that even if he says he is getting off Geni, experience shows that he is likely to continue to add very problematic profiles that someone will have to remove.

Mark

why you couldn't come to that realization like 800 posts ago?

Michael, Addiction, Mark

Or perhaps just boundless optimism that Dale might learn something about doing genealogy ;)

Thanks, Justin, As I think I have said before, if you are doing your own family descent and reach a dead end, going off at a tangent from some brother or sister of a partner surprisingly often gets you back to resolving the dead end. At least if you are dealing with British gentry, rather than peasants like me. But even with peasants the same would hold true, or truer, if and where records exist. Available travel and social opportunities, property issues, etc compelled people to marry usually quite close cousins or other family connections. You look for parents, and you don't find. You look for cousins and you do.

Mark

Very, very funny, L3. I've been thinking how odd that some people think genealogy is off-topic on a genealogy website. But, as I try to think of a polite way to say that I am struggling with the problem that most of the argument here has been about whether we are doing genealogy or just playing around. Maybe Geni does need a Kid's Table ;)

Justin,
My Notifications tab showed two new posts here from Dale and Michael.
But when I stopped by to have a look at what new madness had taken place, they both seem to have magically disappeared from the Discussion and the Notifications tab. Were they sent to the Kid's Table? ;)

Probably so. I deleted some off-topic messages.

Justin, Erica, and Mark,
On topic, I have a few questions.
My apologies if we have been over this before.
In your informed opinions, is it likely that we will never find the ancestry of John Rice, or is it only a matter of time before someone finds something factual that will provide the next real clue?
And, if John Rice cannot be connected to the past, is he but one of many early Americans who share a similar circumstance?
Also, if these "brick walls" can never be broken through, at what point does one admit defeat and call off the search?
Lastly, if Dale's family were able to actually pay a team of professional genealogists (instead of relying on the kindness of pros who also do genealogy as a hobby) would that payment make a difference, or would the paid professionals only be able to do as we here have done, and report that there simply isn't that much to find?
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts.

Oh gosh, I don't know if I can answer this at all. I haven't tried to "break down the wall" to England in my own 1st arrivers to Massachusetts; I don't feel nearly conversant enough with English resources. And we have enough "unproven" on the US side for me to concentrate there first.

I can say from observation that DNA testing is slowly but surely working with the paper trail. Just over the last couple of years some cherished myths in the Drake lines have been disproved (I think I have two lines in). And in a March 2014 the Doane Family Association was able to assert they have their man in England (not entirely conclusive, may never be, but a very nice case made).

Does this help answer? Probably not. :)

L3 - another way for me to phrase this is I've been concentrating on "disproving myths" for my 1st arrivers. It's the opposite of an affirmative approach. Dale has the significant step up on me of having had his main myth busted by DNA.

I don't remember going over this, except in bits and pieces.

I think it is very likely that someone will find the ancestry of John Rice someday.

It might be the result of an organized search, or it might be chance. It's even possible that there is someone in the world who already has the missing information but doesn't realize its significance.

If you look at the history of Colonial genealogy, one thing that would stand out is that the reason we can link so many immigrants already (albeit a drop in the bucket) is that there are so many descendants swarming the records. Most of it is wasted effort and most of the theories turn out to be wrong, but with so many people working on the same problem it's almost inevitable that if there is something to find someone will find it someday.

Sound familiar?

I am a professional genealogist, but I would refuse this commission if it were offered. My first reason would be that it needs a Great Migration specialist (and that ain't me), but more importantly it would be a long-term project. Very expensive and very time-consuming, with only a poor hope of succeeding.

The "hundred monkeys" strategy has a far better chance of success and it's much cheaper ;)

Continuing ...

My hope for this discussion, and the reason I've been willing to devote time to it, is that it is a chance to model the "how" of jumping the Atlantic.

We hear the experts telling us how to do it all the time, but I think it helps to have a real case study, and not just something someone else solved a generation ago (and here's how they did it).

The problem of John Rice is compelling to me because he is an almost perfect text book example to talk about the importance of placing the immigrant in time and place, why class and religion matter, why geography matters, why local history matters, the perils of oral tradition, how to figure out when that "ancient tradition" really came out of a 20th century book, the importance of short-hop relationships, when DNA can help and when it can't, and on and on.

And Dale himself is an almost text book example of someone just learning. He asks questions, throws out ideas that can be discussed, and challenges almost everything. Because of him the discussion is much richer than it would have been if he just nodded and agreed.

Exciting news for Great Migration researchers from Robert Charles Anderson. If you're a serious genealogist for the Great Migration period, you probably already follow Anderson. He's Director of the Great Migration Study Project.

He is going to be doing a series of lectures this fall about "the continuity of connections which go back more than a century before the Great Migration, back to the beginning of the English Reformation under Henry VIII in the 1530s."

He says the lectures will form the basis for a future book entitled Puritan Pedigrees: The Deep Roots of the Great Migration to New England.

http://vita-brevis.org/2014/08/puritan-pedigrees/

What could be cooler than that?

BTW, his most recent book is Elements of Genealogical Analysis. Has anyone had a chance to look at it? I'm thinking of ordering a copy.