The Cornerstone
Fall 1995

William Marsh Rice, born in 1816, was one of ten children born to David Rice and Patty Hall Rice. David Rice was from Norfolk County, Massachusetts. Patty Hall's father, Josiah Walpole Hall had, as a minuteman, traveled the road to Concord, Massachusetts, in the early hours of April 19, 1775, to deliver the message that General Gage's regulars were crossing the Charles River to march to Lexington and Concord to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock for treason and seize the cannon and military stores at Concord. During the war that followed, Hall served in Colonel Joseph Read's Regiment. He died at South Walpole, Massachusetts, at the age of 101.

At age 22, William Marsh Rice arrived in Galveston, Texas, in October, 1838. He did not stay long in Galveston but soon moved to Houston where he received a conditional headright certificate to 320 acres on February 12, 1839. The Texas Ranger Service Records show that a Wm. M. Rice enlisted March 16, 1839, as a private in the Texas Rangers under the command of Captain J. Emberson and was discharged September 16, 1839.

William M. Rice had a succession of business partners, including "aggressive and fiery" Ebenezer Nichols and "meticulous and gentle of spirit" Abraham Groesbeeck. The ten years before the Civil War were prosperous ones for planters and cotton merchants. Enormous increases in property between 1850-1860 were reported to the census takers. These were prosperous years for William M. Rice, as he reported an increase in net worth from $25,000 to $750,000. Among the companies listing W.M. Rice's name on the original charter during this period were the Houston Plank Road Company, the Union Marine and Fire Insurance Company, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, & Colorado Railroad Company, the Houston Academy, the Houston Insurance Company, the Huntsville Railroad Company, and the Houston Tap and Brazoria Railway Company.

On June 29, 1845, William Marsh Rice married Margaret Bremond at Christ Church, Houston. The couple had no children. Margaret died August 13, 1863. The cause of her death was unknown, but it was the season of yellow fever, a major cause of death in the United States and Texas until after the Spanish-American war. (One of Houston's founders, John Kirby Allen, had died of yellow fever in 1838; the yellow fever epidemic of 1839 took the lives of fifteen percent of Houstonians. Lime was spread on the mud streets of Houston in the summer 1847 in the belief that it would ward off the fever. The worst epidemic was in the fall of 1867.)

The letters from William Marsh Rice to his brother Frederick Allyn Rice are of particular interest and give us new information about the life of William Marsh Rice after the death of his wife Margaret. William left Houston for the balance of the Civil War; he was in Monterrey, Mexico, by January 23, 1864, and by February he was in Matamoras, Mexico, where he stayed until July of 1865. His last letter to his brother on May 14, 1865, tells of RIP Ford's victory over Federal troops in the Battle of Palmito Ranch, the last battle of the Civil War. On July 8, 1865, Frederick Rice wrote Sidney Thrasher in Galveston that he expected his brother to return to Houston during July.

William Marsh Rice married Julia Elizabeth Baldwin on June 26, 1867, in Christ Church, Houston. Elizabeth was the sister of Frederick Rice's wife Charlotte Baldwin Rice. (In 1861, Elizabeth and Charlotte's brother had joined Frederick Rice in forming the Houston Base Ball Club, probably the first baseball club in Texas.) Elizabeth was 40 years old when she married William Rice and was the widow of John Brown who, in 1841, entered into a grocery and provision business in the City of Houston and acquired substantial lands in Montgomery, Walker, Comal, Gonzales, Bexar, Harris, Leon, and McLennan Counties. Elizabeth Baldwin Rice died in 1896 and was buried in Houston's Glenwood Cemetery, a resting place for many of the Rice family. Her tombstone is inscribed: "Beloved wife of William Marsh Rice, 1827-1896. A brilliant woman. She moved and carried herself with the dignity, grace, and charm of a queen. She loved people and was always happiest when doing for others." Elizabeth and William Rice had no children.

The brothers William Marsh Rice and Frederick Allyn Rice continued to be major contributors toward the economic development of early Houston. W.M. Rice's name was listed on the charters of the Houston Ship Channel Company, the Houston and Texas Central Railroad Company, The City Bank of Houston, and the Houston Direct Navigation Company. F.A. Rice was listed as an incorporator of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad Company, the Ship Channel Company, the Buffalo Warehouse and Compress Company, the Houston East and West Texas Railway Company, and the Railroad, Real Estate, Building and Saving Association of Texas. Frederick helped organize the Houston Board of Trade and Cotton Exchange in 1874 and served as president of the Houston Savings Bank, which operated between 1874 and 1886, and as a director of the National Exchange Bank.

Although William had no children, his brother Frederick had nine children and named one of his sons William Marsh Rice, Jr. William Marsh Rice, Jr. engaged in the lumber business and was a founder of the Union Bank and Trust Company, president of the Merchants and Planters Oil Company, and director of the Guardian Trust Company and Houston Land and Trust Company. His uncle William Marsh Rice paid for his education at Princeton. William Marsh Rice, Jr. served on the Board of Trustees of The Rice Institute and, upon his death, left a considerable fortune to this institution. Will Rice College is named in his honor.

Another of Frederick's sons, Benjamin Botts Rice, also served on the Board of Trustees of The Rice Institute. His relationship with The Rice Institute began upon the death of his father and continued until his retirement in 1944. His uncle William Marsh Rice wanted him to move to New York and become his assistant. It was a wonderful opportunity, but Ben Rice was afraid if he left Houston he would lose out in his courtship of Mary Walker Calder, whom he subsequently married, and he declined the offer. He sent his uncle a message telling of the damages to property and buildings destroyed by the 1900 Galveston storm. It was not until much later that he fully understood that when his uncle began to respond and forwarded substantial sums for restoration that Albert Patrick killed his uncle to prevent any further "loss" of fund.

William Marsh Rice, Jr. never married. However, his nephew Calder Rice (son of Benjamin Botts Rice and Mary Calder Rice) named a son William Marsh Rice III. (Ed. note: William Marsh Rice III's son William Marsh Rice IV is now a Houston police officer.)

In addition to William Marsh Rice, Jr. and Benjamin Botts Rice, the seven other children of Frederick Rice and his wife Charlotte Baldwin Rice included: Jonas Shearn Rice, who served as president of Great Southern Life Insurance Company and chairman of the Board of Directors of Bankers Trust, etc.; David Rice, who had seven children; Horace Baldwin Rice, who had an active public career serving as County Cominissioner and twice as Mayor of the City of Houston (1896-1898 and 1905-1913) and was one of the orignial promoters of the Houston Ship Channel; Frederick Allyn Rice, Jr., who moved to Pharr, Texas; George Converse Rice, who had no children; Minerva Rice, who married Henry Lummis; and Lottie Lillian Rice, who married Paul Bremond Timpson, who was president of Houston's oldest trust company, Houston Land and Trust Company which later became Houston Bank and Trust Company.

(Ed. note: Frederick Rice's personal letters became the property of Katherine Rice Neuhaus, daughter of Jonas Shearn Rice. Katherine's son Hugo V Neuhaus, Jr. donated the letters to the archives of the Houston Public Library on November JS, 1979.)