Ancestors

James Rice

James Rice was the son of a Virginia landholder. He sold out in Virginia, took his family to Kentucky, and died there in the winter of 1794.

His father was Matthew Rice Sr. of Prince Edward County, in the Virginia Southside. On 16 May 1774 Matthew and his wife Anne gave "my son James Rice of Amelia County" 160 acres on the branches of the Sandy River. Amelia was the older county to the east. Prince Edward had been cut from it in 1753.

The gift ran "on my old line upon a Branch Joining William Rice ... to the great Branch of Sandy River." John Crenshaw and William Rice witnessed it. James settled on the land. His brothers held the farms around him, each a gift from their father: Matthew Jr., Nathan and John, and probably William.

On 16 August 1779 "James Rice & Mary his wife of Prince Edward County" sold the whole tract to Joseph Fowlkes of Amelia for £800. The deed calls it "the Tract of Land which his Father gave him whereon he now lives." Its neighbours were Nicholas Vaughn, Ann Rice, William Rice and David Rice. Mary came to the August court and gave up her dower in it. Dower was a wife's right to a life share of her husband's land if she outlived him. A buyer wanted it released in open court so that his title was clear.

A sale of everything he had fits a family about to leave. The James Rice and Mary who sold out in Prince Edward are very probably the James Rice and Polly who appear next in Kentucky. The names match. Their daughter Nancy was born in Prince Edward in 1773. And a Nathan Rice stood at the Kentucky deathbed, as James's brother Nathan could have. No single record says all of this. It is an inference from those points together.

The family settled in the Kentucky country around Danville, in what became Mercer County. There on 12 September 1790 Nancy Rice married Benjamin Spilman, a young man from Culpeper County, Virginia, who had come out with his widowed mother.

James Rice died on 25 January 1794. He did not leave a written will. A few hours before he died he told two men how his estate should go, and five days later they wrote his words down. A will spoken aloud like this was called nuncupative, and a court would accept it if the witnesses swore to it. The two witnesses were Nathan Rice, most likely his brother, and Charles Spilman, probably a cousin of his son-in-law.

He asked that "the whole of his Estate should be kept together for the support of the Children." Only at his wife's death was it to be divided equally among them. He named his son-in-law Benjamin Spilman and his wife, "Polley Rice," to carry this out. At the May court of 1794 Nathan Rice and Charles Spilman proved the will. On the motion of "Benjamin Spilman and Mary Rice Executors therein named," the court granted them letters of administration with the will annexed. These were the letters that let them settle the estate under the will's terms. Their bond was £300, with Charles Spilman as surety. The court named Charles Spilman, Nathan Rice, Robert Ross and John Taylor to appraise the estate.

The will does not name the children. Nancy is the one known. Two years before her father died she had named her first daughter Mary Rice Spilman, called Polly, which was her mother's name. Find a Grave memorials for Nancy and Benjamin, and a Spilman family genealogy printed in 1965, both call her the daughter of James and Mary Rice.

A history of Illinois Presbyterians printed in 1879 says Nancy's family was the one "very prolific of ministers" that produced Parson David Rice, the pioneer Presbyterian minister of Kentucky. How James Rice's family was related to David Rice is not shown by any record.

If James Rice is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "James Rice (d. 1794)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-rice-1794-e1f091.