William Whitney Rice
Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts
In office
March 4, 1877 – March 3, 1887
Preceded byGeorge Frisbie Hoar
Succeeded byJohn E. Russell
Constituency9th district (1877–83)
10th district (1883–87)
Massachusetts House of Representatives
In office
1875–1876
District Attorney
Worcester, County, Massachusetts
In office
1869–1873
Mayor of Worcester, Massachusetts
In office
1860–1861
Preceded byAlexander H. Bullock
Succeeded byP. Emory Aldrich
Member Worcester, Massachusetts
School Committee
Personal details
BornMarch 7, 1826
Deerfield, Massachusetts
DiedMarch 1, 1896 (aged 69)
Worcester, Massachusetts
Political partyFree Soil Party, Republican
Spouse(s)Cornelia A. Moen died June 16, 1862;
m. September 28, 1876 Alice M. Miller
ChildrenWilliam Whitney Rice, Jr., Charles Moen Rice

William Whitney Rice (March 7, 1826 – March 1, 1896) was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts.

Born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Rice attended Gorham Academy, Maine, and graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1846. He served as the preceptor of Leicester Academy, Leicester, Massachusetts from 1847 to 1851 before studying law in Worcester. He was admitted to the bar in 1854 and commenced practice in Worcester. In 1858 he was appointed judge of insolvency for Worcester County.

Rice was elected mayor of the city of Worcester in December 1859.[1] He served as district attorney for the middle district of Massachusetts from 1869 to 1874 and was a member of the State house of representatives in 1875.[2]

Rice was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1885.[3]

Rice was elected as a Republican to the Forty-fifth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1877 – March 3, 1887). After a failed re-election bid in 1886, he returned to Worcester and resumed the practice of law. He died there on March 1, 1896, at age 69, and was interred at Worcester Rural Cemetery.

Rice family and relations

William was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony.[4] He married Alice Miller (1840–1900), whose mother Nancy Merrick Miller was sister to Massachusetts judge Pliny T. Merrick.[5][6] Alice's own sister, Ruth Ann Miller, married U.S. Senator George Frisbie Hoar, making Rice and Hoar brothers-in-law. Alice founded a children's day nursery in Worcester.[6]

See also

References

Public Domain This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Notes

  1. ↑ Rice, Franklin Pierce (1899), Worcester of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Eight: Fifty Years a City, Worcester, MA: F.S. Blanchard & Company, p. 728
  2. ↑ Hoar, Rockwood. 1897. William Whitney Rice Biographical Sketch. Press of Charles Hamilton, Worcester, MA. Library of Congress E664-R49-H6
  3. ↑ American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
  4. ↑ Edmund Rice (1638) Association, 2007. Descendants of Edmund Rice: The First Nine Generations.
  5. ↑ Merrick, George B. Genealogy of the Merrick-Mirick-Myrick Family 1636-1902. Madison, WI: Tracy, Gibbs & Co.,1902, p. 283.]
  6. 1 2 Alice Miller Rice, privately printed commemorative pamphlet, ca. 1900.
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