Name Charles Rice | ||
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Charles Francis Rice (April 4, 1851 – October 2, 1927) was a prominent New England Methodist Episcopal minister and author.
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Early life and education
He was born April 14, 1851 in the parsonage of the Walnut Street Church in Chelsea, Massachusetts to Rev. William Rice and Catherine Laura North. He attended Springfield High School and Wesleyan University, graduating as salutatorian in 1872. He was a member of the Eclectic Society, and Phi Beta Kappa. He received an A.M. in 1875 and D.D. in 1893. The Wesleyan archives have his journals in which he describes his college experiences during the early 1870s.
He taught classics at both Springfield High School (1872–73) and Wesleyan University (1874–77). In 1874, he worked in the City Library of Springfield. He served on the committee on the Annual Examination, the committee on the Olin Prize, and as President of the General Alumni association at Wesleyan University, where his father Rev. William Rice was a trustee, and his brother William North Rice was a professor and acting president.
Ministry
C. F. Rice was a member of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He served as pastor at Appleton church, Neponset, Boston (1877–80); Wesley chapel, Salem, MA (1880–83; Webster, MA (1883–85), St. Paul's, Lowell, MA (1885–88), Leominster, MA (1888-93), Epworth Methodist Episcopal Church, now Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church in Cambridge, MA (1893–98). He served at St. Lukes Church in Springfield (1898-1900), which became Wesley Church, Springfield (1900–05). He was then a presiding elder, Superintendent of the Cambridge District (1905-1910), and paster at Winthrop Street Church in Boston from 1911-1915. He was pastor at South St. Church in Lynn, Massachusetts (1916-1920), then at Wellington Church in Medford, Massachusetts (1921-1925).
He was an incoming trustee of the New England Methodist Conference in 1902, and dealt with the results of unwise investments, which had cost the church thousands of dollars. He was a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1904 and 1908, the Inter-church Conference on Federation in 1905, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 1912, 16 and 20. He was President of the Massachusetts Federation of Churches from 1911-1921 and of the Lynn Inter-church Union from 1918-1919. He was also director of the Federation of Churches and Religious Organizations of Greater Boston. He was also chairman of the Conference Board Exam from 1897-1905, president of the New England Educational Society and a member of the Board of Education of the M.E. Church from 1908-12.
He wrote History of Methodism in Webster, Mass., printed in the Webster Times in 1884. He hosted Methodist students of Harvard University in the 'Oxford Club' and presented a paper entitled Life in the Epworth Rectory in 1894. He also served on the visiting committee of the Boston University School of Theology. Some of his sermons from Boston University chapel services are included in Noontime Messages in a College Chapel: Sixty-nine short addresses to Young People by Twenty-five Well-known Preachers, printed 1917.
He was a trustee at Wilbraham Wesleyan Academy and president of the board from 1898-1912.
Family life
He married Miriam Owen Jacobs on August 25, 1875. She was born February 26, 1853, the daughter of Dr. Horace Jacobs and Emily Owen Jacobs. She was educated at Springfield public schools, and graduated with honors from Vassar College. Together, they had five children; Laura Owen Rice, William Chauncey Rice, Horace Jacobs Rice, Paul North Rice, and Rachel Caroline Rice. All three sons attended Wesleyan University, and Laura Owen Rice attended Vassar College. After graduating from Wesleyan in 1901, William Chauncey Rice received an A.M in Government from Yale in 1902. He then studied at Harvard, where he earned a law degree in 1908, and later wrote a dissertation on the decline of the Federalist Party in New England in 1912. Horace Jacobs Rice also graduated from Harvard Law School in 1908. Both were admitted to the bar and practiced law in Boston and Springfield respectively. Paul North Rice became a notable librarian. Laura Owen Rice married Professor William Grant Seaman, while Rachel Caroline Rice married Professor Burton Howard Camp.
The New York Times lists Rev. C. F. Rice and his brother Professor William North Rice as having sailed to Liverpool on the Cunard Line ship, SS Bothnia, and returned on the SS Catalonia in 1881. C. F. Rice presented a sketch of his trip at a meeting of the Essex Institute, in 1882.
In 1898 with William North Rice, he co-authored and published William Rice: A Memorial, memorializing their father William Rice.
Genealogy
Charles Francis Rice was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony, as follows: