Henry Rice (politician)


Henry Rice was an American Army officer in the War of 1812, a leading Boston merchant, a member of the Boston City Council and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Biography

Henry Rice was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts on 15 January 1786 to Noah Rice and Hannah Palfrey Rice. He served as an officer in the War of 1812, attaining the rank of major. He married Maria Burroughs of Boston on 26 February 1816, and they had five children. Rice served as a member of the City of Boston Common Council from 1832 to 1834, and in 1838, and served for six years as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was a trader of imported goods in Boston and lived at 8 Bulfinch Street in Boston's Beacon Hill district, but he maintained a substantial estate in Marlborough that he inherited from his father Noah. In his later years, after 1847, he was engaged in the trading of corporate stocks in Boston. Rice died on 15 October 1867 at his home in Boston.

Family relations and legacy

Rice's grandson Charles Austin Coolidge was a brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Upon Rice's death, his estate near the center of Marlborough was sold to build housing for workers in the shoe factories that were being established in the rapidly industrializing town. Rice Street in the Middle Village area near downtown Marlborough was named after Henry at that time.
Rice was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice an early immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony as follows: