Lieutenant Oliver Rice, 4th Regiment Massachusetts Continental Line – Original Member
A Son of William and Mary (Estabrook) Rice, he was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, July 26, 1752, died in Belpre, Ohio, in Novmeber 1836, aged 84; private in the Lexington Alarm, April 19, 1775; sergeant, 4th Continental Infantry, January 1-December 31, 1776; sergeant-major, 9th Massachusetts, March 1, 1777; Ensign, June 2, 1778; Lieutenant, September 5, 1780; transferred to 4th Massachusetts, January 1, 1783, and served to November 3, 1783. For several years after the war he kept a store in Walpole, New Hampshire; removed to Belpre, Ohio, in 1789, where he was a surveyor by profession; his will dated October 29, 1836 bequeathed: to nephew Oliver Rice, son of his later brother Charles; to niece Mary, wife of Cyprus Ames of Belpre; to niece Betsey, wife of William T. Howe, ‘lately of Belpre’; and to several friends in Belpre.
He married about 1785, Abigail Willard of Walpole, who died there in 1788 with an infant daughter. He never remarried, and left no issue.
Abstracted from James Archer O’Reilly III, Memorial of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati (Boston, 2004), 323. Oliver Rice was an Original Member of the Massachusetts Society, signing the covenant on June 9, 1783. He has been represented in the New Hampshire Society since 2019.
