Martin Luther Rice

 

Martin Luther Rice

Martin Luther Rice, my 3rd great grandfather, was possibly born around Springfield, Ohio around 1845.  Up until today as I write this, I had always thought he was born in Noble County, Indiana to Daniel and Nancy Colley Rice. But even I make mistakes and I have come to realize that I made a mistake when I added him 20 years ago and now a half dozen online trees that copied my information without verifying my work now have it wrong too.  It was an easy mistake to make. Ancestry showed me a single census record with his name Martin Rice at the right age living in Indiana with parents Daniel and Nancy and I soon found others. What I failed to pay attention to, is that all those other records for the same father and son actually said the name Marlin Rice. 

When researching genealogy, one typically works backwards. I had lots of records of Martin Rice in Iowa and when I found that one record of him in Indiana that I falsely assumed was him, I just continued to work backwards in time despite the names being off by a letter in most cases. I made the faulty assumption that he went by either name or that transcription errors had been made. Had I worked forward in time from that one record where I made the wrong assumption, I would clearly have seen that Marlin Rice lived and died near his home in Indiana and thus couldn't be a misspelled Martin Rice that is my 3rd great grandfather.

So I lopped off that branch of my tree and am beginning to do things the right way.

So where was Martin Luther Rice born? I can't say for sure because records disagree. Most census records list Ohio and the death certificate of one of his sons lists the already mentioned Springfield, Clark County, Ohio . But another son's death certificate lists Springfield, Illinois. Martin did join the 140th Illinois Infantry and fought in the Civil War for 100 days in 1864 but the Illinois record of his enlistment lists his birthplace as Buckeye, Indiana while his Grand Army of the Republic membership in Iowa lists Ohio. So your guess is frankly as good as mine at this point but it gives me several places to look more closely and see if I can pick up his ancestral trail.

Martin would serve his 100 day enlistment with Company A of the 140th Illinois Infantry before being discharged on the 29 Oct 1864 in Chicago. Disability claim records files after his return from the war however provide a lot of detail not only for those three months but the rest of his life. After enlisting, Martin was mustered on June 18 at Camp Butler, Illinois and was soon moved to Cairo, Illinois by train, from there by boat to Memphis, Tennessee and then by marching east of Memphis to somewhere near a small town called La Grange where the first of his many injuries received during the war happened.  On 12 July 1864, along the La Grange River (today named the Wolf River), Martin was digging a vault fortification with some sort of grub hoe and fell into the fault injuring his right knee. Records theorized that he had a broken patella and torn ligaments from the fall. This injury would continue to cause him pain and swelling the rest of his life. Evidently though it didn't get him put on the sick list because 3 or 4 days later he was in a battle where he damaged his vision and hearing both though no details on how. One battle was so intense, he lost several several teeth on the left side of his mouth pulling his gun's ramrod out. All these things continued to haunt him throughout the remainder of his life along with a general case of diarrhea that was common among Civil War vets who served and lived in appalling conditions, especially those along important waterways.

After Martin's discharge from the army in Chicago, his whereabouts are a mystery for the next five years until he shows up in DeWitt, Iowa on the eastern side of the state and married my third great grandmother Amana Virginia Smith on 17 Feb 1869. According to the disability papers, they did not linger and left for western Iowa in Monona county where they would spend the rest of their lives. Perhaps the hurry to go to western Iowa was partly due to their oldest child, John J. being born 9 months later in their new home in Monona county. But the census records dispute this fact listing their home on 7 August 1870 in Berlin township, Clinton county, Iowa still on the east side of the state. Regardless of the correct answer, they were in Monona county by March 1872 when their second daughter was born. Also a note and a clue to his past is that the 1870 census lists two other Rice males living with Martin who was around age 26 at the time. Justus Rice age 29 and Peter Rice age 25. Both are listed as farm laborers with substantial personal real estate values listed in the census that leads me to suspect they may be brothers. I have tried searching for records for both Justus and Peter and perhaps found some but nothing definitive that ties them to either Martin or a parent who I can reference to Martin. For now, all I have are unanswered questions that I hope to solve again so that this branch of my family tree doesn't tie with being the shortest with my 3rd great grandmother Mary Meyer Kuck from Switzerland.

My 2nd great grandmother, Annetta Jane Rice was born 19 October 1873, joining her older brother and sister and was eventually joined by four more brothers and four more sisters for a total of 11 children over a range of 23 years. One of Martin's daughters, named after her mother, died not quite three weeks after birth and another one died 7 months after birth due to pneumonia but the other nine would survive to adulthood, I think. Due to a fire that destroyed the 1890 Census records, the oldest two children, with the common names of John and Mary, disappear from the records or more specifically, blend into the records of multiple people with the same name in the general vicinity. In John's case, I can pick him up again since I know his death date being buried in the family plot. Mary isn't buried in the family plot and most likely was married and I never have been able to learn of her outcome.

Another wrinkle though popped up it's ugly head as I researched for this blog post. In searching for records for Martin L. Rice, I found a birth record for his youngest son Roy Edward Rice. That wasn't surprising as I already knew of his existence. What was surprising is the record listed Roy Edward's mother as Mrs. Susie Warren. My first thought was that Martin and Amanda divorced as some point but Amanda's name is all over his Civil War pension application with her and others testifying that she was Martin's wife and later widow. So perhaps is was only a split so that the pension wasn't disqualified? Maybe it was a clerical error. I just don't know at this point in the game. 

Martin was a farmer during his lifetime post Civil War, when his health allowed him to be anyway, though from the records, he only owned an acre somewhere near the yellow "tack" in the photo above just northeast of the town of Whiting, Iowa. They also owned Lot 10 somewhere on the NE side of town. The disability papers had several witnesses saying he was often inside suffering from his various infirmaries and could only work for brief periods of time. I'm sure this is why so much effort was put into getting his military pension and disability moneys (the disability claim alone tops out at 126 pages) as they were probably very poor trying to keep 9 children fed.

Martin died on 24 May 1899 at the age of 54 (assuming the 1945 birthdate) of theorized stomach cancer. The doctors made several mentions of stomach cancer but the records state that they only guessed as a post mortem was never done and Martin was buried in the local cemetery on the south side of Whiting the very next day.

For many years as I researched this family, I could only piece together their story from the few historical records and the disability application. I have never been able to search through local newspapers which to my knowledge, have never been digitized like areas where some of my other ancestors live. As such, I never knew where they were buried other than the name of the cemetery with 4000+ people buried there across many acres. It might take a person a couple days of walking to find their headstones assuming they even had headstones.

But in the process of writing this post, I did some more research and was able to find a website where I could search by name and it pointed out which grave they were buried in precisely. So I did and put a "pin" in the area view seen above so that someday when I am in the vicinity, I can stop by and pay my respects to my 3rd great grandparents. They are buried right next to each other and there is nobody names Susie anywhere close. 

Amanda Virginia Smith Rice

Amanda Virginia Smith Rice (of my only southern branch of my family tree) would live another 23 years at her house in town before giving up her earthly toil and from the disability papers, it does sound like toil. When her husband Martin died, she still had two young children in the house and no income. Character references for her in the disability papers make her living conditions sound kind of bleak, some due to health issues but mostly because she had no money and really needed the claim to be approved which it eventually was. 

She was also part of the loop in my family tree that I wrote about not too long ago and shorts me of one set of 5th great grandparents since they are the same grandparents for two branches.

Amanda died of pneumonia on 24 October 1922 according to her death certificate and is buried next to Martin and a number of her children. But other than affirming her parents name and that son George filled out the certificate, there is little information on her life that one typically gets with death notices filed in newspapers. Someday I hope to get out that way and do a search of the local newspaper to see if one exists and provides a little more details of her life.