Person:Mary Rice (105)

Which Mary Rice?

The website of the Edmund Rice Association dances around the identity of the first wife of Paul Brintnal. In the entry for Paul, it mentions that Dorothy Rice is Paul's second wife without giving any information about his first wife, even though she is clearly named Mary Rice in the marriage record, and should be in their cross-hairs. This website, following Ward^[2], pairs Mary Rice, d/o Isaac Rice and Sybil Collins, with Ephraim Curtis, married 1729.

The use of the name Collens for a son, by Paul Brintnal and Mary Rice, is strong circumstantial evidence that it was the daughter of Isaac Rice and Sybil Collins that married Paul Brintnall. But, additionally, the will of the mother in 1734 explicitly names her deceased daughter "Mary Brintnor".

It appears that it was Mary, daughter of Nathaniel Rice and Patience Brown (named as Mary Rice, i.e., unmarried, in her father's will of 1726), who probably married Ephraim Curtis in 1729.

Occasionally Mary Rice, d/o Ephraim Rice, is proposed as the wife of Paul Brintnall. Besides their poor age match (she 10 years older), this can be shown to be wrong through a long chain of convoluted evidence. She was the Mary Rice who married Jonathan Bigelow. (Unfortunately Ward makes another error involving her sister "Hannah Stone", whom she names in her will, preventing him from being able to identify Jonathan Bigelow's wife as this Mary Rice. Hannah, d/o Ephraim Rice, married John Barber, than (2) Dea. Adams Stone (see Simon Stone Genealogy and various vital records). Hannah, d/o Phineas Rice, m. bef. 1730 Israel Stevens (based on birth of son Jacob). Ward confused the two Hannah's.)

1. ↑ Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. Vital Records of Sudbury, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850. (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1903)
   298.

   BRINTNEL, Mary, w. Paul, [died] June 24, 1732.

2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Ward, Andrew Henshaw. A Genealogical History of the Rice Family: Descendants of Deacon Edmund Rice, who came from Barkhamstead, England and settled at Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1638 or 9. (Boston: C. Benjamin Richardson, 1858)
   33.

   Children of Isaac Rice and Sybil Collins: 4) Mary, b. 1706, m. 23 Dec 1729 Ephraim Curtis.
   [The marriage specified here is almost certainly wrong. See the detailed discussion in the Personal History.]