The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
Oliver Rice was born 2 May 1717 at Marlborough, Massachusetts, a son of Charles Rice and Rachael Wheeler. He married Hannah Barlet, on 30 June 1742, at Grafton, Massachusetts. Their known children were:
Isaac was born on 1742.
Stephen was born on 1744.
Sarah was born on 4 February 1746.
Zerviah was born on 1748.
Levina was born on 1751.
Susanna was born on 1761.
Additionally, there are unnamed children born in 1753, 1756, 1757, and 1759.
While they were living in Hardwick, they joined a separatist movement that was organizing a new church. Several parishioners were unhappy with the official church and chose to leave it. The church voted to call upon those individuals, including Oliver Rice, to give why they were absent on 14 November 1753. In 1754 and again in 1757, the group requested exemptions from paying the Gospel Tax but were refused both times. The congregations created a covenant expounding their beliefs and both Oliver Rice and Hannah Barlet Rice signed the document in support of the Separate Church.
The town of Hardwick mustered a company to fight in the French and Indian War. Oliver Rice appears on the 1756 rolls of the Crown Point Expedition. In the summer of 1757, he was part of the company that marched as far as Kinderhook to provide relief for Fort William Henry.
The Rice family moved from Massachusetts to Vermont between 1761-1762, as the birth of his daughter Susanna was recorded at Hardwick in 1761, and in 1762, Oliver Rice’s name appears in the list of original members of the Bennington, Vermont, church.
During the Revolutionary War, Oliver served under Captain Elijah Dewey at the Battle of Bennington. The Battle of Bennington, as part of the Saratoga campaign and took place on16 August 1777, in Walloomsac, New York, about ten miles from Bennington, Vermont.
Oliver’s obituary was published with the following:
“In this town, on Thursday, the 12th [12 September 1799] Mr. Oliver Rice, in the 84th year of his age. He was a man who always illustrated a good character …he left an aged and respectable widow, to lament her irreparable loss.”
Sources:
Massachusetts Birth and Christenings, 1639-1915. FamilySearch Historical Records.
Massachusetts. Grafton Town Clerk’s Office. Records of the Town of Grafton, Massachusetts, Marriages, Births and Deaths, Vol. 1, 1716 - 1851. Massachusetts. Grafton.
Paige, Lucius, The History of Hardwick, Massachusetts with a Genealogical Register, New York, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883.
Memorials of a Century: Early History of Bennington, Vermont and its First Church, Massachusetts. Boston: Jennings, Isaac; Gould and Lincoln, 1869.
Vermont Gazette, Bennington, Vermont, 26 September 1799.
Day, Henry Clay, Scrapbooks of Henry Clay Day contain a variety of news clippings from about 1874-1918, Vermont. Bennington: The Bennington Museum Library and Archive.
Find a Grave.com, digital record, Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com: accessed 24 May 2020, memorial for Oliver Rice, Find A Grave Memorial # 43945392, Bennington, Vermont.
Sons of the American Revolution, National Society, Louisville, Kentucky. Primary application of Bruce Charles Starkweather, National Number 154624.
Baldwin, Thomas W., Vital Records of Hardwick, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Massachusetts. Boston. The New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1917.
Send a biographical sketch of your patriot!
Patriot biographies must be the original work of the author, and work submitted must not belong to another person or group, in observance with copyright law. Patriot biographies are to be written in complete sentences, follow the established rules of grammar, syntax and punctuation, be free of typographical errors, and follow a narrative format. The narrative should unfold in a logical manner (e.g. the narrative does not jump from time period to time period) or have repeated digressions, or tell the history of the patriot's line from the patriot ancestor to the author. The thinking here is that this is a patriot biography, not a lineage report or a kinship determination project or other report published in a genealogy journal. The biography should discuss the qualifying service (military, patriotic, civil) of the patriot ancestor, where the service was rendered, whether this was a specific state or Continental service, as well as significant events (as determined by the author) of the patriot's life. This is the entire purpose of a patriot's biography.
Additional guidelines around the Biography writeup can be found here:
Send your submission1, in a Microsoft Word compatible format, to patriotbios@sar.org for inclusion in this space 1Upon submission of a patriot biography, the patriot biography becomes the property of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and may be edited to conform to the patriot biography submission standards.