Last September, hubs and I went to nearby Natick, MA for the Rice reunion and I met techno-savvy Brian Rice. He was sending our tweets on the bus tour and I must admit, I was amused. Look how tall he is!
It is a great thing when a Society shares their presentations online. I wanted to spend a few minutes today reviewing what they put up online and I thought I'd show you them.
People have emailed me that they are descended from Deacon Edmund Rice but they can't come to this area to the reunion. Once such person is Randy Seaver of San Diego, CA.
An Introduction to the Life of Edmund Rice
DNA and The Rice Association
19th Century Army Generals
Showing posts with label Edmund Rice Reunion 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edmund Rice Reunion 2011. Show all posts
Friday, September 21, 2012
Monday, September 19, 2011
Making Cousin Friends
One of the fun parts of family organizations, is finding people who are "cousins". This happens online, too, as I have discovered this week with the number of people on Facebook who are also descendants of Deacon Edmund Rice. I admit that I did that on purpose since I took a wonderful (ahem, bragging here) great photograph of the memorial gravestone and people might like to have it for their collection. Yes, go ahead. You may use the photo.
I asked some simple questions of the people I met who were board members. I figure that they have been to a number of these events and know things that might not be known to everyone.
The first question was where are Rice descendants buried. (Answer:everywhere) and the second question was which child of Edmund is the most "popular". That means who is the child that has the most descendants who belong to the family association. (Answer: Thomas).
Edmund's son Thomas is not my husband's ancestor. His ancestor was the son named Edward. This cuts back on the number of people in the room who are more related to him. However, one man (pictured here) opened his laptop and said, "Oh, Edward is my ancestor, too." That's cool. I made them pose for a photo.
Scott Rice, is a Maj. Gen. in the Air Force reserve in Massachusetts. As this was the reunion that covered "famous" military Rice men, Scott was watching that part of the presentation with interest. Here's the Summary Slide. [By the way: hubs tells me that Scott outranks them all!] My husband is distantly related to Edmund Rice who earned the Medal of Honor. He was excited by that since I have one in my family too.
Not being a food person, I don't usually mention the food. The lunch was $20 per person and it was well worth it. Chowder, soup, deli sandwiches, salads and chocolate chip cookies. Soda, water and coffee were also served. I ate so much I wasn't hungry at suppertime. It was delicious and I didn't have to sit and eat it outside. This is the advantage of the hotel setting. Oh, yes, and the bathroom was not a porta-pottie.
New England family reunions tend to be outdoor affairs. The food may be catered or homemade by members of the organizers. That is always fun but it can be stressful for the organizers.
The after lunch speaker, was Benjamin Carp who told us about fire fighting in Colonial Times. It was very good. Some of the things he talked about are on this Web page.
For me, I always like the "stuff" that a Society sells. In this case, it was all of the books about Edmund Rice and his descendants and to Society members ONLY, a DVD of 9 generations. This family offers several generations online for free. I bought all of what you see here for $40. That's an amazing bargain.
I thought this was a great family reunion. We will go again next year. The air conditioning, great food, easy to find setting and nice people made all the difference. They were welcoming to us but not over pushy. I learned a lot. Enough said.
Postscript: Having the books shown here has already helped me identify some gravestone photos. Yes!
I asked some simple questions of the people I met who were board members. I figure that they have been to a number of these events and know things that might not be known to everyone.
The first question was where are Rice descendants buried. (Answer:everywhere) and the second question was which child of Edmund is the most "popular". That means who is the child that has the most descendants who belong to the family association. (Answer: Thomas).
Edmund's son Thomas is not my husband's ancestor. His ancestor was the son named Edward. This cuts back on the number of people in the room who are more related to him. However, one man (pictured here) opened his laptop and said, "Oh, Edward is my ancestor, too." That's cool. I made them pose for a photo.
Scott Rice, is a Maj. Gen. in the Air Force reserve in Massachusetts. As this was the reunion that covered "famous" military Rice men, Scott was watching that part of the presentation with interest. Here's the Summary Slide. [By the way: hubs tells me that Scott outranks them all!] My husband is distantly related to Edmund Rice who earned the Medal of Honor. He was excited by that since I have one in my family too.
Not being a food person, I don't usually mention the food. The lunch was $20 per person and it was well worth it. Chowder, soup, deli sandwiches, salads and chocolate chip cookies. Soda, water and coffee were also served. I ate so much I wasn't hungry at suppertime. It was delicious and I didn't have to sit and eat it outside. This is the advantage of the hotel setting. Oh, yes, and the bathroom was not a porta-pottie.
New England family reunions tend to be outdoor affairs. The food may be catered or homemade by members of the organizers. That is always fun but it can be stressful for the organizers.
The after lunch speaker, was Benjamin Carp who told us about fire fighting in Colonial Times. It was very good. Some of the things he talked about are on this Web page.
For me, I always like the "stuff" that a Society sells. In this case, it was all of the books about Edmund Rice and his descendants and to Society members ONLY, a DVD of 9 generations. This family offers several generations online for free. I bought all of what you see here for $40. That's an amazing bargain.
I thought this was a great family reunion. We will go again next year. The air conditioning, great food, easy to find setting and nice people made all the difference. They were welcoming to us but not over pushy. I learned a lot. Enough said.
Postscript: Having the books shown here has already helped me identify some gravestone photos. Yes!
Sunday, September 18, 2011
NO Evidence
Edmund Rice (1638) Reunion 17 Sept 2011 hosted by the Edmund Rice Association known as ERA
John F. Chandler, President of the ERA, greeted us after an hour of social time and coffee. I got coffee for the lady who was taking the registrations since her name tag said she was from North Stonington, CT (where MY ancestors came from). I think her name is Kathleen. I took her photo.
Mike Rice gave the first presentation. He called it Edmund Rice 101. He wanted to make sure that we knew that many people contributed to the research and data that he was making a synopsis of for his slides. Shown here is my favorite slide. NO EVIDENCE. Look at all the information that is not known and there is more, like when he came to America and what ship. So many books and genealogies are claiming to know so many of these facts. I am re-looking at what is said about MY immigrant ancestors.
My favorite "non-fact" is that no one knows for sure the burial location of Edmund Rice, his wives and some of his children. So, they put his memorial stone in the logical place. He is probably buried there near the site of the first meeting house. It seems fitting.
Mike covered what we do know and what can be supposed from the information. It is not known what year or place Edmund was born. (it is supposed and calculated from a court deposition of 3 April 1656), We do know when he died and the locations of his homes and some of his sons.
Mike explained open and closed field farming so we could understand what life was like in Sudbury (now Wayland as of 1835). I was impressed with his explanation and clarity of terms like freeman and land ownership and land divided among sons.
What I loved best was the money discussion of understanding that Edmund Rice was a wealthy man before he came to this country. It took a lot of money for him to gain passage and bring half those children with him. He became land rich after he got here. Edmund was a prosperous person.
John Chandler did the explanation of the Rice DNA project. As my husband is a Rice for only 4 generations, this won't do him any good but I would still like to do this, just to experience the process and results. Edmund Rice descendants show that their DNA came from an area of England and not Wales.
To be continued... [Here 's a link to all of the photos of the day]
Edmund Rice Reunion Tech Events
Yesterday, my husband Steve and I went to nearby Natick, MA to the annual RICE reunion. Having been on the bus tour the day before, we already had met and enjoyed the company of other RICE descendants that went with us. This reunion is held yearly in a hotel. Yes, you read that right in a hotel.
We were told that there were not as many people signed up this year as in the past. This society had a database that lists as many descendants as they can find and now numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Wow, that is a lot of people. Edmund Rice had twelve children. It made me wonder how many descendants my ancestors had.
I chose this photo of Brian Rice and myself for this blog post to make a point. I discovered while at the North cemetery, that Brian was the webmaster and is the face behind the Twitter name of @EdmundRice1638
It was funny, really. I realized while on the bus tour that someone on the bus was LIVE tweeting and guessed that it was Brian. (Well, he WAS the youngest person on the bus.) I stopped tweeting and blog posting and started re-tweeting his tweets. Seemed logical.
During the talks of the reunion, while I was busy taking notes, Brian continued to tweet. Here's my personal favorite. Yeah, so he spelled it wrong. He was listening, tweeting, taking photos AND taking notes. You want a person like this in YOUR society.
You might wonder why I am excited about this? Well, because this is the FIRST family reunion (remember this is NOT my family) that really covered a lot of family history plus a DNA project. I took a few photos of selected slides of the PowerPoint presentations before two things happened.
- I realized that they were presenting with computers (not an overhead projector or with just notes).
- They are planning to post the slides to the Web site soon.
I also learned that someone besides the Edmund Rice (1638) Association started the Wikipedia page but they are now correcting and adding to this online resource.
To be continued....
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Edmund Rice Bus Tour
This is the large bus that navigated the narrow, winding road of Sudbury, Wayland and Framingham yesterday on the official bus tour of the Edmund Rice (1638) Association.
Our guide George Rice led us by spots of interest and explained what the areas of these three towns were when Edmund Rice lived here. He even showed us Edmund Rice (don't get too excited, it was his son).
We saw one marker that we will go back and photograph. It is on the lawn of a private home. We will go on a Sunday morning, when there is less traffic and cross the street to get a shot of it without disturbing the people who live there.
Of course, we went to the cemetery.
Our guide George Rice led us by spots of interest and explained what the areas of these three towns were when Edmund Rice lived here. He even showed us Edmund Rice (don't get too excited, it was his son).
We saw one marker that we will go back and photograph. It is on the lawn of a private home. We will go on a Sunday morning, when there is less traffic and cross the street to get a shot of it without disturbing the people who live there.
Of course, we went to the cemetery.
Friday, September 16, 2011
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