PART ONE

A simple DNA test can either negate or validate decades of genealogical research.  It can also save hundreds of hours of detailed genealogical sleuthing by giving you, for starters, a fairly accurate assessment of which of the many branches of the Rice family you belong to.

Why is that valuable information?  Because it will enable you to immediately compare notes with all the other researchers who are perched on your branches of the family tree.  You can see how you are related and, usually, find out more about your Rice ancestors and what their lives were like.

Information on how to take a DNA test is at the end of this article.

Why get involved in DNA testing?  Because we have an ancestral "signature" locked in our DNA.  The male Y-chromosome identifies it.  Everyone who descends from Thomas Rice of Virginia and his wife, Marcy, has the same "signature".  The same is true for descendants of every Rice immigrant to America from the 1600s onward.   In DNA lingo, these "signatures" are called haplotypes.  For example: Now that we know the haplotype for Edmund Rice any male descendants of his still bearing the Rice surname will DNA test with that haplotype or a very slight variation on it.

We will be talking about DNA testing a lot in our Rice Family Ezine.  There will be updates to the basic groups (i.e., branches of the Rice family in North America).  With your help, we will be trying to identify branches of the Rice family which have not yet had a descendant tested so we can establish priorities and an action plan for having this done.

The statistics on the testing done to date are interesting.  Of the more than 200 people tested, about 22% don't fit into the established family groups.  If this statistic remains constant, we will be discovering many more--perhaps dozens--of branches of the Rice family.  This is both important and exciting news to Rice family researchers.  It also means we have a lot of work ahead!

This article only begins to lay the information foundation that we can work from.  In Part One we will describe eight of the groupings established to date.  Part Two (in our next issue) will complete that description, ending with the most intriguing group of all: those 40 some test subjects who don't fit into the 15 groups established so far and do not match with each other!  That means we've only discovered and named a very small number of the Rice family branches in America! 

Please keep in mind that the identity of test subjects is kept confidential and is keyed to the identification number of the person tested.  This means your editor and many others interested in--or associated with--Rice DNA testing only know the ancestral lines of those who chose to identify themselves and furnish information on their ancestors.  This means the following summary of groups is limited to participants who have volunteered this information.  If you have been tested and your earliest known Rice ancestor is not listed, please consider letting us add his name to our list.

GROUP 1 (41 tested) - DESCENDANTS OF EDMUND RICE (ca. 1594-1663), WHO CAME FROM ENGLAND TO MASSACHUSETTS IN 1638.  This group is well enough established that if you think you are an Edmund Rice descendant but have not proven a documented line, a DNA test of a Rice surname male you know is of your line should either support or disprove Edmund as your ancestor. If you are an Edmund Rice descendant, you can verify the earlier generations on the website of the Edmund Rice Assn.  There is fairly complete, documented information for the first five generations on the Edmund Rice Association website.

GROUP 3 (31 tested) -  ROBERT ROYCE (ca. 1606-1676) of New London, CT.  Readers are urged to see Rice Book 2, titled The Immigrants, for more information on this branch of the Rice family.  There, questions about whether he was the Robert Rice found in Massachusetts at an earlier date are discussed and much more material on these Rices is given. Five of those tested trace back to Robert using fairly reliable genealogical procedures. Seven others appear to have semi-documented lines back to Robert, seven more are not documented and three who test as Group 3 members were previously thought to be descendants of Edmund Rice. The near-exact match status of all the samples tested on 25 loci (the basic test is only 12 loci) makes it seem likely that at least these are closely related, and probably all of them are. Since the testees with documented genealogies back to Robert Royce agree at least 24/25, and include exact-match descendants from two different sons of Robert, the group as a whole is now quite firmly established, even though not all members have traced their lineage back to the founder. There is a Robert Royce Association. (See list of links in left column, above.)
 
GROUP 4 (21 tested) - A VIRGINIA RICE LINE. It appears that this is the branch of the family that has been known for decades of genealogists as belonging to Thomas and Marcy Rice, who were in Virginia at an early date, but later than some other Rice immigrants to Virginia.  (Indeed, until recently almost every Rice with Southern ancestry has assumed that they belonged to this family and DNA testing has proven this longstanding assumption wrong.) Here are some of the ancestors claimed by those who test in this group: Christopher Columbus Rice of Richmond, Madison Co., KY; Campbell Rice of Carter Co., KY; Charles Rice of Goochland Co., VA and Bath Co., KY, who d. in 1785; Edward Rice of Goochland Co., who d. 1770; Jesse Rice (b. ca. 1778) of Shelby and Muhlenburg Co., KY; David Holman Rice of Barnwell Dist., SC; William Rice of Caswell Co., NC, who m. Esther Chounan; James Rice (1750-1835) of VA & KY; Holeman Rice 1773-1845) of VA, NC & OH; Holman Rice, b. 1784, VA; Charles Rice, b. 1749, VA (whose line then continues as Charles b. 1715, Edward, d. 1770, VA, and Thomas and Marcy); Charles W. Rice, b. 1839, Madison Co., KY (son of James); James Rice (m. Alice Hix) of Logan Co., KY; Humphrey Posey Rice (b. ca. 1816, SC and moved to Cherokee Co., GA); Holman Rice who m. Jane Morris; Jesse Rice (d. Shelby Co., KY before 1840); and, William Campbell Rice, b. 1823, Lawrence Co., KY & m. Polly Osborne.  Nine donors have tentatively traced back to Rices of Virginia, and eight others to Rices of Kentucky or the Carolinas (and probably to Virginia ultimately).  Yet the identification of their common ancestor remains uncertain.  Additional testing of more descendants would no doubt firm up this group.

GROUP 5 (15 tested) - RICE OF VIRGINIA. Several people who know they are cousins and thus have common ancestry have been DNA tested, yet the immigrant ancestor is unknown.  Those tested give the following as their ancstors:  Archibald Rice, b. 1795, VA and d. 1864, Carter Co., KY; Elijah Rice, b. 1787, VA & d. 1860, Carter Co., KY; Thomas W. Rice (b. 1811, VA),  m. Sarah Cox and died after 1880, Grainger Co., TN; James Monroe Rice, b. 1803, TN and m. Sarah Hedrick in Blount Co., TN; Sherrod Rice, b. 1805, VA, and d. ca. 1864, Carter Co., KY; Alan Bronson Rice of Ashland, KY, who moved to KS; Mathias Rice (1801-1843) of Lawrence Co, KS; George Rice of Ashland Co., KY, b. ca. 1900; and, Ezekiel Rice, b. 1777, Wythe Co., VA, son of James and Elinor, with this James possibly the same James Rice (1724-1844) who died in Gallia Co., OH.  (Your editor advises caution here where evidence relates to a man who supposedly lived to the age of 120 years, which is extremely unusual).

GROUP 7-a (3 tested) - RICE OF MID-SOUTH.  These are descendants of Richard Rice, b. ca. 1770-1780 and d. 1841, Elbert Co., GA; and, Benajah Rice, d. 1819, Boone Co., KY (son of William Rice, d. 1780, Culpeper Co., VA).  Three other test subjects were first assigned to this group, but when their tests were extended to 37 markers their relationship with the others proved to be too distant.

GROUP 8 (3 tested) - David Rice of Weymouth, MA; this is said to be the family of William Marsh Rice of Houston, who founded Rice University, but your editor has seen no documented proof of William's ancestry, though it certainly may exist.

A study of the above results shows that there is much more data needed to substantiate preliminary results.  This means we need many more test subjects.  Only some groups have enough test results--with supporting records from traditional genealogical research--to solidify these branches.  What this means is that there is enough evidence to establish the genetic signature (called a haplotype) for the immigrant ancestor or to assume that those who test the same have a common ancestry.

Group 7 remains an interesting case study and genealogical challenge.  The earliest identified person in the group is Henry Rice, but it is not proven that all those tested descend from him and nobody knows Henry's ancestry.  Serious and competent genealogists have been trying for decades to discover Henry's ancestry, but even with DNA testing of several descendants it has remained elusive.  Many of us (your editor included) who do not descend from Henry are so challenged by his unknown ancestry that every time we check an index, or find a new source, we automatically punch his name in! 

It may seem that DNA testing has not led us very far, but consider this.  As recent as the early 1990s many of those researching the New England Rices thought there was only one major branch, that being the descendants of Dea. Edmund Rice, who came from England to Massachusetts in 1638.  Now test results support what only a few of us already knew: The assumption was false. There are other unrelated branches of the Rice family in New England--at least six of them, and we have not yet had a single person DNA tested that belongs to at least three of those.  Likewise, those descending from Southern Rice families believed they all had a common ancestor, a Thomas Rice of Virginia.  Here DNA testing has come to the rescue, already indicating a dozen or more separate, unrelated Rice families in the south.  It seems inevitable that there will be even more since most of the tested subjects who do not match anyone else claim southern Rice lineages-that is, they don't have a common ancestor unless you go back a thousand or more years!  The reason for this is that since genealogy as a hobby became all the rage in the mid 1800s nearly every amateur genealogist has researched only his/her own branch of the family.

Only professional genealogists or the few people who have, like your editor, covered all branches of a family, have known the width, breadth and depth of the non-relationship these people with the same surname have to each other.  Between the 1870s and now--a span of more than 135 years--less than 10 people are known to have covered all branches of the Rice family.  Some of the "surprises" revealed by DNA testing struck me as "It's about time" because I started a Rice newsletter in the 1970s and as soon as it started accepting genealogical queries from readers I knew, by their content, that there are literally dozens of Rice family branches in North America.  Indeed, if you look at the list of Rice immigrants to America in just the 1600s, you will find that there are at least 60 of them. Almost without exception they stayed this side of the Atlantic, had children and founded branches of the Rice family.  (See Rice Book 2, titled The Immigrants.)