James H. Rice

JAMES H. RICE has been a resident of Smith County forty-five years, has been one of the successful farmers and stock raisers in the vicinity of Kensington, and is now postmaster and a banker of that town.

Mr. Rice is of old American stock. The Rices were English Quakers who settled in Pennsylvania about the time of William Penn. His grandfather, Jesse Rice, was born in Pennsylvania, was a farmer and lived in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and died in the latter state. He married Miss Adamson in Pennsylvania.

Thomas A. Rice, father of James H., was born in Pennsylvania in 1823. He grew up in that state, went to Knox County, Ohio, where he was a blacksmith and in 1861, located in LaSalle County, Illinois, where he followed his trade until his death in 1870. He was a democrat in politics. He married Elsie Reynolds, who was born in 1829 and died at Smith Center, Kansas, in 1890. They had five sons, all of whom live in Smith County, Kansas. The three oldest William, Thomas M. and Eliott R., are farmers; the fourth is James H., and the youngest is Emery Scott Rice, an attorney at Smith Center.

James H. Rice was born in Knox County, Ohio, January 4, 1856, was educated in the public schools of that state and Illinois, and in 1873 arrived in Smith County, where he worked on farms during the summer and attended school for three years. After leaving school he took up farming as his regular vocation and followed it until 1915. His farm, which he still owns, comprises 400 acres six miles northeast of Kensington, and is devoted to diversified farming. He has raised Shorthorn cattle and Poland China hogs on a rather extensive scale.

Mr. Rice was appointed postmaster of Kensington under President Wilson in 1915, and his service in that office has been both courteous and efficient. He is also vice president of the First National Bank, having filled that office for five years. He is a democrat, and for a number of years was clerk of the town board of Cedar Township. He is a trustee and deacon of the Christian Church and is affiliated with Kensington Lodge of Masons and Kirwin Chapter of the Royal Arch.

In 1876, in Decatur County, Kansas, Mr. Rice married Miss Louise McClaury. Her father, Sherman McClaury, now deceased, was a farmer and her mother, Jennie (Payne) McClaury, is now living at Oberlin, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Rice have four children: Walter Scott, a graduate of the Kensington and Smith Center high schools, took his LL. B. degree from the University of Kansas, and served two terms as county attorney of Smith County; the daughter Hazel is at home; Harry Foster was senior in the Kensington High School, a very promising athlete and captain of the football team, when he died at the age of nineteen; Mattie, the youngest of the family, is a junior in the Kensington High School.