My Genealogy Hound

Columbus T. Rice, one of the leading farmers and stock raisers of Clay Township, is a native of Tompkins County, N. Y., where he was born in 1827, and is the sixth of nine children of Asa and Polly (Reid) Rice. The father was born and reared in Connecticut, and married in Massachusetts, in 1812, at about the age of twenty-seven, and the same year removed to Tompkins County. N. Y., where he spent the remainder of his life as a tiller of the soil He served a short time in the War of 1812, and died about 1870. The mother was born in Massachusetts, and was about five years her husband’s junior, and died in 1873. Both were Methodists. Our subject remained at home until of age, only receiving a common-school education. He then went to Illinois in 1854, and the year following returned to New York and married Miss Catherine, daughter of Garrett and Elizabeth Wickoff, a native of Seneca County, N. Y. To this marriage seven children were born, five of whom are now living: Edward A. (of Kansas), Charles, James A., Mary and Augusta. He immediately returned to Illinois, and remained until 1857, then came to Adair County, Mo., and located in Clay Township, fourteen miles northeast of Kirksville, where he has a fine farm of 620 acres highly improved and cultivated, making him one of the leading farmers of the county. His property is an evidence of his industry and good management. When a young man he learned the carpentering trade, which he followed prior to coming to Missouri. He is now one of the leading stock raisers of the county, making a specialty of breeding thoroughbred Holstein cattle. He served three months each in the years of 1862 and1864 in the State Militia. He is one of the early settlers of the county, coming here when it was slightly settled and game was abundant, and has ever since been an active worker for the prosperity of the place, and an advocate of education. He is now a Republican, was reared a Whig, and cast his presidential vote for Lincoln in 1860.