(This was planned to be a straightforward reprint of two articles written back in 2012, but it sparked off some more research, so now reappears as one longer revised article)
Photograph taken from Ancestry
A name that occurs
in many histories of the Watchtower Society (although omitted from the
Proclaimers book) is H.B. Rice – full name Hugh Brown Rice. His name is found
in the first issue of Zion’s Watch Tower as a contemporary of CTR. Rice had
attempted to start his own journal The Last Trump – but financial woes resulted
in failure. CTR offered to send the new ZWT to Rice’s subscribers, and listed
him as a regular contributor to ZWT. However, Rice never actually wrote a word
for CTR’s new paper.
From our vantage
point now, perhaps the most useful detail about Rice is that he was not an
Adventist but a firm convert to the Age to Come movement. This is why he and
CTR would be in touch. This is why Rice’s readers would logically be attracted
to the message of the new ZWT. It is why he offered to write for ZWT and might
have done so if financial woes had not diverted him.
Financial
difficulty was a recurring theme throughout Rice’s association with the Age to
Come movement.
Hugh Brown Rice
was born in Eden Ridge, Tennessee, in 1845. He married Sarah Gideon Edwards in
1872 and they had seven children in 12 years. He initially trained for a
conventional mainstream ministry. In a letter written in 1887 to The
Restitution, the main Age to Come paper of the day (and reproduced in full at
the end of this article) Rice gives some brief biographical details of himself.
“I was educated at Amherst College, Mass., (class of 1870) and was for a time
in Auburn Theological Seminary at Auburn, N.Y….I preached for a short time
among the Presbyterians and then for some seven years among the “Disciples,”
but…seeing the way of the Lord more clearly in reference to the life eternal
and the gospel of the kingdom, I was baptized on the confession of this faith
by Brother Richard Corbaley in Yale County, Cal., in 1878 or ’79.”
Class of 1870 from 1879 directory
Richard Corbaley
(1820-1903) was an old-timer in the Age to Come movement, who had travelled
west in the early 1870s along with Benjamin Wilson. Corbaley was credited with
founding the first Church of God congregation on the Pacific Coast in the
Restitution for May 24, 1876. His life story is given in his obituary in the
Restitution for September 9, 1903.
A letter from a
Thos. Hughes in the Restitution for March 13, 1878 reviewed the personnel in
his area, which included Richard Corbaley, along with “Bro. Wilson, Rice and
wife at Sacremento.” Whether this is H B in early 1878 is unknown, but
certainly by 1879, H B Rice is very much in evidence as a featured speaker with
Corbaley at the annual Church of God conference in California. This was held
over August 14-17, 1879 and a full report then published in the Restitution for
September 10, 1879. This report indicates where Rice’s main loyalties and
interests lay so soon after ZWT began publication and now that his own paper
The Last Trump had folded.
The report reads
(in part) “Brother R. Corbaley submitted his report as Evangelist…in the
(Friday) evening we were profitably entertained by listening to a discourse
delivered by Brother H.B. Rice from John xvii.3…by motion Brother Richard
Corbaley was elected as Evangelist for the ensuing year…in the (Saturday)
evening Brother H.B. Rice delivered a discourse on “the key of interpreting the
Scriptures,” during which he dwelt at some length upon the fact that the
natural always precedes the Spiritual…(on Sunday) after listening to short but
interesting discourses by Bros. H.B. Rice and R. Corbaly (sic) the friends and
brethren proceeded to bid each other farewell.”
The same report
included the appointment of a future business and conference committee to
include a certain C.W. Russell – not to be confused with C.T. Russell - and
also a commendation of The Restitution as a “valuable paper” to whom the report
was of course sent.
Rice then seems to
disappear from view, apart from brief correspondence found in ZWT and Barbour’s
Herald. Barbour’s June 1879 Herald mentions Rice’s “business failures” and
“lack of means.” CTR’s Zion’s Watch Tower last hears from Rice in its July 1880
issue which again talks of “loss of business.” It mentions that Rice has
obtained a situation in San Francisco and has moved there.
Several years go
by and then Rice resurfaces in the pages of The Restitution in 1885. His
comments indicate that as far as financial woes are concerned, not a lot has
changed. In The Restitution for January
21, 1885, he writes from San Jose, California, that he is now in the Real
Estate business, but wants to go preaching and “to devote more time and
attention to this matter than I have done for some years.” But there is a
problem, “In worldly goods I am very poor, and have a wife and four children to
support.” He asks for “a helping hand” – which could be interpreted as someone
moving there to preach, or financial help so he could do it further.
A couple of years
later, he pops up again, this time from Oleander, California, and indicates
that financial woes have continued dogging him. In the Restitution for
September 21, 1887, he describes himself as “poor in this world’s goods,
and…hampered by business connections entered into for the purpose of providing
for my family.” Not much has changed except that there are now five children to
feed, quaintly described by Rice as “all young and non-productive of material
needs.” Rice is now running “a little country store here but am partly in debt
for my building and my stock.” But it is a good location – maybe someone could
go into partnership with him or perhaps buy him out? It was a good prospect –
honest! Brother Benjamin Wilson was nearby, but organizing anything had proved
difficult.
Whether anyone
responded to his business suggestion is not recorded, but in the November 7,
1888 issue of Restitution, Rice is now at Delano, California on “a government
claim, a homestead of 160 acres,” enthusing about the Philadelphia National
Conference to come, and bemoaning (as always) his financial circumstances. He
would love to go preaching but “am too much burdened by the cares of a large
and helpless family”. Farming is not working out, so “unless the brothers know
of my condition and feelings they certainly can never help me to devise ways
and means to do gospel work.” Basically, please can someone help me
financially?
Something must
have worked out temporarily for him, because in the Wilmington Evening Journal for
December 1, 1888, he is preaching at a Church of God meeting.
But shortly
afterwards, in the January 9, 1889 Restitution, Rice writes two letters about
his current preaching tour. Unfortunately – and you could say almost par for
the course – Rice has run out of money and is now stranded far from home. Home
is California but as the above clipping shows Rice has been preaching on the
opposite side of the States in Wilmington, Delaware. The friends there suggest
that he moves on to visit his mother and sister in Knoxville, Tennessee, the
city of his youth. Perhaps it is reading too much into it, but one almost hears
a sigh of relief when Rice moves on, because once in Knoxville, he writes to
The Restitution, “I am as yet, of course, unable to return to my family in
California, and I suppose God has a work for me to do here yet, else he would
send me the money to get home.” How his “large and helpless family” back home
are managing during this time is undisclosed.
Somehow, Rice does
get back home and almost immediately - indefatigable as ever – he is writing to
the Restitution again. From the February 13, 1889 issue: “I reached home Jan.
30th after a long and eventful absence…It occurred to me…to say that
if any of the brethren in California so desire and can arrange to meet the
necessary expenses (!) I could preach some this summer.”
This is followed
up with another letter that results in editorial comment on February 27, 1889,
to the effect that they have received communication from Brother H B Rice at
Delano, Ca. “There seems to be a door opening for him there, but he needs some
help financially...” In other words – the usual! Rice’s letter was due to be
published in the next issue, but unfortunately that issue is not extant.
The final reference
to H.B. Rice that this writer has been able to find in The Restitution was a
month or two later in the issue for April 10, 1889. Referring back to an
announcement in the previous week’s issue (which again sadly is missing) there
is an editorial note that they were in error last week saying that the
Executive Board had passed a resolution that Bro. Rice should receive some
money from the Evangelical Fund – it should have been Bro. Niles... Oops! One wonders what the story was behind
that.
At this point the
impoverished H B Rice disappears from the pages of the Restitution – this time
apparently for good.
There had been a
repeating theme to his writing over a ten year period; however, at this
distance it would be harsh to judge the man’s sincerity. He obviously lacked
the financial acumen of a CTR, and for whatever reasons his early forays into
commerce generally ended in disaster. However, his frequent appeals for
financial help were always linked to his desire to preach as he saw fit.
But once he
disappeared from view, Rice finally obtained what might be termed “a proper
job,” a position enabling him to feed his family. Being an Age to Come preacher
had not really worked out and perhaps that decided that his religious interests
(however they now evolved) should remain as a spiritual hobby rather than
livelihood.
A year later the
name H B Rice turns up in the Los Angeles Herald for 25 May, 1890. Rice is
involved in organizing tours.
This finally seems
to work. By the time of his death in 1905 he was running his own travel agent
company.
He ended his days
– no longer impecunious – but also no longer apparently in association with the
Restitution. When he died, there was no mention in its pages. And his
connection with CTR had ended almost as soon as it began.
His obituary was
published in the Los Angeles Herald for November 3, 1905. It mentioned that he
was a religious man, but the main subheading concentrated on his business
activities – “Pallbearers Are Selected From Intimate Business Friends of the
Deceased Steamship Agent.” The account stated that he “was president of the
Hugh B. Rice company, steamship and touring agents.” The funeral service had
been conducted by “Rev. J.W. McKnight, pastor of the Magnolia avenue Christian
church…assisted by N.W.J. Straud, leader of the Bible class of which the
deceased was a member.”
We do not know the
nature of this Bible class, whether Rice stayed within the Age to Come family
or reverted to something more traditional. Neither he or Straud are mentioned
in the Restitution or the Christadelphian papers of the day.
The complete
obituary along with a photograph of the family gravestone can be found on the
Find a Grave site under Hugh B Rice, born October 6, 1856, died October 31,
1905, Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, Los Angeles County, California.
Historically there
were two disparate stories for Hugh Brown Rice. There was the impoverished Age
to Come preacher who nearly wrote for Zion’s Watch Tower and then wrote
repeatedly to The Restitution begging for financial help. And there was also
the prosperous businessman in the travel industry. You could be forgiven for
wondering if these were two different men, both coincidentally named Hugh B
Rice. Stranger things have no doubt happened in history. But here we are helped
by another obituary notice, this time found in the Obituary Record of Graduates of Amherst
College, for the Academical Year Ending June 27, 1906, Amherst, Massachusetts,
1906, page 158.
Although this adds a little more detail and joins the dots so to speak,
it has to be said that the memory of surviving relatives lets the side down. It
states: “During the last twenty-five years of his life
he regularly taught a large and enthusiastic Bible class in Los Angeles. He was
a frequent contributor to religious publications, and for several years
published a small monthly paper called The Last Trump.”
Let's do the math here. (Quote) he regularly taught a large and enthusiastic Bible class in Los Angeles for twenty-five years? That would take us back to around 1880, the time had a brief association with CTR and Nelson Barbour. Was his Bible class large and enthusiastic and continuous? As noted above, in the second half of the 1880s many letters from Rice were published in the Restitution newspaper. They showed Rice struggling to make ends meet as an unsuccessful farmer, and storekeeper, and bemoaning his isolation from those of like faith. They repeatedly ask for financial help so he can go preaching. One one documented occasion he leaves his family in near penury, goes preaching far away and runs out of money and has great difficulty getting home. Two typical letters from the period are reproduced at the end of this article, which stress both his isolation and lack of funds.
The Amherst
obituary also mentions his paper The Last
Trump running as a monthly “for several years.” This would appear to be a
“folk memory” on the part of his family. Available evidence suggests it ran for
only about three issues and then folded prior to the start of Zion’s Watch
Tower. When a dramatic reversal occurred in Rice’s fortunes at the very end of
the 80s, he disappears completely from the pages of extant One Faith/Age to
Come publications. For Rice to have
published for several years would have meant his re-starting it when he finally
got on his feet financially in the 1890s. While the old adage holds true that
absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, it would seem
doubtful.
Once Rice finally got
his finances in order, his dreams of an active ministry disappeared into the
relief of actually making a reasonable living for a growing family. He still
retained an interest in religious matters and The Los Angeles Herald obituary
mentions Bible class he attended, but as noted earlier neither he or Bible
class leader Straud are to be found in extant Age to Come materials of the time.
The main thing the
Amherst obituary does for us is draw two diverse pictures together. On one hand
we have the financial failure and on the other we have the prosperous businessman.
The Amherst obituary shows this was clearly the same man – even if the details
have been blurred and distorted in the telling.
Basically, Rice’s
obituaries highlights the major flaw in all obituaries – the one person who
could verify the information is unfortunately not there to do so.
Below are
reprinted two of H B Rice’s letters to The Restitution, covering a little bit
of his history, and showing his keen desire to preach the word as he saw it, in
spite of continued personal adversity.
Letter from H.B.
Rice as published in The Restitution for September 1, 1887, page 3.
OLEANDER, Cal.
Dear Restitution:
I notice with
interest and joy all attempts to organize effort in the spread of the glad
tidings of life through the Son of God. I, too, long to preach the good news of
the kingdom, but, knowing that the very many of the called, chosen and faithful
are, like myself, poor in this world’s goods, and being hampered by business
connections entered into for the purpose of providing for my family things
honest in the sight of God and men, I have supposed it were impossible to
obtain the needed means to enable me to devote my time to preaching. So I have
kept silent. But when I read of the call for laborers, when I see the fields
white for the harvest, when I go to hear professed gospel preachers who are
blinded by the errors of the apostasy and see how the people are feed (sic) on
husks while our Father’s storehouse is full of rich food for the hungry, ready
for their use if only the shepherds would give it to them.
Oh, my heart burns
within me, and I long to give all my time, all my energies to this work. My
heart is full of love and pity for the erring, the blinded, the famishing, the
dying men and women around me on all sides. Starving, but not for the food
which perishes – this is a land of plenty – but for the bread which comes down
from heaven. But how can one who has a wife and five children, all young and
non-productive of material needs, who has no money except as earned slowly by
daily toil, to feed, clothe and educate these dependent ones, how can such as
one go out and the preach the word in a land containing but a handful of
brethren?
I have a little
country store here but am partly in debt for my building and my stock. It is a
good location, in the very midst of the fruit and raisin industry which makes
this part of our State famous already. My store is situated between and about
one hundred yards distant from two packing houses and fruit driers. Last season
the Curtis Fruit Company, which owns one of them, put up 23,000 boxes of raisins,
and this year the two institutions together will probably put up 60,000 boxes.
This gives employment to many men, women and children at fair wages. It is a
new but prosperous neighborhood, all the while improving. We have either a
family or young bachelor living on nearly every twenty acres. We are nine miles
south of Fresco and five west of Fowler, and have most of the conditions
necessary for a good country business. We have a good school house and a
postoffice, and with the exception of about three months of hot weather (in
June, July and August) a very fine climate indeed. Eastern people are usually
delighted with it.
My house is new,
worth about $1500, stock and fixtures $500 more. Hence $2000 is about what I
consider my place worth as I have it now. With an additional $2000 the place
and business can be put in fine shape for a comfortable home and moderately
remunerative income for one or two small families. The postoffice, which can be
had in the store if desired, pays now $10 a month and would draw trade besides.
Now if some brother who has the capital and a taste for the mercantile life in
a humble way in the country will join me or buy me out possibly I can devote
more if not all my time to the ministry or gospel preaching. I have been
lecturing in the school house on Life and Death and trying to interest and
instruct people. Considerable interest has been manifested.
Perhaps I should
say that I was educated at Amherst College, Mass., (class of 1870) and was for
a time in Auburn Theological Seminary at Auburn, N.Y., that I preached for a
short time among the Presbyterians and then for some seven years among the “Disciples,”
but that, seeing the way of the Lord more clearly in reference to the life
eternal and the gospel of the kingdom, I was baptised on the confession of this
faith by Brother Richard Corbaley in Yale County, Cal., in 1878 or ’79. Since
then I have been isolated from brethren a good deal but have been giving myself
to reading and the study of God’s word as I have had opportunity, never
neglecting to speak a word in private or in public as occasion occurred if I
could aid a fellow mortal or honor my Father in heaven and our elder brother
Jesus of Nazareth the Christ of God and our only true life-giver.
I have thus told
you of myself and how I wish to give myself wholly to the gospel word. Do you
know of any way to accomplish this end? Or do you know of any brother who would
trade for my store or go in with me in such an enterprise. My idea would be, so
far as I am concerned, to make the store only a means of support while I gave
myself mainly to preaching and teaching the word. We have a few brethren and
sisters here but no regular organization. Brother Benj. Wilson is here, two
Brothers Balch (?) and Brother Calder and their wives, about a dozen of us in
all. Circumstances have made it out of my power to do more than speak to them
and others who were interested to come and hear. There are causes not necessary
to name here which have operated to prevent any attempt at organization, but
which I hope soon will be removed. If you see fit to state my case in an
abbreviated way (what I have written is too long and rambling to print) in THE
RESTITUTION, I would like to see if the Lord may by such means open a door for
me. I am with much love,
Your brother in
Christ,
H.B. RICE
Below is another
typical letter from H B Rice, as published in The Restitution for November 7,
1888, page 4.
DELANO, Cal.
Dear Restitution:
Although far away
from any church organization and having none of that “fellowship of kindred
minds” which Christians so much need and which I so much covet, I must write to
express my deep interest in the movement now being towards organization of our
forces. Co-operation is certainly Scriptural and wise and needful in our work.
How I would rejoice could I be present in Philadelphia at the General
Conference. May God direct you all in your planning and may the much needed
union of effort be well begun and enthusiastically carried out.
Since it has
pleased God by the “foolishness of preaching” (not foolish preaching), to save
those who believe, we canst preach if we save any. Now I am too much burdened
by the cares of a large and helpless family, and poverty, brought on by sundry
mistakes in business enterprise and consequent indebtedness, to hope to be able
to give my whole time to this glorious work soon. Some who have heard me preach
in years past urge that I ought to give my attention to that work. Surely I am
not a Jonah! I would rather preach the gospel than any other work. Hardships
and privations for myself I mind not at all. But when my honest debts state me
in the face, and a wife and five children appeal to me for bread and clothing,
how can I go forth among strangers, most of whom are not in the least
interested in such things, with no brethren able to aid me, no organized or
systematic methods among them to sustain me while my time and labor is given to
gospel work?
I do preach, not
often in public, for I have no opportunity for that, but by the wayside, on the
path, on the road, in private houses, to individuals, to all who will listen
anywhere and everywhere. I lend books and tracts, and can see some fruit of my
labor. But after various wanderings in search of a home for my family, I am at
least located here on a government claim, a homestead of 160 acres, two miles
from Delano. One year has rapidly passed away. I have a plain but comfortable
house of four rooms, and a fence enclosing less than an acre about the house, a
few grape vines and a dozen fruit trees growing misely, a two-horse wagon, a
two-horse buggy, a gang plow and seeder, eight or nine tons of hay, and four
work animals.
It is too dry to
slow saw. We have had no rain except a light shower not sufficient to lay the
dust well, since the forepart of last March! Last season was too dry to raise a
crop except on irrigated land. But water is only twelve to fourteen feet from
the surface on my land, and windmills would enable me to put in and raise an
orchard and vineyard and a few acres of alfalfa; if I could only get them. Two
or three cheap mills would be needed for ten or fifteen acres. The soil and
climate are exceedingly favorable if we only had water. Rabbit-proof fencing is
also a necessity. But here I am, unable to get work, without means to make
these needed improvements; among strangers, no brethren anywhere near me, and,
at present, no work of any kind by which I can earn a dollar. As soon as it
rains I can get all the plowing I can do at good prices, but that does not
supply present needs. Well, perhaps I ought not to say so much of my present
condition, but it just occurred to me it might serve as an example of how some who
long to preach cannot.
No one is more
ready and anxious to help himself than I am, and in fact, when one reflects
that a year ago I had nearly nothing and had to borrow from an old San
Francisco acquaintance the money to file on my land, I feel great gratitude to
our Heavenly Father for the success attained. Educated and trained for the
ministry in the Presbyterian Church, having seven or eight years of practical
experience as a preacher, in that church first, and then in the Christian
Church or among the Disciples, having been pastor of a church for two years at
Rock Island, Illinois, and then in San Francisco, California, and preached in
many other places acceptably while knowing only a meagre part of the truth as
it is in Jesus, I feel certain that I could do good heralding forth the “glad
tidings of great joy which shall be to all people” were it in my power. It is
my purpose, if the Lord tarries so long, to give my whole time to preaching as
soon as I can get my farm into a condition that will enable my family to
support themselves thereon. I am trying to teach my children (for I cannot send
them to school at present) and am not neglecting the word of the Lord. This
work may be more important now than any other, but of course when I get work to
do I must be busy at that and may be compelled to be away from home, when such
teaching will be interrupted.
In the meantime
were the Lord to open any door for me to engage in my chosen work, I would try
to do that rather. I have threatened several times to write to THE RESTITUTION
and announce myself ready to fill calls in California to preach if any were
interested and would pay my expenses to reach the place and return home. But I
have been so isolated and so busy I have hesitated. This letter is written on
the impulse of the moment, in view of the notices I have read concerning the
General Conference and its aims. The thought came, unless the brethren know of
my condition and feelings they certainly can never help me to devise ways and
means to do gospel work, and perhaps, if they knew, some might be able and
willing to join hands with me and so the good news be sounded out in California.
Your brother in
Christ
H.B.RICE
