By the Name of Rice

Mercv Rice (22.10) married Elnathan Allen. They
had Eight Children, the oldest of whom, Obadiah,
married Susannah Pratt, May 17, 1720 (daughter of
John and Ruth Pratt; brother of Ephraim of Shutesbury.
Thankful Rice married a Whitney and Israel married
Elizabeth Wheelock. After these various "crossings"
in the Rice, Pratt and Wheelock families the patriarchs
Ephraim Pratt of Shutesbury, and Henry Rice of
Framingham, whose combined age was 209 years, could
safely gather up their loins, what was left of them, and
depart in peace. The country was saved again.
But it was Abigail Rice (17.5) who was to be her
father's proudest asset. Abigail married a Smith to be
sure, but she was the great grand-mother of Abigail
Smith * who was the wife of John Adams and mother
of John Quincy Adams; the only woman in the history
of our country who has been both the wife and mother
of a President of the United States.
* Abigail (Smith) Adams, born in Weymouth, Mass. 23d. Nov.
1744, died in Quincy, Mass. 28th. Oct. 1818. Her father was for
more than forty years minister of the Congregational Church in
Weymouth. Abigail was among the most remarkable women of the
American Revolutionary period. Oct. 25, 1764 she was married to
John Adams, who became President of the U. S., was a member of
the Continental Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
She was the mother of three sons and one daughter.
Her Son John Quincy Adams was 6th. President of the United States
and 6th. in descent from Deacon Edmund Rice.
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