William Marsh RICE and His Institute A Biographical Study Edited by Sylvia Stallings Morris From the papers and research notes of Andrew Forest Muir Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis members and Sloan Foundation funding http://www.archive.org/details/williammarshriceOOmorr William Marsh Rice The above portrait by an unknown artist shows Rice in middle age. One copy of the original hangs in the Founder's Room, Rice University, another in the Rice- Cherry House. William Marsh Rice and His Institute A Biographical Study Edited by Sylvia Stallings Morris From the papers and research notes of Andrew Forest Muir Rice University Studies Houston, Texas © 1972 by Rice University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-89263-212-7 Vol. 58, No. 2 of Rice University Studies FOREWORD For a number of years prior to his death in 1969, Professor Andrew Forest Muir was engaged in collecting the material to write an account of the hfe of Wilham Marsh Rice, founder of the Rice Institute, now called Rice University. To this end. Professor Muir received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation which allowed him to take the time to consult in detail the courthouse records of Harris and its neighboring counties, where many of William Marsh Rice's financial trans- actions were recorded, as well as providing him with an oppor- tunity to visit and consult records in Springfield, Massachusetts, where Rice was born and spent his early years, in Dunellen, New Jersey, where Rice and his wife kept a country estate for some years, and in New York City, where Rice spent the last years of his life. On the basis of the material that he collected. Professor Muir wrote and published a number of short articles on special as- pects of WilHam Marsh Rice's life and career. The most impor- tant of these articles are "William Marsh Rice, Houstonian," East Texas Historical Journal, II, 1 (Feb., 1964), pp. 32-39 and "Murder on Madison Avenue: The Rice Case Revisited," Southwest Review (Winter, 1959), pp. 1-9. In addition, at the time of his death, Professor Muir left a number of unpublished manuscripts, several of which had been read before one or another of the local historical societies but which had never been revised for publication and several of which were no more than preliminary sketches. The most significant of these unfin- ished papers are "Wilham Marsh Rice and his Institute," "Wil- liam Marsh Rice, His Life and Death," "The Beginnings of the Rice Institute," "Wilham Marsh Rice, His Life and Death, the vi RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES History of a Fortune," and "A Man Morbidly Virtuous—Albert T. Patrick," the manuscripts of all of which are now found with the Andrew Forest Muir Papers that have been placed in the Archives of the Fondren Library at Rice University. Professor Muir, however, never found the opportunity to bring his work together and to utilize the vast amounts of de- tailed information that he had collected concerning William Marsh Rice. That these materials have now been organized and edited is due to the dedicated interest of Professor Muir's execu- tors, the late Charles W. Hamilton and his wife Mary Alice Hamilton, the encouragement of Willoughby Williams and Ben Blanton of the Development Office of Rice University, and the support of a number of friends of Rice who contributed gener- ously toward financing the project. For the actual work of sorting through Professor Muir's pa- pers, checking his sources, filling in the gaps, and bringing life to inanimate data. Rice University Studies has had the extremely good fortune to secure the services of Sylvia Stallings Morris (BA, Bryn Mawr College, 1948). Mrs. Morris has produced the following study of William Marsh Rice. It is not intended to replace the work that Professor Muir, with his love of minute detail and his insistence on exhaustive research, would have written. But it is a balanced view of the Founder's life and presents William Marsh Rice as a warm human being, the cen- ter of a drama of no mean proportions. I am confident that Professor Muir would be pleased. Katherine Fischer Drew Editor Rice University Studies PREFACE Ever since I was a graduate student in the Institute in 1940 I have been interested in WilHam Marsh Rice. I was astonished then, and I remain astonished, that so little information was available on the founder and so little interest in him evinced by members of the uni- versity community . .The two questions which fascinate me are What sort of man was Rice? and How did he accumulate his fortune? —A. F. Muir This was the task to which Andrew Forest Muir addressed himself and for which he was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957, but the work remained incomplete at the time of his death in 1969. The extent and variety of the notes and manu- scripts left by Dr. Muir, nevertheless, are ample evidence of the range of his research and the zest which he brought to its pur- suit. I feel greatly privileged to have had access to this material. Nothing, however, is more certain than that it is well-nigh impossible for one person to take over another's research mate- rial and from this turn out anything like the study which the original writer intended. In the case of Andrew Forest Muir, who possessed a singularly felicitous turn of phrase, a wide and exhaustive acquaintance with Texas history, and a feeling for the fine shades of human behavior by which everything became grist to his mill, such an undertaking is especially difficult. I have done my best to retain the scope and depth of Dr. Muir's work; undoubtedly mistakes have crept in—for these I alone am responsible. A number of people have gone out of their way to be of assistance to this project, and those to whom particular thanks are due include Barbara Hamilton and Ola Moore, archivists at the Fondren Library; Peter Rippe, of the Harris County Heri- vu viii RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES tage Society; Ben Blanton and Nathan Broch of the Rice Uni- versity Office of Information Services; Willoughby WiUiams and Sam Emison of Development; John F. O'Neil of the De- partment of Fine Arts; and the history secretaries, Linda Barnes and Linda Quaidy, for their masterful interpretation of a be- wildering manuscript. I should like to add that without the patience and encouragement of Katherine Fischer Drew, Chair- man of the Department of History, the entire project might have died a-borning, and to thank Mrs. Richard W. Neff, Sr., for her generosity with her time and interest and for pointing out that Patty Hall Rice's Christian name, like that of Thomas Jefferson's favorite daughter, was most probably Martha. Sylvia S. Morris May, 1972 3 RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES Vol. 58, No. 2 Spring 1972 WILLIAM MARSH RICE AND HIS INSTITUTE A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY Foreword v Preface vii Chapter I. The Early Years 1 Chapter II. The War Years and Their Sequel 29 Chapter III. Plans for the Institute 61 Chapter IV. "Murder on Madison Avenue" 84 Illustrations 1 1 Notes 1 23 Appendix 1. Charter of Incorporation of the William M. Rice Institute FOR the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art 151 2. Elizareth Baldwin Rice's Contested Will 159 3. William Marsh Rice's Will 165 4. The Forged or Patrick Will _ 169 IX William Marsh Rice in his later years CHAPTER I THE EARLY YEARS "Just below Springfield," wrote the Reverend Timothy Dwight, that indefatigable traveler and preacher who was soon to become the president of Yale University, as he journeyed northward along the Connecticut River valley at the end of the eighteenth century, "we crossed a vigorous millstream on which, a little eastward, is erected the most considerable manufactory of arms in the United States."' By 1812, when David Rice, the third to bear that name, moved his young family to Springfield from Norfolk County, Massachusetts, and went to work in the forging-shop at the Springfield Armory,^ the town had changed very little. For "a few hundred dollars," David Rice bought a square clapboard house of one and one-half stories on Hickory Street,^ perhaps not anticipating that four-month-old Louisa was to be the first of ten children. A son, David, was born two years later, and a second, William, in March 1816; Josiah and Lucy Ann, who followed in 1819 and 1821, respectively, both died in infancy; but Minerva, Caleb, Charlotte, and Frederick, who followed at intervals of about two years, lived and thrived. The last of David Rice's daughters, Susan, did not long survive her birth in 1833.^ The Hickory Street house stood at no great distance from the Armory's Middle Watershops; with an accessible and abundant supply of waterpower, these continued to expand and David Rice advanced from working in the forging-shop to the boring of gun barrels and the making of bayonets, until in 1833 he was appointed an Inspector of the Watershops.^ It was a position of some importance, which brought with it added responsibilities, and undoubtedly neither David Rice nor Patty, his wife, had the 2 RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES time to single out any one of their children for particular notice; certainly, there is very little known about their second son, Wilham Marsh Rice, during this Springfield period of his life. Central Massachusetts must nonetheless have been a pleasant place to grow up. Timothy Dwight observed that Springfield was the oldest town in Hampshire County (from which, in David Rice's day, Hampden County had been separated), lying along a single street on the western side of the Connecticut River.