Background
Edmund Rice was born February 14, 1819 in Waitsfield, Vermont, the son of Edmund and Ellen (Durkee) Rice, and a descendant of Edmund Rice who settled at Sudbury, Massachussets, in 1638.
Edmund Rice was born February 14, 1819 in Waitsfield, Vermont, the son of Edmund and Ellen (Durkee) Rice, and a descendant of Edmund Rice who settled at Sudbury, Massachussets, in 1638.
He received a limited common-school education and worked as a farm hand and as a clerk in a country store. In 1838 he went to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he studied law.
In 1842 he was admitted to the bar.
In 1841 he was register of the court of chancery, and subsequently he was master in chancery and clerk of the state supreme court. During the Mexican War he served as first lieutenant in a Michigan regiment.
In July 1849, he settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he became senior member of Rice, Hollinshead & Becker, a law firm which during its existence was the most prominent in the territory. During the fifties there was great agitation in Minnesota for railroads. Rice was a leader in the movement, and in 1856 he abandoned his law practice to devote more time to railroad projects.
He was a director of the Minnesota & Northwestern Railroad Company, chartered by the legislature of 1854 to receive the lands that Congress was expected to grant to the territory. The importunity of persons interested in the company, who went so far as to tamper with the phraseology of the bill in Congress, deprived the territory of the grant.
When Congress made a generous grant of lands for Minnesota railroads in 1857, Rice took the lead in working out a plan for railroad lines, which became the basis of the state's present railroad system.
As president of the Minnesota & Pacific, one of the companies sharing in the grant, and of its successors, the St. Paul & Pacific and the St. Paul & Chicago, Rice labored, in the face of the many disasters that marked the history of early Minnesota railroads, to build the roads in advance of settlement, relying upon future development to pay for them. In spite of his success in interesting eastern and foreign capital and in obtaining additional grants of lands, the St. Paul & Pacific, after completing some three hundred miles of road, was unable to survive the panic of 1873.
The St. Paul & Chicago, after completing its line from St. Paul south to Winona, was sold in 1872 to the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. Rice later shared in the prosperity that came in the wake of the railroads, but his financial gain was due, not to his railroad activities, but to fortunate investments in real estate. He was a member of the legislature at intervals from 1851 to 1878, served two terms as mayor of St. Paul, was defeated for the governorship by John S. Pillsbury in 1879, and was a member of Congress from 1887 to 1889.
He died at White Bear Lake, Minnesota, in his seventy-first year. Henry Mower Rice was his brother.
In politics he was an uncompromising Democrat.
He was an able executive, tactful and discerning in his business dealings, and had a large amount of practical knowledge. Tall, well-formed, dignified in bearing, and courtly in manner, he was spoken of in the legislature as "the Chesterfield of the House".
Rice married Anna M. Acker of Kalamazoo, Michigan, November 28, 1848, and they had eleven children.