JOSIAH M. RICE PAPERS

Josiah M. Rice (1832-1914) left Elizabethtown, New York, in April 1851 to enlist in the U.S. Army. He said that he was seeking a "foreign clime." In New York City, he signed up for five years with the 16th Battery B, 2nd U.S. Regiment of Artillery. Captain H.L. Kendrick commanded the regiment. After a brief training period, the Company set sail for New Orleans, Louisiana.

The sailing ship becalmed and was towed by a steamship to New Orleans. There, the soldiers transferred to another steamship and traveled up the Mississippi River to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. From Missouri, the Company set out for Fort Leavenworth and then to Bent's Fort. From Bent's Fort, they traveled southwest (passing through Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico) until they joined Colonel Sumner's dragoons southwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Rice's group provided artillery support for Sumner's mission to subdue the Navajo in New Mexico. Setting off immediately, the troops marched through the Del Norte Valley past the black mountains until they arrived at the site that Sumner selected to erect Fort Defiance (currently Arizona). Rice was part of a detail led by Lieutenant Charles Griffin of the Second Artillery that continued marching southwest to the junction of the Gila and San Pedro Rivers in Arizona and back to Fort Defiance via Canon de Chelly. Rice helped construct Fort Defiance and explored the surrounding countryside. He was discharged in May 1853. Since he had been a minor at the time of his enlistment and his father wanted him to return home, he went back to New York.

At the time of his first enlistment, Rice listed his occupation as a miller in Elizabethtown, New York. After returning home in 1853, he became a carpenter and painter. He then married Mary Augusta Wood in 1859 and had five children. At the time of his second enlistment, they had one daughter, Carrie A. Rice.

Rice again enlisted as a Private in 1861 to serve in Company I, New York Volunteer Engineers. He was soon promoted to Corporal. The company sailed aboard the Steamer Vanderbilt to Hilton Head, South Carolina. There, under Generals Sherman and Walker, they worked to construct a fort (later called Fort Mitchel) to blockade Savannah, Georgia. Rice worked as part of a group building a pier. He was promoted to Sergeant in May 1862. While cutting down logs, he was injured and spent the next year in and out of the hospital. Never fully recovering, Rice took over the job of painting dead soldier's names on gravestones.

Rice was mustered out of the military in December 1864. He returned to Elizabethtown, New York but moved his family to Beaufort, South Carolina to superintend Federal work. In 1869, he moved to Lansing, Michigan where he was listed in the city directory as a sign and house painter. Rice died in 1914 in Lansing, Michigan.