association between the Rice and Brigham families. The maiden name of Mercy Brigham, often cited as Hurd, is uncertain due to lack of any primary documentation. Two daughters were born to Edmund and Mercy Rice as follows: Lydia Rice, born circa 1657 at Sudbury, MA, died 26 May 1718, married James Hawkins, Jr. circa 1678, probably in Boston. Hawkins was a stonemason & bricklayer by trade. Ruth Rice, born 29 September 1659 at Marlborough, MA, died 30 March 1742 at Glastonbury, Connecticut, married Capt. Samuel Welles, grandson of Thomas Welles on 20 June 1683 Edmund Rice's descendants Descendants of Edmund Rice had been meeting annually at the old Rice homestead in Wayland since 5 September 1851. Documentation of Edmund Rice's descendants began with the 1858 publication of a genealogy of the Rice family by Andrew Henshaw Ward (1784-1864). Its publication was funded by a committee formed at the 1856 annual reunion consisting of five Rice descendants, including: George Merrick Rice (1808-1894), then president of the Worcester Common Council; Edmund Rice (1813-1888) (father of stage producer Edward E. Rice); his uncle, Levi Goodnough (1804-1886), a physician from Sudbury; Anson Rice (1798-1875) (postmaster of Northborough and grandfather of author Wallace Rice); and U.S. Congressman Constantine C. Esty (1824-1912). Despite the difficulties of communication and transportation in the 1850s, Ward was able to document over 6,200 Edmund Rice descendants and spouses, mostly in the New England region. On 7 October 1903, Edmund Rice descendants were on hand to dedicate the homesite marker of Jonas Rice, a grandson of Edmund and founder of Worcester, Massachusetts. A few years later on 30 August 1912, shortly after the old family homestead in Wayland had been lost by fire, Rice descendants in Massachusetts formally organized the Edmund Rice (1638) Association (ERA), led primarily by Nellie Rice Fiske (1856-1934) a school teacher from Wayland. At that first ERA meeting, Eustace Bond Rice (1871-1938) a professor of music theory at the New England Conservatory who had grown up in the old Rice homestead was elected as the association's first president, and they set out to raise funds to erect the homesite and cemetery monuments. Beginning in the early 20th century, and partially aided by the compilation and publication of Massachusetts vital records by Franklin Pierce Rice (1852-1919), among others, the ERA undertook the task of building upon Ward's pioneering genealogy by verifying and better documenting Edmund's descendants. In the