{{Infobox person |name = William Harrison Rice |image = William Harrison Rice.jpg |image_size = 140px |caption = Circa 1856 |birth_date = {{Birth date|1813|10|12}} |birth_place = Oswego, New York |death_date = {{Death date and age|1862|5|27|1813|10|12}} |death_place = Līhuʻe, Kaua{{okina}}i, Hawaii |children = William Hyde Rice <br /> Anna Charlotte Rice <br /> Three others |parents = |spouse = Mary Sophia Hyde |occupation = Teacher, Planter |known_for = Punahou School }} thumb|William Harrison Rice and his wife, Mary Sophia Hyde Rice. [[File:Old School Hall at Punahou School.jpg|thumb|Old School Hall at Punahou School.]]
'''William Harrison Rice''' (October 12, 1813 – May 26, 1862) was a missionary teacher from the United States who settled in the Hawaiian Islands and managed an early sugarcane plantation.
==Life== William Harrison Rice was born on October 12, 1813, in Oswego, New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario. His father was Joseph Rice and mother Sally Rice. On September 29, 1840, he married Mary Sophia Hyde, who was born on October 11, 1816. Her father was Jabez Backus Hyde, a missionary to the Seneca nation in western New York State near current-day Buffalo, New York, and mother was Jerusha Aiken Hyde. Reverend Hyde performed the wedding ceremony.<ref name="Friend">{{cite news |title= Mary Sophia Hyde Rice |work= The Friend |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=puLkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA74-IA105 |date= June 1911 |pages=7–8}}</ref> The Rices sailed in the ninth company of missionaries to Hawaii from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions on the ship ''Gloucester'', leaving from Boston on November 14, 1840, and arriving to Honolulu on May 21, 1841. Also in this company were John Davis Paris, Elias Bond, and Daniel Dole.<ref name="port">{{cite book |title=Portraits of American Protestant missionaries to Hawaii |author= Hawaiian Mission Children's Society |url= https://archive.org/details/portraitsofameri00hawarich |year=1901 |location=Honolulu |publisher=Hawaiian gazette company |page= 75}}</ref> The Rice and Paris families were intending to proceed to Oregon Territory, but after being told of Indian uprisings at the Whitman Mission, decided to stay in Hawaii.<ref>{{cite web |title= Rice Family Papers 1838–1964 |editor= Marylou Bradley |year= 2002 |publisher= Kauaʻi Historical Society |url= http://www.kauaihistoricalsociety.org/assets/finding_aids/ms_7_rice_family_papaers.pdf |access-date= September 17, 2010 |archive-date= October 29, 2013 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20131029222639/http://kauaihistoricalsociety.org/assets/finding_aids/ms_7_rice_family_papaers.pdf |url-status= dead }}</ref>
Their first posting after learning the Hawaiian language was the remote Wānanalua mission station in the Hana district, on the eastern coast of the island of Maui. Reverend Daniel Conde had founded the station in 1838, but was holding services in a traditional Hawaiian thatched building. The native Hawaiians were put to work building a stone building starting in 1842, which still stands.<ref name="nom">{{cite web |title= Wananalua Congregational Church nomination form |author= Edith H. Wolfe |author2= Chic Diehl |work= National Register of Historic Places |date= June 6, 1988 |publisher= U.S. National Park Service |url= {{NRHP url|id=88002533}} |access-date= September 19, 2010 }}</ref>
In 1844, the Rice family was transferred to become the first secular teachers at Punahou School that had been founded by Dole two years before in Honolulu.<ref name="dewitt">{{cite book |author= William DeWitt Alexander |author-link= William DeWitt Alexander |title=Oahu college: list of trustees, presidents, instructors, matrons, librarians, superintendents of grounds and students, 1841–1906. Historical sketch of Oahu college |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GxADAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA4 |year=1907 |publisher=Hawaiian Gazette Company |pages=4–5 }}</ref> One of his first tasks was to have a house constructed for his family and some boarders, known as "Rice Hall".<ref name="field">{{cite web |title= Rice Field |work= Punahou School web site |url= http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=2762 |access-date= September 18, 2010 }}</ref> He then supervised the building of a building now called "Old School Hall" from 1848 to 1851, largely with student labor.<ref>{{cite web |title= Old School Hall |work= Punahou School web site |url= http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=2754 |access-date= September 18, 2010 }}</ref>
In 1854, they resigned from the school and moved to the island of Kaua{{okina}}i<ref name="port"/> where he became manager for the Līhuʻe Plantation owned by Henry A. Peirce and William Little Lee, replacing James Fowler Baldwin Marshall. Since the plantation had suffered through extremes of storms and a drought, his pay was supplemented by shares in ownership of the company. The position also included a house called Koamalu, which means "shade of the Acacia koa tree".<ref>{{Hawaiian Dictionaries |malu |exact=1 |access-date= September 20, 2010 }}</ref> From 1856 to 1857 Rice engineered and supervised construction of the first irrigation system for sugarcane in the Hawaiian Islands.<ref>{{cite web |title= Lihue Plantation Company History (Kauai) |url= http://www2.hawaii.edu/~speccoll/p_lihue.html |work= Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association Plantation Archives |year=2004 |access-date= September 17, 2010 |publisher= University of Hawaii at Mānoa Library }}</ref> It took water from the wetter elevations of Kilohana Crater at {{Coord |21|59|58|N| 159|25|41|W| type:mountain_region:US-HI |display=inline |name= Kilohana Crater}},<ref>{{GNIS |361233 |Kilohana Crater }}</ref> diverting the Hanamāʻulu Stream to solve the problem of uneven rainfall. It started as a simple ditch similar to smaller scale projects that ancient Hawaiians had developed, eventually adding flumes and tunnels.<ref>{{cite book |author=Edward Joesting |title=Kauai: The Separate Kingdom |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GfWj0Pt3cwoC&pg=PA178 |date=February 1988 |publisher=University of Hawaii Press |isbn=978-0-8248-1162-4 |pages=175–179 }}</ref>
==Death and legacy== Rice made a brief trip to California in 1861, but died from tuberculosis in Līhuʻe on Kaua{{okina}}i on May 27, 1862. His wife lived on until May 25, 1911, continuing to be a benefactor. Although he did not live to see it, the plantation shares became valuable as the demand for sugar increased due to the American Civil War and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875. In 1907 the original Rice Hall at Punahou was torn down and replaced by a new dormitory also named for the family. It was subsequently demolished in 1950, and the central open area of the campus is now called Rice Field.<ref name="field"/>
The Rices had five children. Daughter Hannah Maria Rice was born at Hana on February 17, 1842, in 1861, married German Paul Isenberg, and died April 7, 1867. Isenberg (1837–1903) took over managing the plantation in 1862, and then was partner in the company that became Amfac, Inc. with Heinrich Hackfeld.<ref>{{cite book |title= The Story of Hawaii and Its Builders |year=1925 |publisher= Honolulu Star Bulletin |editor= George F. Nellist |url= http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/bios/isenberg34bs.txt |chapter= Isenberg, Paul }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title= Paul Isenberg Dies at Bremen, in the 66th Year of his Age |newspaper= Hawaiian Gazette |location= Honolulu |date= January 20, 1903 |url= http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025121/1903-01-20/ed-1/seq-6/ |access-date= September 20, 2010 }}</ref> Daughter Emily Dole Rice was born May 10, 1844, married Honolulu judge George de la Vergne (1839–1924) in 1867, and died June 13, 1911, in Los Angeles.<ref>{{cite news |title= Mrs. de la Vergne Dies at Los Angeles Home |newspaper= Evening Bulletin |location= Honolulu |date=June 13, 1911 |url= http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016413/1911-06-13/ed-1/seq-3/ |access-date= September 20, 2010 }}</ref> Son William Hyde Rice was born July 23, 1846, and became a politician, serving as the last Governor of Kauai. Mary Sophia Rice was born January 7, 1849, and died September 5, 1870.<ref name="Friend"/>
Daughter Anna Charlotte Rice was born on September 5, 1853, married businessman Charles Montague Cooke, founded the Honolulu Museum of Art, and died on August 8, 1934.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Edward T. James |author2=Janet Wilson James |author3=Paul S. Boyer |title=Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rVLOhGt1BX0C&pg=PA377 |year=1971 |publisher=Harvard University Press (Radcliffe College) |isbn=978-0-674-62734-5 |pages=377–378}}</ref> Their son was banker and politician Clarence Hyde Cooke (1876–1944), and great-grandson judge Alan Cooke Kay (born 1932). Other descendants include scientist Charles Montague Cooke, Jr. (1874–1948), musician Francis Judd Cooke (1910–1995), and baseball player Steve Cooke.
The modest irrigation system was expanded over the years. It was copied in other places in the islands, including a project by Henry Perrine Baldwin.<ref>{{cite book |title= Sugar Water: Hawaii's Plantation Ditches |author= Carol Wilcox |publisher= University of Hawaii Press |year= 1998 |isbn= 978-0-8248-2044-2 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=6lZO0HSgF7UC&pg=PA55 }}</ref> Baldwin's daughter Charlotte married Rice's grandson Harold Waterhouse Rice in December 1907.<ref>{{cite news |title= The Baldwin-Rice Nuptials at Haiku |newspaper= Hawaiian Gazette |location= Honolulu |date= December 13, 1907 |url= http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025121/1907-12-13/ed-1/seq-3/ |access-date= September 20, 2010 }}</ref> By 1922, he had 66 known living descendants.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hawaiian Mission Children's Society |title=Annual report |volume= 70 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jABNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA48 |year=1922 |pages=47–48}}</ref>
==Family tree== {{Rice-Cooke family tree}}
==See also== * Sugar plantations in Hawaii
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== {{commons category}} * {{Cite book |author1=Ethel Moseley Damon |author2=Mary Dorothea Rice Isenberg |title=Koamalu: a story of pioneers on Kauai, and of what they built in that island garden |volume= 2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SxpXAAAAMAAJ |year=1931 |publisher= Honolulu Star-Bulletin press }} (Author Isenberg is his granddaughter)
{{Christianity in Hawaii}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rice, William Harrison}} Category:1813 births Category:1862 deaths Category:Congregationalist missionaries in Hawaii Category:History of Oahu Category:History of Kauai Category:People from Oswego, New York Category:American emigrants to the Hawaiian Kingdom Category:American Protestant missionaries Category:People from Kauai Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Category:Tuberculosis deaths in Hawaii