User:Riceflan/Lt. Colonel Joseph Parker Rice



Lt. Colonel Joseph Parker Rice was an officer in the Civil War. He was the Lt. Colonel of the Massachusetts 21st Regiment Company H from Belchertown, and was killed during the Battle of Chantilly September 1, 1862.

"On that date, the 21st Massachusetts Infantry was sent into the woods on the east side of the Oxford/Chantilly Road as support for the 51st New York, which had been sent on ahead. The weather conditions were horrendous. It was a dark dismal day with heavy rain showers that limited visibility to a few yards.  As the regiment moved forward, the men became concerned when they spotted a line of battle just up ahead. Since he was in command and would have known the nature of the orders, Rice most likely thought that these men were the New Yorkers. Incharacteristically and without due caution (most likely being ordered to do so) Rice moved forward to reassure his boys. There he was met with a volley of fire from a Georgia regiment of Lawton's brigade that took out over one hundred of the 21st. (Walcott, pap165,168). Hit in the chest he died almost instantly."

Rice was born to a long line of early settlers and revolutionary soldiers in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. He was "a useful and influential citizen...frank, manly and self-reliant, and for these qualities, he was esteemed and trusted by his associates...frequently chosen to office and was the last member of the Legislature from this town...while an independent representative district"

Promoted to colonel of the 9th regiment July 19, 1860 ( in 1861 he had been offered the commission of brigadier general of militia by Governor Andrew of Massachusetts. He had turned that down for personal reasons, most likely that his son was soon to be born. (Having lost four of his siblings growing up, and then his first wife and first child, one can understand his feelings).  He had also been offered the Light Intantry for service, but this too he denied.

However, when his son was almost one year old, Rice went to Worcester, MA. The regiment was at Camp Wool in Worcester, now under the inept Colonel Augustus Morse of Leominster, and the lack of drill and discipline was affecting even the crack companies. So Rice went. Described as a man "of inflexible determination...(and) as a drillmaster had few superiors. On August 23rd he was commissioned as Captain of Company H, the Belchertown Company."

He left behind a wife, Emma Garnett Rice and two young boys, Frederick William Rice and Joseph Newbern Rice. A large oil painting portrait, once hung in the "Hall of Fallen Heroes" in Boston, is now hanging in the Stevens Public Library in Ashburnham.