File:Settling a Frontier Town Rice, Minnesota.wav

English: This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Journey Stories" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. #bHereMainSt "My name is George Rice. My parents’ [ancestors] came over from Ireland and Scotland in the late 1600s. My direct grandfather was the seventh of ten children, and he was born on the boat coming over. When they arrived in Sudbury, Massachusetts. And, in the early 1800s, the family broke up. Half the family went south toward the Carolinas and Virginia, and the other half went west toward Oregon. My grandfather’s Conestoga wagon broke an axle as they were crossing the Mississippi River just above St. Cloud, Minnesota, and consequently, he decided that God was telling him that this was a far as they were going to go, so he preceded to build a sawmill and develop a town called Rice, Minnesota, which is still there. There are no Rices left . . . in the interim, the railroad came through and the town prospered. He built a grain elevator and a hotel, and from there, as I say, the rest of the family at least made it as far west as Salt Lake City. And, at least one of the family did make it all the way out to the coast."