Joseph Redmond Rice and Willie Masters Rice
Houston County, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Joseph Redmond Rice (May 24, 1805 - Aug. 11, 1866) and Willie Masters Rice (Aug. 17, 1809 - Sept. 6, 1881) Tennessean Joseph R. Rice married Willie, daughter of Jacob Masters, about 1825. By 1828 they lived in a log cabin near this spot. Their children were Sarah (b. 1826), Jacob (b. 1828), twins deceased in infancy, Amanda Elizabeth (1832-1910), John (1838-62), Francis (1841-61), Joseph R., Jr. (1843-1927), George R. (1847-79), Henry (1853-1929), and Willie Louise (1856-1915). Many members of the family rest in this plot. Recorded - 1976
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Joseph and Willie Rice came from Tennessee to the Texas wilderness, settling into a log cabin near this spot by 1828—well before Texas won its independence. Together they raised a large family whose births and deaths, carefully recorded on the marker, span the hard decades of frontier life. Many of the Rices rest in the family plot here, rooted to the ground they helped settle.
Why it matters
The family's arrival in the 1820s places them among the earliest Anglo settlers of East Texas, part of the migration that reshaped the region a decade before statehood.
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Related people
- · Joseph Redmond Rice
- · Willie Masters Rice
- · Jacob Masters
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rice Cemetery
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Joseph Redmond Rice and his wife Wille built a log cabin along the old San Antonio Road in 1828, in the years when Anglo families were first putting down roots in what would soon become the Republic of Texas. Grief came early: the burial ground likely began with the deaths of their infant twins around 1830, and the high toll of childhood illness filled the plot with young graves, including four grandchildren. Deeded to trustees in 1953, the cemetery is still tended by the family's descendants.
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In 1828, when this stretch of East Texas was still raw frontier on the eve of the Republic, Joseph and Willie Rice raised a one-room log cabin here—she reportedly drove the team that snaked the logs to the clearing. Standing on the old San Antonio Road between Nacogdoches and Crockett, the cabin grew alongside a family of eleven children into a well-known place where travelers could find a meal and a bed. Later generations preserved it, and in the 1970s the log house was restored and moved to Tejas Mission Park as a relic of pioneer days.
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