Rice, Nathan L.

Born: 1807-12-29 Garrard County, Kentucky

Died: 1877-06-11 Bracken County, Kentucky

Flourished:

Nathan L. Rice, Presbyterian clergyman and educator, grew up on his family’s farm in Kentucky and was educated at local schools. Beginning in the autumn of 1826 he attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky for two years and subsequently spent two years as a student at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1833 he was ordained in the Presbyterian Church, and during his long career in the ministry he served in churches in Bardstown, Kentucky, Woodford and Paris, Kentucky, as well as in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and New York. Throughout his ministerial career, Rice was simultaneously involved in education, founding schools for girls and boys in Bardstown, and serving as a professor at the Theological Seminary of the Northwest (later McCormick Theological Seminary) in Chicago. He edited several Presbyterian periodicals and was a prominent debater on religious subjects. Rice married Catherine P. Burch in 1832 and the pair had several children.

Walter Lee Lingle, “Rice, Nathan Lewis,” Dictionary of American Biography, ed. by Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935), 15:543-44; Callaway Weekly Gazette (Fulton, MO), 15 June 1877, 2:4-5; Gravestone, Hillcrest Cemetery, Fulton, MO.