Nehemiah Cram Rice (1801-1881) was born in Sandwich, New Hampshire. In his early twenties, he moved to Brownfield, Maine, and he married Phoebe Goodnow Tyler in 1829. He developed businesses in the wool and shoe leather industries in Brownfield. In 1850, he moved to Portland, Maine, where he partnered with his brother-in-law, Daniel Tyler II, to deal in leather and other goods (Box 4, Folder 4).

Nehemiah Webster Rice (1832-1911) was born in Brownfield, Maine, to Nehemiah Cram Rice and Phoebe Goodnow Tyler Rice. In 1852, he traveled to Buenos Aires and lived there for a year, during which time he learned about the economic conditions in Argentina. After returning home in 1853, he became a partner with his father and uncle in the firm Tyler, Rice, & Son in Portland, Maine, and, based on what he had learned during his travel in Argentina, he soon developed trade with Buenos Aires. In 1857, he married Josephine Emery, and later had a daughter, Annie Tyler Rice, and a son, Charles Goodnow Rice (1866-1943). The Rice family moved in 1866 from Portland to Boston and established N.W. Rice & Co. (which in 1900 would become N.W. Rice Co.). The company dealt primarily in leather, and it traded in South America, exporting lumber and other goods and importing wool and other products (Box 4, Folder 2).

The growth of N.W. Rice & Co.’s trading business required the company to develop interests in shipping as well. These shipping ventures began in the late 1870s and continued until the 1920s. The company had interests in over forty vessels and shipping companies, managing some of these and holding small shares in others. Some of the vessels and shipping companies in which they had interests, and for which records survive, included the Benjamin F. Hunt, Jr. (Bark); the Boston (Brig); the Gael (Bark); the Gael Shipping Company, Ltd.; the Harvard (Bark); the Kentigern (Steamship); the Pilgrim Shipping Company, Ltd.; the Rhine (Ship); the Rhine Shipping Company, Ltd.; the Snowdon Shipping Company, Ltd.; the Timandra (Ship); the Timandra Shipping Company, Ltd.; and the Thomas A. Goddard (Bark). At least one ship, the Rhine, was involved in the trafficking of Indians from India to the West (Box 1, Folder 12). The invention of the steam ship and trade complications during World War I eventually led to the slowing and then discontinuation of the company’s shipping businesses (Box 4, Folder 2).

Many of the records of N. W. Rice & Co. are no longer extant, as they were destroyed by fire. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, Charles Goodnow Rice II (1918-2007), grandson of Charles Goodnow Rice (1866-1943), pieced together what he could of the history of the company’s involvement in the shipping trade. In 1983, he composed a brief essay, “Rice family and the River,” which describes the history of the family business and offers a partial list of the vessels and shipping companies with which the family was involved (Box 4, Folder 4).