Or, Subtitled: “At the head of the table, laid out with great neatness, plenty and variety, sat our well-dressed hostess, who did the honors with ease and propriety“
This is the first of a two-part series that will document the life of George Rice and Elizabeth Brooks’s daughter Mary Rice and her husband Joshua Wilson. This posting focuses on the couple’s years in Virginia and then in Bardstown and Lexington, Kentucky. The next posting will focus on the final period of their lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and Corydon, Indiana. Several of the children of George and Elizabeth Brooks Rice shared an interest in inn- and tavern-keeping. As we saw in a previous posting, soon after they arrived in Kentucky from Virginia, Mary Rice Wilson’s sister Ruth and husband Micajah Roach purchased an inn in Bardstown from Joshua and Mary Wilson. And in a later posting, we’ll see that Mary and Ruth’s brother George also had a tavern in Winchester, Virginia. I call these establishments inns-cum-taverns because they were akin to the public houses of the British Isles in which locals could eat and drink, and also in which travelers could find lodging.
Begats and Bequeathals 
Interesting! Funny how professions just as inn keeping seemed to run in families. Makes sense, because you’ve seen how it’s done up close. I’ve got an inn keeper in Lunenburg (Robert Estes) whose inn seemed to have been a haven for gambling and drunkenness. One of my “black sheep” lines!
Wish I knew more about the Rice family.
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It is interesting how professions run in families, isn’t it — and the cluster of children in George and Elizabeth Rice’s family who were innkeepers makes me wonder if there was a prehistory on one or both sides of the Rice-Brooks family who were innkeepers. The pre-history of both families before they show up in Frederick County, Virginia, is such a mystery to me, though. It’s like both just appear out of nowhere! Robert Estes sounds interesting. It wouldn’t surprise me that tavernkeepers may often have drunk and caroused and gambled. It was all right at their doorstep!
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