Edmund Rice was born to Robert Rice and Margaret Rice (née Tierney) on the farming property of "Westcourt", in Callan, County Kilkenny. Edmund Rice was the fourth of seven sons, although he also had two half sisters, Joan and Jane Murphy, the offspring of his mother's first marriage. Rice's education, like that of every other Irish Catholic of the day, was greatly compromised by the 1709 amendment to the Popery Act, which decreed that any public or private instruction in the Catholic faith would render teachers liable to prosecution, a measure that was not reformed until 1782. The boys of the Rice family obtained an education at home through Patrick Grace, a member of the small community of Augustinian friars in Callan.[1] As a young man, Rice spent two years at a school which, despite the provisions of the penal laws, the authorities suffered to exist in the City of Kilkenny.[2]
His uncle Michael owned a merchant business in the nearby port town of Waterford. In 1779 Edmund was apprenticed to him, moving into a house in the market parish of Ballybricken, entering the business of trading livestock and other supplies, and the supervising of loading of victuals onto ships bound for the British colonies. Michael Rice died in 1785, and this business passed to Edmund.[3] He was an active member of a society established in the city for the relief of the poor.[2]
In about 1785 he married a young woman (perhaps Mary Elliott, the daughter of a Waterford tanner).[4] Little is known about their married life, and Mary died in January 1789 following an accident, possibly by a fever that set in afterwards. The circumstances surrounding this accident are unclear, but she may have fallen off a horse that she was riding, or thrown out of a carriage by panicking horses. Pregnant at the time, a daughter was born on Mary's deathbed.[5] The daughter (also named Mary) was born handicapped. Edmund Rice was left a widower, with an infant daughter in delicate health.
