Rice, John Holt, Dd

Rice, John Holt, D.D., a Presbyterian minister, was born near New London, Bedford County, Va., Nov. 28, 1777. He became tutor in Hampden Sidney College, Va., in October, 1796, and on Sept. 12, 1803, was licensed to preach. On Sept. 29, 1804, he was ordained and installed pastor of the church at Club Creek, still retaining his connection with the college until the latter end of the year, when he resigned his tutorship and removed to a small farm in Charlotte County. Here, his salary being insufficient, he also opened a school, and thus continued until 1812, when he became pastor of Mason's Hall, Richmond, Va. In May, 1816, he came to New York as a representative of the Bible Society of Virginia at the formation of the American Bible Society. He afterwards attended the meeting of the General Assembly at Philadelphia, where he was often sent again as a delegate from his presbytery. He was elected president of the College of New Jersey Sept. 26, 1822, as well as professor in the Union Theological Seminary in Prince Edward County, Va., on Nov. 16 of the same year: he only accepted the latter and resigned his pastoral charge. He entered upon his professorship Jan. 1, 1824. In May, 1830, he came to New York, where he delivered one of the series of the Murray Street Lectures. After this his health gradually declined until his death, Sept. 3, 1831. Dr. Rice started, in 1815, and published for a time the Christian Monitor, the first weekly religious newspaper which appeared in Richmond. In January, 1818, he published the first number of the Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine, which he continued till 1829. His other writings are, a memoir of S. Davies and of Rev. J.B. Taylor; also a number of occasional sermons, addresses, and pamphlets, among which we will notice his Historical and Philosophical Considerations on Religion, addressed to James Madison, Esq. (the ex-president), which, after being first published as successive articles in the Southern Religious Telegraph in 1830, appeared in a small volume in 1832. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit; 4, 325.