Job Sylvester

Very probably the father of Mary (Sylvester) Rice, and so great-great-great-grandfather of Dick Ellingwood. Son of Job Sylvester, the Revolutionary soldier, he married Lydia Phillips at Hanover, Massachusetts, in 1790; their first five children were born there, and about 1800 they settled at Durham, Maine, where he was a blacksmith and farmer. “About 1840 he and his wife went West to live with his son Benjamin. He died at Manchester, Ind., 19 Oct. 1859” (source). Manchester, in Dearborn County, is where Rufus and Mary Rice were living in 1840 and where Rufus is buried; his daughter Lydia had married Luther Plummer in 1811 and “Settled in Manchester, Ind.,” and Rufus and Mary named a daughter Lucy Plummer Rice, and another Sarah Sylvester Rice.

Stackpole says they had nine children and names seven: John (1791, of Avon, m. Esther Collier), Lydia (1792, m. Luther Plummer), Job Phillips (1794, postmaster and militia captain at Durham), William (1797), Benjamin (1799, of Aurora, Indiana, and later Minnesota), Patience (1808) and Roland (1814). Mary, born at Durham on 18 July 1801, fits the gap after Benjamin.

Open questions

• Mary’s birth in the Durham town records, or a Dearborn County deed or probate tying Mary Rice to the Sylvesters or Plummers, would prove her parentage.

Research: research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Wives_Families.md.