Although journalist and newspaper editor Rosemary Bachelor didn't know it then, this Rice Book Project was initiated in 1970 when she began collecting Rice family data. When Rosemary founded a small quarterly newsletter, The Rice Family News-Journal, the collection included all known U.S. branches of this very diverse and historic family. The project began.
Two years later, Rosemary was sending her newsletter to almost 4,000 Rice descendants and had received material on their Rice ancestry from more than 800 people. Meanwhile, she had started quarterly newsletters for three other surnames. The files expanded.
Rosemary next started a monthly genealogy magazine called The Epistle. It had sections on four families. That meant lots of new Rice material to publish every month. More and more people sent in Rice data. Now her correspondents included dedicated, experienced researchers of numerous separate branches of the Rice family. New Rice genealogical data arrived almost daily. The project was growing.
For 12 years Rosemary published The Epistle, eventually making it a bi-monthly
publication. There were more than 100 issues! She gave it up after becoming
a full time genealogical publisher tucked away in a small Maine coastal village.
She had founded The Second Boat, the fourth largest genealogy magazine in
the United States, and another smaller magazine. These were devoted to all
U.S. immigrants of the 1600s and their descendants down to the Revolutionary
War era. But that's another story!