Captain, Co 21, Army Medical Officers Training Corps.
Died of pneumonia at Camp Greenleaf Hospital, Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, October 13, 1918. Age 37.
Town: Batavia (also Buffalo, Erie County; see text)
Burial: Grand View Cemetery, Highland section, Batavia, Genesee County, New York
Victor Moreau Rice was one of four children (brother, Homer Donald; sisters, Helen and Elizabeth) of Spencer V Rice and Eliza nee Kingston Rice. He was born on October 25, 1880, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where his father taught drafting at Lehigh University before the family relocated to Buffalo (Erie County), New York. The 1900 US Census shows the family in Buffalo, where Victor’s father had been born and raised and, according to the census, was working as a civil engineer. Victor’s grandfather and namesake—Victor Moreau Rice I—was a prominent Buffalo citizen and well-known educator who served as New York State’s first Superintendent of Public Instruction. He was instrumental in making the state’s public schools free and in establishing New York’s system of teachers colleges.
Dr. Victor Moreau Rice came to Batavia to practice medicine in June, 1906. He had graduated from the University of Buffalo’s medical school in 1904 and afterward worked at Buffalo General Hospital. The 1910 US Census shows him as a physician in Batavia at age 29, single, rooming at 120 Bank Street. On April 26, 1911, he married Miss Frederica Hanlon, a Batavian “very popular in social circles,” according to their marriage announcement in the April 27, 1911 Batavia Daily News. The couple moved into a home at 38 Tracy Avenue in Batavia and in 1915 had a son, named Spencer after Victor’s father.
Doctor Rice became a prominent and popular physician and surgeon in Batavia. In 1915, he was appointed to a four-year term as the city’s health officer, and in 1917 was named as the physician member of Genesee County’s newly formed draft registration board. He was also medical examiner of the public schools. Rice held all three positions in 1918 when he enlisted in the Medical Reserve Corps in answer to a national call for physicians and nurses. On September 11, 1918, he left Batavia and was officially commissioned a captain at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he’d been assigned to the Medical Officers Training Camp there, called Camp Greenleaf (mistakenly identified in area newspapers as Camp Greenfield). He arrived shortly before a severe outbreak of Spanish influenza and pneumonia struck the camp, and perished barely more than a month later. Between September 25, 1918 and October 26, 1918, over 3,500 cases of flu and pneumonia were admitted to the camp hospital, and 325 patients died—including Doctor Rice, on October 13.
Newspaper reports following his death spoke glowingly of Dr. Rice and his impact on the community. “Captain Rice was a skillful surgeon and a physician of great ability,” stated the October 14, 1918 Batavia Daily News article announcing his death. “He possessed a genial personality which made and held many warm personal friends. He was particularly conscientious with his exacting duties on the draft board . . . and all of his work was marked with care and kindliness.” A resolution adopted three days after Rice’s death and published in the October 17, 1918 Batavia Daily News read (in part), “Resolved, That we, the Mayor and members of the Common Council of the City of Batavia . . . have met with an unspeakable and overwhelming loss and the City of Batavia which he so long and ably served has been deprived of an honorable, brilliant and useful citizen. . . . Since taking up his residence in this City he established a very large practice and was generally recognized as one of the ablest members of his profession in this vicinity. He was possessed of a most kind, loving and pleasing personality, very devoted to his family, and everyone who knew him was a friend. He was always interested in public affairs and the betterment of civic conditions in this city. . . .”
Even after death, Dr. Rice contributed to the area’s medical capabilities. In addition to running his general practice and serving in many civic roles, Rice was a specialist in roentgenology, a newly emerging field at the time, and willed to Batavia Hospital the valuable X-ray apparatus (“one of the most complete in this section of the state,” reported the October 14, 1918 Batavia Daily News) that he had installed there.
Because of the prevalence of influenza at the time, Dr. Rice’s funeral was private. He was interred at Batavia’s Grand View Cemetery on October 21, 1918.
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October 14, 1918 Batavia Daily News p4 c5
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October 17, 1918 Batavia Daily News p3 c2
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October 17, 1918 Batavia Daily News p3 c2
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Source: New York Service Summary from Abstracts of World War I Military Service, 1917-1919, NY State Archives, Albany, New York
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Source: AMA Deceased Physicians Card File 1906 – 1969, American Medical Association, U.S. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, Bethesda, Maryland
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Source: Burial Case Files, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives — St Louis, Missouri
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Dr. Victor M Rice headstone, Grand View Cemetery, Highland section, Batavia, Genesee County, New York
GPS Coordinates: Lat 42° 59’ 55.48” N, Long 78° 9’ 5.969” W (DD: 42.998744, -78.151658)
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Dr. Victor M Rice Sources:
– All County Lists; also BHR
– Jun 9, 1906 BD p1 c6
– Apr 27, 1911 BD p4 c4
– May 7, 1915 RDC p9 c2
– Jun 2, 1917 BD p7 c4-7
– Sep 7, 1918 BD p1 c6
– Sep 13, 1918 BD p10 c4
– Sep 14, 1918 BT p2 c1
– Oct 14, 1918 BD p2 c1, p4 c5*
– Oct 17, 1918 BD p3 c2
– Oct 26, 1918 BT p2 c1
– Oct 29, 1918 BD p1 c6
– “United States Census, 1900.” Online index and images, HeritageQuest.com. Entries for Spencer V Rice (head) and family, citing Census Records, Election District 4, Buffalo City (Ward 24), E.D. 206, Erie, New York; sheet number 7, line numbers 3 through 8, microfilm series T623, Roll 1032, page 68.
– “United States Census, 1910.” Online index and images, HeritageQuest.com. Entry for Victor M. Rice (roomer, age 29) in household of Louis A Prentice, citing Census Records, Batavia, Genesee, New York; sheet number 8B, line number 65, microfilm series T624, Roll 951, page 102.
– Farm Journal Illustrated Directory of Genesee County (1917), p 88
– “Militia Enrollment List” (Genesee County, 1917), p R6
– NYSS
– Roll of Honor (NY State), p 65
– “Rice Family Papers,” Syracuse University Library, online overview and biographical history (http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/r/rice_family.htm)
– “Rice, Capt. Victor Moreau,” biographical card, AMA Deceased Physicians Card File 1906 – 1969, American Medical Association, U.S. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, Bethesda, Maryland. (Ref http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/genealogy/amabiopage.html)
– Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War. Volume 3, Part 2, pp 825, 841
– The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, Volume VII, Training, p 26, accessed online, U.S. Army Medical Department, Office of Medical History (http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/VolVII/ch02part1.html)
– BCF
– Grand View Cemetery tombstone transcriptions, R-S listings, online, access from USGenWeb, “Genesee County NY Cemeteries” Table of Contents (http://www.usgwarchives.net/ny/genesee/cemeteries/cemeterytoc.htm)
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Click for Key to Source Abbreviations. See the Bibliography for complete title, author, and publisher information, with links to online access when available.