27 Facts About Rosella Rice

Rosella Rice was an American author, poet, and lecturer born in Perrysville, Ohio.

Rosella Rice was known for her direct and energetic comedy writing, her nature poems, and her vivid descriptions of folklore figure John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman.

Rosella Rice's writings appeared in Cleveland and Columbus newspapers, Godey's Lady's Book, Indiana Farmer, Arthur's Home Magazine, Interior, Watchman, Journal and Messenger, Presbyterian Banner, Household, Housekeeper, Little Corporal, The Children's Hour, Toledo Blade, Western Rural and Woman's Journal.

Rosella Rice wrote under her own name as well as multiple pseudonyms that reflected different characters.

Rosella Rice wrote columns from these points of view for Arthur's, "creating fictional characters who inhabited her magazine's stories, and became 'real' to hundreds of readers".

Rosella Rice is perhaps best known for writing prose and poetry about her encounters with John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman, who often visited Perrysville in his later years.

Rosella Rice later corresponded with Chapman after he moved to Indiana, until his death in 1845.

Possibly due to Rosella Rice's depictions, Appleseed became a hero of American folklore.

Rosella Rice wrote extensively to mythologize the nostalgia of American pioneer life and was a public lecturer.

Rosella Rice was born on August 11,1827, in Green Township, Richland County to Sarah "Sallie" Johnson and Alexander Rosella Rice, second-generation colonists of Perrysville, Ohio.

Rosella Rice lived her entire life in her homestead birthplace.

Rosella Rice's paternal first cousin Americus V Rice, from Perryville, was a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and served as a US congressman.

In 1852, Rosella Rice gained access to the railroad, allowing her to take annual trips, that included attending seminars in Chautauqua, New York; mother-daughter trips to Lake Erie and Canada; and to Massachusetts, where her family had arrived as colonists in the 17th century.

Rosella Rice moved back to Perrysville that year to raise her stepsisters Russell Bryte and Ida Josephine.

In 1873, Rosella Rice served on an awarding committee at the Mansfield State Fair, judging bread and butter.

On September 15,1882, Rosella Rice was part of the group that unveiled the Copus Monument, a mass grave monument built in response to the War of 1812's Copus massacre.

Circa 1854, Rosella Rice gave birth to Lillie May Rosella Rice; the name of the father is not mentioned in sources.

Rosella Rice was not interested in marriage and declined local men who proposed.

On June 13,1889, a year after Rice's death, Lillie May Rice married Daniel W Stahl, a former schoolteacher who began a blackboard business.

Lillie Mary Rosella Rice Stall died at their home in Butler, Ohio, on April 7,1943.

In 1849, Rosella Rice wrote a humorous article about happiness for the Ohio Cultivator titled "The Light and the Shade".

In 1856, Rosella Rice was listed as a delegate by the Ohio State Teachers' Association for both the Ashland and Franklin counties.

In 1863, Rosella Rice contributed to nonfiction book A History of the Pioneer and Modern Times of Ashland County: From the Earliest to the Present Date by describing her encounters with John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman, possibly helping to mythologize him with her fantastical descriptions.

Rosella Rice's writing was later published in an 1871 Harper's Magazine and used as a significant source of information about Chapman's life.

In 1860, Rosella Rice was featured in William Turner Coggeshall's poetry anthology, The Poets and Poetry of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices.

Rosella Rice is a born poet and has nursed her strange, wild fancies, amid the equally wild hills and glens and rocky caves which she has haunted with a devotion that has amounted to a life passion.

In 1880 alone, multiple of Rosella Rice's writings were published in Arthur's under one of her pseudonym characters, Chatty Brooks.