William Marsh Rice and His Institute: The Centennial Edition

Foreword to the First Edition

( ix ) Foreword to theFirst Edition For a number of years prior to his death in 1969, Professor Andrew Forest Muir was engaged in collecting the material to write an account of the life of William Marsh Rice, founder of the Rice Institute, now called Rice University. To this end, Professor Muir received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation that allowed him to take the time to consult in detail the courthouse records of Harris and its neighboring counties , where many of William Marsh Rice’s financial transactions were recorded , as well as providing him with an opportunity to visit and consult records in Springfield, Massachusetts, where Rice was born and spent his early years; in Dunellen, New Jersey, where Rice and his wife kept a country estate for some years; and in New York City, where Rice spent the last years of his life. On the basis of the material that he collected, Professor Muir wrote and published a number of short articles on special aspects of William Marsh Rice’s life and career. The most important of these articles are “William Marsh Rice, Houstonian,” East Texas Historical Journal 2 (February 1964): 32–39; and “Murder on Madison Avenue: The Rice Case Revisited,” Southwest Review 44 (Winter 1959): 1–9. In addition, at the time of his death, Professor Muir left a number of unpublished manuscripts , several of which had been read before one or another of the local historical societies but had never been revised for publication and several of which were no more than preliminary sketches.These unfinished papers are now found in the Andrew Forest Muir Papers in theWoodson Research Center of the Fondren Library at Rice University. Professor Muir, however, never found the opportunity to bring his work together and to utilize the vast amounts of detailed information that he had collected concerningWilliam Marsh Rice.That these materials have now been organized and edited is due to the dedicated interest of Professor Muir’s executors, the late CharlesW. Hamilton and his wife Mary Alice Hamilton, the encouragement of Willoughby Williams and Ben Blanton of the Development Office of Rice University, and the support of a number of friends of Rice who contributed generously toward financing the project. Katherine fisCher drew ( x ) For the actual work of sorting through Professor Muir’s papers, checking his sources, filling in the gaps, and bringing life to inanimate data, Rice University Studies has had the extremely good fortune to secure the services of Sylvia Stallings Morris (BA, Bryn Mawr College, 1948). Mrs. Morris has produced the following study of William Marsh Rice. It is not intended to replace the work that Professor Muir, with his love of minute detail and his insistence on exhaustive research, would havewritten . But it is a balanced view of the founder’s life and presents William Marsh Rice as a warm human being, the center of a drama of no mean proportions. I am confident that Professor Muir would be pleased. Katherine Fischer Drew ...