Kittery, Maine 375th: The story of Arabella Rice, town library’s mystery patroness

This article is part of a monthly series celebrating Kittery’s history, as Maine’s oldest town counts down to its 375th birthday.

Arabella Rice’s initials, elegantly engraved above the archway of the main entrance, can still be seen as one approaches Rice Public Library from Wentworth Street.

But even though this historic building bears her name, and even though her fortune funded its creation, you won’t find her portrait displayed inside. In fact, you won’t find much of anything pertaining to Arabella Rice.

The newly expanded library is expected to open its doors soon following a $6 million overhaul.  No date has been set yet, but the grand reopening will mark a new chapter in a story that starts with this mysterious 19th-century heiress.

A local historian once described Arabella Rice as "just a very quiet soul who lived a very quiet life in Portsmouth." But what little we know of her background reads like an even more tragic version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women.”

Arabella was the youngest of four daughters of Capt. Robert Rice, a Kittery-born seaman who became one of the wealthiest men in Portsmouth. She was born in 1822, following her older sisters Charlotte, Lucretia and Anna. The girls also had an older half-brother, John Thomas Goddard, from their mother’s previous marriage.

Their father belonged to a renowned clan of Kittery-based mariners and sea merchants who rose to prominence as privateers during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Privateers were basically legalized pirates, licensed by the government to attack merchant ships of U.S. enemies.

By the time of Arabella's birth, the Rice clan had settled into the more respectable shipping trade and other business interests as well, including the Eastern Railroad. Through marriage, the family was connected with the Badgers of Badger's Island, the Dennetts of Dennett's Island, New Hampshire Gov. Ichabod Goodwin, and even the heroic Adm. George Dewey of Spanish-American War fame.

Capt. Rice eventually left the sea, invested in several notable Seacoast area ships, and took over leadership of the Rice empire. One of the ships in which Rice was a co-owner was christened the Arabella, after his youngest daughter, and won renown successfully transporting ice overseas. His family lived in a magnificent mansion of pink brick built on Islington Street in Portsmouth, believed to be the current site of Robbins Auto Parts.

But when Arabella was only 8 years old, her sister Charlotte died at age 15. Before the end of 1843, Arabella would lose her two remaining sisters and her half-brother as well.

When her father died in 1853, the 73-year-old former sea captain was one of Portsmouth's leading merchants and a director of the Rockingham Bank. His wife, Charlotte, followed him in death 10 years later.

So at age 41, Arabella was the sole heiress to the fortunes of both her mother and her father. According to 20th-century Portsmouth historian Dorothy Vaughan, she was "most likely the richest woman in town."

And yet, despite her wealth, there do not appear to be any photographs or painted portraits of Arabella, or at least none which have survived. Given her local prominence at the time, I’ve always found this rather remarkable.

She died in 1872, unmarried and childless, of typhoid fever. One thing we do know about Arabella, if the will she left behind is any indication, is her compassion for her fellow man.

She bequeathed more than $172,000 to a wide range of worthy causes, including $20,000 for the Asylum for the Insane in Concord; another $20,000 for the Sailors' Snug Harbor of Boston; $5,000 to the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism; and $3,000 to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, among others.

And most significantly for generations of Kittery residents, she also bequeathed a total of $30,000 toward the creation of a "free public Library" in her father’s birthplace. She noted in the will it was “the wish of my beloved father to give a sum of money for educational purposes to the inhabitants of his native town of Kittery.”

Now, Arabella stipulated in her will that none of the principal was to be used for the purchase of land or building. She hoped the town itself, or additional benefactors, would provide the physical structure.

But she also included a clause allowing interest from the fund to be used toward a building if one was not established after a 10-year period. This turned out to be the case, and even then the trustees had to borrow another $5,000 on a personal note, which was paid back within five years.

Ichabod Goodwin, who served as New Hampshire’s governor during the outbreak of the Civil War, was married to Arabella’s cousin Susan Parker Rice. (It is their historic home which now stands as a prominent feature of Strawbery Banke.) Arabella left Goodwin $6,000 in her will, and he served as one of the library’s first trustees.

The Rice library was built and furnished at a cost of $18,500 when it first opened in 1888. It was designed by the renowned Boston architect Sheperd S. Woodcock and constructed of Philadelphia brick in a Romanesque visual style. With marble steps, granite sills and a spectacular vaulted ceiling with stained glass panels, it was an institution in which the town of Kittery could take great pride.

And in 1979, it was added to the National Historic Register as a treasured landmark.  "Of its type and style, the Rice Public Library is by far the most outstanding building in the State of Maine,” the Maine Historic Preservation Commission declared in nominating the building.

It’s become cliché to refer to the proverbial “gift that keeps on giving,” so I won’t use that to describe the legacy of Arabella Rice in a town where she never resided. But if I did, it would be fitting.

Of course, she never could have foreseen the library that stands today, and which will soon be in full operation again. Patrons can access eReaders, audio books, computers, DVDs, CDs, MP3 units, portable video players, online learning programs, family movie nights and the like.

In recent years the library has orchestrated local appearances by such nationally acclaimed Maine novelists as Carolyn Chute and Tess Gerritsen, of “Rizzoli & Isles” fame, and hosts the popular Rice Pudding poetry series. Now, to mark Kittery’s ongoing 375th anniversary celebration, the library is teaming up with the Maine State Library for a program called Read ME.

This program enables adults to share reading experiences by indulging in a particular book at the same time, particularly books written by up-and-coming Maine authors. This year’s nonfiction selection is Phuc Tran’s “Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In,” describing the author’s experience as a child of refugees arriving in the United States in the 1970s. The selected novel is Meredith Hall’s “Beneficence,” set on a family farm in Alstead, Maine, in the middle of the last century.

This program will start on June 3, and Arabella Rice’s modernized and enhanced library will have multiple copies of both books available, including five print copies of each, e-books, e-audiobooks, books-on-CDs, and a large print copy of “Beneficence.”

It’ll be fascinating to see what other highlights are to come in this new chapter of Arabella’s immortal saga.

A series of other events are also taking place in Kittery throughout 2022 to commemorate the seaside town’s 375th birthday. Information about these festivities is available at kittery375th.com.

D. Allan Kerr is a member of Kittery’s 375th Celebration Committee, and formerly served on Rice Public Library’s board of directors.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: The story of Arabella Rice, Kittery ME library’s mystery patroness