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ALEXANDER C. BRICE

 

Alexander C. Brice is numbered among the veterans of the Civil war and when he enlisted, was the youngest member of his regiment.  Throughout his entire life he has been equally loyal and patriotic in his devotion to the general good and in civil office as well as in military life has demonstrated his devotion to his country.  In his local connections he is well known as the senior partner of the Brice Company of Bedford, owning and conducting one of the finest grocery stores in southwestern Iowa.  He has long been a resident of this part of the state and from pioneer times down to the present, has enjoyed an excellent reputation as a business man and citizen, being honored and respected by all who know him.  He was born in Montgomery county, Ohio, about six miles from Dayton, July 1, 1844.  His paternal grandfather, Alexander Cooper Brice, was a native of Virginia and became a minister of the Presbyterian church.  He died in the Old Dominion at an advanced age after having devoted many years to redemptive work.  His family numbered four sons and five daughters, including Washington Brice, who was also a native of Virginia.  In early life, however, he became a resident of Montgomery county, Ohio, where he was reared.  There he turned his attention in a business way to the raising of tobacco and in 1850 he removed westward to Lee county, Iowa, where his death resulted from a runaway accident in 1861, when he was forty-five years of age. In early manhood he had wedded Priscilla Martha Snodgrass, a native of Pennsylvania, who had also gone to Montgomery county, Ohio, at an early day.  Her father was a native of the Keystone state, was of Holland Dutch descent and devoted his life to farming.  He removed to Iowa in the fall of 1852, settling at West Point, Lee county, where he carried on general agricultural pursuits until his death when he was sixty-eight years of age.  His widow long survived him, reaching the remarkable old age of ninety-two years.  They had a large family, numbering eight daughters and four or five sons.  The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Washington Brice was blessed with four children: Alexander C., of this review; Samuel S., a resident of Taylor county, Iowa; Belle, the wife of J. R. Sater, residing near Lenox, Iowa; and Hattie, the wife of E. L. Osborn, of Montrose, Colorado.  The mother survived her husband for a long period and departed this life in 1894, at the age of seventy-nine.  Both were consistent members of the Presbyterian church.

 

Alexander C. Brice lived in Montgomery county, Ohio, until six years of age and then came to Iowa with his parents, who settled in Lee county, where he remained until 1861.  Constrained by a spirit of patriotism, he then offered his services to the government, enlisting as a member of Company C, First Iowa Cavalry, when not quite seventeen years of age.  He served for five years, lacking one month and a half.  He joined the army as a private and was mustered out as a sergeant.  He was the youngest member of the regiment at the time of his enlistment and for two years after he went to the front, his command was engaged in fighting bushwhackers in Missouri and Arkansas.  Later he participated in the battle of Prairie Grove, Bayou Meter, Little Rock and in many other important engagements in the west.  During one campaign he was for thirty-nine days under fire.

 

After the war Mr. Brice returned to Iowa and a year later went to Dallas county, Iowa, where he was engaged in the grocery and woolen goods business, his store being located in the county seat.  After two and a half years he removed to Richmond, Missouri, where he engaged in building railroad bridges under contract and there lived for six years.  He next came to Taylor county, Iowa, and was in the fruit business at Lenox.  In 1890, he was elected county treasurer and served in that position for two years, after which he was appointed consul to Cuba by President Cleveland and continued in official service there until the outbreak of the war on that island.  He then returned home to Bedford, Iowa, where he has since lived and, establishing a grocery store, he has since been its proprietor, while associated with him in its conduct are his sons, Elmer T. and G. B., under the firm name of the Brice Company.  They have one of the finest grocery stores in southwestern Iowa, carrying a large and well selected line of staple and fancy groceries, while their annual sales reach a large figure.

 

In 1866, Mr. Brice was married to Miss Elizabeth Berry, of Richmond, Missouri, and unto them were born three children:  Alice J., the wife of Rufus Woodring, by whom she had four children, Elizabeth, Theressa, Rufus and Catherine, who is deceased; Kate H., who is the wife of George Bubb and lives in Parsons, Kansas, with their three children, Ruth, Bernice and Elsie May; and Elmer T.  The wife and mother died in 1876, and Mr. Brice afterward wedded Miss Phebe Arabel Kenyon, a daughter of George W. and Ruth Elizabeth (Green) Kenyon.  The four children of that marriage are: George Basil; Alexander C.; Esperanza; and Calvin S., who is deceased.  Mrs. Phebe Brice was called to her final rest in 1904.  She was a devoted member of the Presbyterian church, to which Mr. Brice also belongs and he is a member of Taylor Lodge, No. 156, A. F. & A. M.  Politically he is an earnest democrat but has never been very active as an office seeker.  He has preferred to concentrate his energies upon his business affairs and at one time he owned nine or ten buildings in Bedford, where he still has a fine home property, together with eight acres of farm land.  A lover of the beautiful and especially as manifest in flower creations, he has a garden of over fifteen hundred varieties of flowering plants.