Raytown Tutors Come To You

Bordering the old Santa Fe Trail in Raytown, Missouri, is a farmhouse that dates to 1844 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The home was built by Archibald and Sally Rice as a replacement for a two-story log cabin they had built in 1936 in the same location, now at 66th Street and Blue Ridge Boulevard. The Rices also built several slave cabins near their home.

The Rices owned 160 acres in Raytown and sold corn, vegetables, and pork to pioneers heading west on the Santa Fe Trail, which passed right by the home. Wagon trains were formed and outfitted in early spring in nearby Independence, Missouri, about eight miles away, but these couldn’t depart until the prairie grass further west had greened up enough to sustain livestock. Consequently, wagon trains often had to camp for days or weeks, waiting for the word that it was safe to proceed. According to twenty-seven accounts of people who camped there between 1838 and 1849, the Rice property was the perfect campground. It had plenty of space for the wagons, prairie grasses for the animals, natural springs, and corn, and down the road was a blacksmith shop, the first one on the trail, that could make repairs while the wagon train camped. In addition, the Rices made it their mission to be hospitable and helpful to the travelers, even nursing the ill during a cholera epidemic.

The Rice’s son, Elihu Coffee “E.C.” Rice, inherited the estate in 1849 when Archibald died. In 1950, E.C. married Catherine “Kitty” Stoner, who brought her slave, Sophia White, along with her to the Rice farmhouse. Sophia lived in the cabin next to the farmhouse’s back door, but she was an integral part of the family. She was present for the birth of Kitty and E.C.’s five children, and they called her Aunt Sophie. She cooked the meals for the family in her fireplace in her three-room cabin and carried the food into the main house because she refused to use the Rice’s “modern” cookstove.

Sophia was paid with livestock, which she raised and sold. She was also allowed to pick as many apples as she wanted from the Rice’s apple orchards, and she would peel, dry, and sell these.

Because the Rices were slave-holding southerners, they were forced to hastily move to Texas during the Civil War. When they returned, they were shocked to find their house had been spared during Civil War raids. Even after emancipation, Sophia remained with the family.

The farmhouse changed hands several times after the Rice family died and was eventually purchased by Dr. Louis G. Tremonti and his wife, Lois Gloria, who owned the home for sixty years. Now known as the Rice-Tremonti House, the home was restored and, along with a replica of Aunt Sophie’s cabin, is open to the public, giving a glimpse into life in Raytown over a period of more than one hundred fifty years.