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James Pierce DuCray, known as Percy, was descended from Servois Ducray, one of the Ducray Nine, nine Ducray brothers who saved the life of the French King Henry IV ("Henry the Great," "Good King Henry") in the 1590s, and were rewarded with knighthood and villages. Servois' village was Gondenans-les-Moulins. The family crest is a shield and swords, with nine arrows crossed in the shape of an asterisk representing the nine brothers.
Grandparents:
Nicholas and Françoise/Frances (née Petitjean) Ducray of Gondenans-les-Moulins, France, who emigrated in 1839 with their nine children and settled in Meadville, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, where they had one more child,...
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James Pierce DuCray, known as Percy, was descended from Servois Ducray, one of the Ducray Nine, nine Ducray brothers who saved the life of the French King Henry IV ("Henry the Great," "Good King Henry") in the 1590s, and were rewarded with knighthood and villages. Servois' village was Gondenans-les-Moulins. The family crest is a shield and swords, with nine arrows crossed in the shape of an asterisk representing the nine brothers.
Grandparents:
Nicholas and Françoise/Frances (née Petitjean) Ducray of Gondenans-les-Moulins, France, who emigrated in 1839 with their nine children and settled in Meadville, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, where they had one more child, the first Ducray born in the U.S. descended from Servois Ducray. They survived a treacherous crossing, shipwreck, and being stranded on a sand island off of the coast of Newfoundland during their journey (see "HARDY PIONEER FAMILY ducray" online).
Parents:
Ann (née Waters) and Charles Celestin Ducray
James Pierce, known as Percy DuCray, was the second child of eleven children of Charles Celestin Ducray. Charles Celestin had three children with his first wife, Ann (née Waters), before Ann's tragic early passing at only 23, when Percy was barely three years old. Charles Celestin married Hannah Heslop, who was a loving stepmother and mother. Hannah and Charles Celestin had eight more children together.
Charles Celestin Ducray (29 April 1835-1925) lived in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin (he had children born there; some moved to Colorado, joining their cousins, the children of their aunt Celestine Ducray Bourquin).
Charles Celestin was in the Civil War in the New York Marine Artillery 1st Regiment, Company G. Enlisted age 26 in Chicago, July 22, 1862
Discharged 22 Jan 1863 at Newberne, North Carolina
Farmer in 1880 Census, Mineral Point, Iowa
Invented and got a U.S. patent for a Corn Planter
Married:
[1] Ann Waters (1850-1873) September 30, 1866, in Mendota, Illinois
[2] Hannah Heslop (1846-1905) October 11, 1875, Dubuque, Iowa
Children with Ann Waters:
1] Charles Ernest DuCray (1868-1936)
2] James Pierce, known as Percy (1870-1951)
3] Frances/Francis A. Ducray Winders (1872-1953)
Children with Hannah Heslop:
1] Eugenie 1874 born in Gondenans
2] Elizabeth/Eleziebith born 1876
Married Fred J. Thomas 1901 Wisconsin
3] Frank Nicholas DuCray (1877-1963)
Sheriff of Colorado Springs 1921-1923
4] Heslop 1879 Mineral Point, Wisconsin
5] George Heslop DuCray born Gondenans 1880-1945
6] Celestine V. Ducray Beckett, 1884-1959
born in Gondenans
7] Julius C. DuCray 29 Nov 1886- ?
twin of Julian Senninger DuCray
married Tillie in 1907 in Iowa
8] Julian Senninger DuCray 29 Nov 1886-1964 February
Percy served in the Spanish-American War, as James P. DuCray.
Percy married Linnie Harrell of Iowa on 14 June 1900 in Clarinda, Iowa. They made their home in Colorado, and had seven children:
1) Frances Christiana DuCray Wagner, 1 April 1901-1946 May 3
2) Charles Harrell DuCray, 7 Dec 1902-1982 Nov 27
3) Ruth Hannah DuCray Bloss, 14 April 1905-1929 Jan 1
4) Marjorie DuCray Ennis, 28 Feb 1907-2006 Jan 31
5) Ann Rowe DuCray Taylor 21 Jan 1909-1992 Sept 11
6) Kathlyn "Kate" DuCray Young 1911-1994
7) Thomas Max DuCray, 31 March 1913-1968 Dec 14
In 1915, Percy bought from Harry Castle a 540-acre ranch in the Plateau Valley range country between Grand and Battlement Mesas in Western Colorado, along Buzzard Creek, about twenty miles east of Collbran, in Mesa County. The property had been the cattle ranch and homestead of the Herbert Castle family. The story below mentions the sale to Percy DuCray.
With thanks to Helen Hawxhurst Young, Bartell Nyberg, and Harry Castle, whose wonderful story about life in those times gives a vivid look and flavor of what life was like then:
http://home.earthlink.net/~kellysarah/McKelvie/stories_harrycastle.htm
Stories, Harry Castle
Known as "Po" to his great-grandchildren.
See link for aerial photo of the Castle Ranch. Other information from Helen Hawxhurst Young's, "The Skin and Bones of Plateau Valley History":
1977 Story in The Denver Post's Empire Magazine
This story, titled "The great bear hunt on the Buzzard" was written by Bartell Nyberg and was included in The Denver Post's Empire Magazine on September 18, 1977. The reader should note that I was told that after Po read this story in the paper he exclaimed that the damned reporter had gotten it all wrong. Here it is word for word, except my typos, from The Denver Post:
Through the years, thousands of bears have thrived in the Plateau Valley range country between Grand and Battlement Mesas in Western Colorado. Some of these bears angered ranchers by dining on beefsteak.
When that happened, the cattlemen called on famed hunters like the late Ellis Blackman, who killed more than 100 bears. But none of those hunters - not even Blackman, the time he and a bear tumbled head over heels into a sump hole together - had a hunt quite like Harry H. Castle and George Ramsey did in 1927.
On September 20, it will be 50 years since that great bear hunt on Buzzard Creek, about 20 miles east of Collbran, Colo. Details are a bit muddy now, but The Denver Post of Sept 21, 1927, told the story this way:
"The bears had been bothering Ramsey's stock, and he started out for revenge. Coming on two yearling cubs, weighing 200 pounds each, he shot them both, killing them instantly."
He was examining his kill when another bruin charged him from a thicket. Ramsey fired once and took to his heels, with the bear in hot pursuit. After an exciting chase through the brush, Ramsey got in a lucky shot which struck mama bear through the heart.
"Ramsey was willing to call it a day by this time, but the infuriated father bear emerged from the brush and charged him furiously. Ramsey attempted to shoot but his gun was empty, so he fled. Finally, after a long run, when Ramsey was nearing exhaustion and the bear was gaining rapidly, the rancher, who weighs 200 pounds, clubbed his rifle and turned on the bear."
After a terrific hand-to-hand struggle, Ramsey drove his bruin adversary up a tree and attempted to leave the vicinity. But a fifth bear rushed forth and was about to engage him in combat when Harry Castle, a cowboy, rode on the scene, dropped a rope over the bruin's head and dragged it to death. The bear in the tree was then killed.
Harry Castle was a hard-riding, quick-shooting cowman, probably the best calf-roper in Colorado. He and his wife, Lenna, had run the Lazy LH brand since 1914, the year after they were married. They built up a 1,400-acre ranch (not counting national forest grazing permits) on Buzzard Creek, another 1,100 acres nearer Collbran.
Today Castle's blackish-gray hair is thinning and whitening, and he carries a bit of a paunch. Castle, who will be 85 on Sept. 30, moves slowly since falling on ice and breaking a hip two winters ago.
He leaned back in his chair, recalling the events of a half-century ago: "I'll tell you boys how it really was. Ramsey was foreman of the Triangle outfit, punching cows up at the Crooked Creek Cow Camp. My ranch, up there by the Hightower ranger station, was next to his.
"I'd been packing salt to my cows. 'Course, I always carried my gun. I was considered the fastest man in the country with a gun. I've got an old .32 Winchester.
"A bear had killed and eaten three-fourths of a cow in one day. The old bear had three cubs. They were about 100 pounds a piece. Ramsey killed two of them. I lowered the boom on the one bear in the lead. George did break the stock off his gun fighting with the bear. I shot him, or he would have killed George. I shot the mother.
"This bear," he continues, pointing to the bearskin on the wall of his basement den, "didn't weigh over probably 250 pounds. But that's about as big a bear as you want to get on a rope.
"He was a 2-year-old bear. I roped him around the flank. I ran the bear a couple of hours. I caught him a lot of times, but he'd turn on me. I had a bulldog with me, or I couldn't have caught him.
"I caught the bear and took him down to Buzzard Creek, cooled him off in a beaver dam. I muzzled him with wire so he couldn't bite. The forest ranger wouldn't let me kill him because he was on the open range and I didn't have a license.
"So we hog-tied him and loaded him in the back of Francis Chapman's old Model T Ford. (Photos taken that day show the yearling bear tied to the side of a sedan.) Anyway, we took him to town and got a license, I did, to kill him.
"Then we took him around to the butcher shop. By this time that bear was damn near dead from being muzzled. He was dead enough, so I stuck him in the heart with my jack-knife.
"We cut the bear up and gave the meat away. I took one steak and Billy (the butcher) took one. After I cooked the steak up nice, it started to smell. I tried to eat it, but after a couple of bites I threw it to my dog, and my dog wouldn't even eat it. My Gawd, don't ever eat a bear. That's the rottenest thing ever."
How many bears have you killed since then?
"After that," Castle concludes, " I went out of the bear business."
Castle was born in 1892 in Cedaredge, Colo., south across Grand Mesa from Collbran. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Castle, moved to the Collbran area in 1897, homesteading on the Buzzard.
"This was all sagebrush then," says Harry Castle, motioning outside to irrigated alfalfa fields on Kansas Mesa a mile south of Collbran. "There were three boys and two girls in our family." Now, only Harry and his brother Ira, 96, who lives in the Pacific Northwest, are alive. Their father was killed when they were young. Collbran newspapers reported it this way, as quoted by Helen Hawxhurst Young in her book, "The Skin and Bones of Plateau Valley History":
"Herbert Castle died Jan. 19, 1901. He had taken a load of hogs and grain (to Grand Junction) and sold them for around $900. He was found murdered in the Free Corral in Grand Junction, and the money was gone.... This left Mrs. Castle to raise her family alone.
"They took up land in the Heiberger area, and when they built the school up there, though Harry was only a boy, he hauled lumber from the Sullivan Mill to pay their pledge. When in his teens he drove the stage for Barge Hiskey to the Half Way House on the Sunnyside. Later Homer (another brother) and Harry raised mules, which they shipped to Omaha."
That elementary school provided Harry Castle's only formal education. "I always wanted to be admitted to the bar," he says. "But there never was any money to go to school. I could go only three or four months at a time."
Castle married Lenna Van Nattan in 1913. They homesteaded in Harrison Gulch, not far from the Castle family homestead (which was sold to Percy DuCray in 1915).
Castle had learned the cattle business early. He had to. "I rode round-ups since I was 15 up there on the Muddy," he recalls. (Muddy Creek, in Delta and Gunnision Counties, is a drainage southeast of the Buzzard Creek headwaters.)
The early years were difficult. They got their start milking cows - lots of cows, by hand. Often Mrs. Castle was left with the milking, recalls Mrs. Audrey McKelvie, the Castles' only child, who, with her husband Robert, operates the Main Drug and Liquor in Silt, Colo.
"People today don't know what hardship is," Castle snorts. "They talk about the good old days- (bleep), they don't know what the good old days was...
"I learned how to make biscuits in the old days. I even learned my wife how to make biscuits. There's a lot of women don't know how to make biscuits. Some of these women make biscuits so hard you could use them for baseballs."
In 1918, Mrs. Young's book reports, "the Harry Castles moved to the Grandma Baxter place on Kansas Mesa" (near their present home, just south of Collbran). That Kansas Mesa place was their permanent home. "Everybody had two homes," explains Mrs. McKelvie. "We had an upper country home on the Buzzard, where the cattle were in summer, and a lower -main- home for the winter." Womenfolk ordinarily stayed at the lower home in the summer while the men were tending cattle on the Buzzard.
In 1932 Castle started raising purebred Hereford cattle along with ordinary range cattle. He developed a top-notch herd, one of the best in the valley. Castle, and many others, shipped cattle to the Denver market from DeBeque, Colo., via the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad.
"In 1934 I topped the market in Denver with two carloads of cattle," Castle recalls. "I got $5.55 ( a hundredweight) for them."
Reported Mrs. Young: "For two years, DeBeque was the largest shipping point in the state, and for nine years it was second, reaching its peak in 1918 when 742 cars of cattle, 20 cars of horses, 10 cars of sheep and several cars of hogs were shipped."
Early settlers in that sagebrush-dotted country, realizing they needed to capture some of the water that cascaded off Grand Mesa each spring and summer, founded the Big Creek Reservoir Co. in 1888. By 1902 the company had a chain of seven irrigation reservoirs. Castle, whose Kansas Mesa property used Big Creek water, served as president of the reservoir company for 20 years.
But it wasn't all work. Horse racing and rodeo were popular in the Plateau Valley (locals pronounce it PLATT-oh, not pla-TOE). Mrs. Young mentions Clay Puett, who "invented the 'Puett Starting Gate,' which is now used by all the big race tracks."
Chet McCarty won bareback bronc riding competition at several major rodeos across the country and Canada. At one Fourth of July celebration, Wild Bill Wallace rode Skyrocket, a bucking bronc that never before had been ridden. Tom May raced his horses throughout the United States.
But when it came to calf-roping, few cowboys could beat Harry Castle in his prime. "I was in rodeo until I was 52," Castle says. "I was about as good a roper as I ever wanted to be. I hardly ever missed a loop."
Mrs. Young wrote, "Harry, Tom May and George Ramsey organized the early rodeos on Hall Flats (below the Congregational Hospital). Harry was a fine roper and won over 100 roping contests over the state. He was also one of the best bulldoggers."
In 1919 the Plateau Valley Voice reported the "sensational ending of the fair. Harry Castle broke state record in roping ... lots of contestants, town overflowing with visitors."
In 1915 the Voice noted that "the program included everything from horse races to roping sheep. ... Harry Castle and Aaron McKee won the sheep roping, and tied a ribbon on the necks."
In 1918: "Big July 4th celebration at Collbran, the hidden city: Jack Watson enlivened the program in between acts with his splendid voice. Relay races were good, some mighty fine talent: Clay Puett, Bill Minor, Harry Castle, Roe and Roy Lyons, John McCarty, Jess Reams, Ray Young, Roy Lucas and many others."
Castle entered rodeos regularly in western Colorado towns, such as Gunnison, Fruita, Grand Junction, Montrose and Meeker. During the drought and Great Depression of the 1930s, when things really got tough, Castle extended his rodeoing range.
"We took a trip almost to the Canadian border, hitting every rodeo along the way," recalls Mrs. McKelvie. "He made enough money in roping winnings to pay for a ranch."
Castle's beautiful Hightower Ranch "up on the Buzzard" was as fine a ranch as there was in that country for many years. His Porter Creek cabin was the elite cow camp of its day.
He ranched until just over a year ago - even irrigating and baling hay for a year after breaking his hip. Now, he and Lenna, who will celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary on Nov. 9, are retired.
Castle is out of the bear business, out of the rodeo business, out of the cattle business. "I've still got my saddle," he declares sadly, "but I ain't got my horse."
Other information from Helen Hawxhurst Young's, "The Skin and Bones of Plateau Valley History":
(After his father was murdered) ...and when they built the school up there, though Harry was only a boy, he hauled lumber from the Sullivan Mill to pay their pledge. When in his teens, he drove the stage for Barge Hiskey to the Half Way House on the Sunnyside. Later Homer and Harry raised mules, which they shipped to Omaha.
Harry married Lenna Van Natten, who had come to the country with her family during the Clover ditch project.Harry and Lenna bought the Baxter place, and acquired more land until they had 3000 acres and developed a fine herd of cattle.
Harry, Tom May and George Ramsey organized the early rodeos on Hall Flats (below the Congregational Hospital). Harry was a fine roper and won over a hundred roping contests over the state. He was also one of the best bulldoggers. Harry and Al Caldwell, were riding on Willow Creek, when Harry roped a bear. They got it muzzled and brought it to town, so he could get a license from R.C. Phipps (the J.P.) to kill it, which he did with a knife to the heart. This bear skin is still on the wall of his den.
1913 - Harry Castle and Lenna Van Nattan marry at Rev. Simmons residence.
1915 - Castle brothers made a deal with Trey Brothers for their 500 acre ranch on Buzzard for $5000.00. Sold 540 acres to DuCray.
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