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Caleb Perry Wray
b.22 Mar 1821 Ohio, United States
d.28 Oct 1906 Lakeport, Lake, California, United States
Family tree▼ (edit)
m. 1808
(edit)
m. 1 Jan 1848
Facts and Events
"He was just 7 years of age when his family arrived at Niles. He was 27 when he married a girl of 14. Caleb was a very large powerful man being 6 feet 4 inches tall. He was said to be very hard working and skilled at a number of trades. He was very honest, but hot headed and if someone crossed him he would fight. He left his pregnant wife and went around the horn in 1848 landing in San Francisco.
[edit] Gold RushHe left New York by ship and went ashore in Nicaragua and the ship left without him. He caught another ship and arrived in San Francisco and on to the gold fields. He did not find much gold and settled as a "squatter" near San Lorenzo, Alameda County, California on a Spanish Land Grant where he farmed. He sent for his wife and his son, age 4, who died 5 days before the ship reached San Francisco. Thus, he never saw the child alive. He also ran a freight line to the gold fields. All of his children, but for George Peabody and Lorenzo were born there. After a long court battle he lost his land and moved back to Buchanan, Michigan in 1863 retracing the trip his wife and son took some years before. [edit] Home to MichiganHis cousin Hiram Wray had come to the Niles area from Virginia in 1835 and in 1864 he joined him in the sawmill business. In 1866-67 the great Michigan fire burned thousands of acres including the sawmill. The following year his wife died and he placed some of his children at the Shaker Farm in South Bend, Indiana. Others he placed with his mother while he worked out of town for two years at logging camps. Upon his return, he bought a farm and hired Sarah Clark as a housekeeper and the children came home from the Shaker Farm. He operated a brick and tile yard in Buchanan and his older children assisted him. [edit] On to South DakotaIn 1890, he and his brother, William Montgomery Wray II, homesteaded at a place called LaGrace on the Missouri River on the South and North Dakota border a year after South Dakota became a state. He worked with his son, Jim, thrashing grain using the first steam engine used in the Dakotas, harvesting of his own grain and that of other farmers. In the winter time, the engine was taken down by the river and powered a sawmill. Some of the lumber was used to build some of his building, but the first home he built was made of logs. Various members of his family lived with him from time to time. He cut cordwood and sold it to the side wheeler, wood fired, river boats that came up the river as far as Bismark, North Dakota. The crew bought vegetables, butter and eggs as well. Across the river from his farm was a Sioux Indian Reservation and he traded and became friendly with them. During the winter months the river was frozen and there was much visiting back and forth. He allowed one of his buildings to be used as a school house, which was known as the Wray School. [edit] Back to CaliforniaIn early spring of 1898 there was an ice jam on the river and LaGrace and his farm washed away in the flood. The previous year he had homesteaded near Mound City, South Dakota, some 5 miles from the river and he moved there and built a sod home. He soon sold out and moved to Lakeport, Lake County, California to be near his sons Edwin and George. By this time he was an old man with white hair and bent over with arthritis. He had little money for all the hard work he had done over the years. He died in 1906."S2 References
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