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HISTORY OF THE DE COURSEYS, 1814 to 1964
For a class at St. Mary's College, 1964.1
James DeCoursey came to the United States on an oxen train from Prince Edward Island, Canada. He was born in 1814, and he left his Canadian home to come to the California Gold Rush in 1849.2 He made his fortune in California and moved to Illinois where he met and married Miss Mary Murphy. Then they moved here to Leavenworth and homesteaded on a little farm called Pilots Knob. You can see it from the back of the mother's house. He turned the farm into the first creamery in the state of Kansas in 1879. He also supervised the school at Possum Hollow. He planted some oak trees there. They were just little twigs when he planted them, I imagine; but today they have their roots in about everything.
While he was taking care of the farm and the school, Mary, his wife, was taking care of the babies. They had four boys and two girls; Edwin, Mary, James, Anna,3 Harry and Charles - and the DeCoursey tree began to grow.
I don't know much about anybody but Edwin. He was my Great Grandfather. He left home the same year his dad opened the creamery . He drove a team of horses from the farm in Leavenworth to Leadville, Colorado to haul ore from the mines. Grandpa says that he left Leadville in 1881, and went to Alma, a little town near Horseshoe Gulch, where he met Mary McCormick, a school teacher from Pennsylvania, and married her six months later.
Mary had a sister who was a Sister of Charity. Her name was Sister Mary Digna.4 She worked in an orphanage. Edwin and Mary used to come to visit her and would always bring candy the kids. So if she knew they were coming, she would have the kids pray for the candy to strengthen their faith. She worked in a hospital too. It was her job to take the breakfast to the patients. She was never any good before she had her coffee in the morning, so she would fill the patient's cups to the brim so she'd have to sip them on the way.
Ed and Mary moved to Alma, beloved Alma, to a two room house. They didn't have any money, but they had five children: Jim, Frank, Will, Edwin and Mary. They moved back to Leavenworth, then back to Alma, then back to Leavenworth, again. Ed figured Colorado was no place to raise boys. They were farm boys. They worked the land and milked the cows and shucked the corn; but on Saturdays they made ice-cream and sold it at the ball game. When they were dressed up, they always wore roses in their lapels. Grandpa 5 is seventy-five and he still wears his rose.
Mary entered the Sisters of Charity and took the name of Sister Mary Edwin. When she was thirty five, she got sick and died. Her brothers gave the community a shrine of Saint Theresa in Sister's honor. When the Sisters had the shrine dedicated, they invited all the little DeCoursey girls, which included two of Jimmy's, two of Will's and seven of Frank's. They all wore white dresses, long white socks, and blue ribbons in their hair. Mom said it was just a madhouse. They were running all over and when it was time to dedicate the statue, all their socks were hanging over their shoes, and their ribbons were, in their hair and half in their eyes. One of the sisters got a hold of them and pulled up their socks, and everything was all right. The girls got fixed up and the shrine was dedicated. It looks very nice, especially in the spring when the pink bushes behind it are in bloom.
The boys grew up and married girls from St. Mary's parish in Kansas City. Jim bought some creamery equipment from his uncle and started a creamery on Northrup Avenue, a few streets over from St. Mary's. Frank and Will followed him. Eddie wasn't much interested in ice-cream, so he moved to California, where he ran a street car.
Grandpa and Grandma were married at St. Mary's. Grandma's name was Kate Cotter before she was married. Then she became Kate DeCoursey. She looked like a Kate DeCoursey too. She was the simple Kate and the elegant DeCoursey. She had dark eyes and gently arched eye brows. Her features were strong, but delicate. She was beautiful, even when she was sixty. There was always a smile on her face, even when her mouth wasn't turned up - it must have been her eyes.
After they were married, they moved into a large white house on Ohio. There's a hitching post by the curb and fourteen rough granite steps that end at a gate that you always had to make sure was shut so Duke couldn't get out. Duke is Grandpa's dog. He's on his fifth bulldog now. As soon as one dies, he gets another one and calls it Duke. The house is on top of a mound and there is a granite wall all the way around. And on top of the wall, there is a fence where Grandma used to grow roses for Grandpa's lapel.
There was always something to do at Grandma's when you were little, especially when all your relatives were there. Grandpa would always ask you, "What are you, Dutch or Irish?" The answer was "Irish." If you said "Irish", he'd slap a silver dollar in your hand. If you weren't eating, you could go up and smell your aunt's perfume, or you could listen to your Uncle Jim play the piano, or you could play in the closet under the stair-way, or you could go out to Grandma's garden and eat her grapes and peaches and stay out of her tomatoes. Or if you wanted to be dangerous, you could go poking around all the old stuff in the garage. I never went in there without fearing for my life. It looks as if it would fall in if you touched it. It's really a barn.
Grandma's house was in the middle of town, but it was so big she could have a barn and a chicken coop and a vegetable garden and nobody knew the difference. Grandma had all the dignity of a rich man's wife, but she was a farm girl at heart. And oh, how Grandpa loved her. He couldn't stand it when she died. His face took on a lot more wrinkles and his mouth began to sag at the comers. They were always in love, but not the "I love you, Kate" kind of love - another kind. I remember once when I was at their house, Grandpa hollered, "Kate, where's my coat?"
"I sent it to the cleaners"
"Sent it to the cleaners! What did you do that for? It wasn't dirty."
Grandma looked down at me and laughed. She said, "I just might divorce him yet."
It seemed as if there were a wedding every week at Grandma's. The rooms were always filled with people and clothes and lipstick and shoes, but one by one the rooms were emptied and the house settled down in peace - except for Duke's barking. There was only Grandma in her room and Grandpa in his. Then Grandma died.
Old Grandpa could hardly wait to die to be with Grandma. He wears both their wedding rings and always talks about "my wife." Uncle Will died this year, and Uncle Jim died about ten years ago, and Uncle Eddie died about twenty years ago out in California, so Grandpa's the only one left. He keeps saying that, "I'm the only one left now." He still works at the bank every day. He's been president ever since he left the creamery. He goes to Colorado every year too - to beloved Alma. He likes to go to his old silver mine, "The London". It hasn't been worked for over forty years, but he still goes up there. I went with him once when I was ten. It's a rickety old place, but the way Grandpa touched the boards on the shaft of the mine, and the way he picked up lumps of ore lying around to show us the difference between gold and fool's gold, you'd think it was precious.
I'll never forget Grandpa around that mine - the way he climbed up to the cabin with the wind whipping his thin white hair in his face. He was rugged. He was rugged when he worked the mine and he was rugged when he had to just look at it. It was a shot-gun cabin with two rooms. Some of the boards in the floor were out and the door was hanging on one hinge. It screeched liked you've never heard a door screech. There was a table and chair in the first room. The table was covered with leaves and nut shells; squirrels and winds had been there. Grandpa didn't say much, he just ran his hands through his hair a few times and walked on down by the lake. I remember going wading and sliding around on the mossy rocks and climbing around on the big ones that walled the lake. It was quiet now, but in the days when Alma was thriving, it was lined with flumes and prospectors. Those were the days.
Uncle Will had six children: Vince, Bill, Aileen or Sister Regina, Regina, Mary and Jack. Sister entered the Sisters of Charity when she was about twenty. She's a lot like her father - calm and gentley. She counsels girls who want to come to the convent. She counseled Kathy O'Connor, a Sister in my novitiate. Kathy said she really liked Sister Regina before she entered, but after three months in the postulancy, she hated her. She likes her again - there's something about those first months.
Uncle Jim had four children: Edwin, Mary Agnes, Pat or Sister Mary Edwin, and Jim. Sister entered the community about the same time Sister Regina did. She teaches at the college now. You can see her every day, lumbering over to her classroom under the substantial sun. Sometimes she sings and sometimes she thinks when she's lumbering. One of my friends caught her singing at the top of her lungs one day. She turned purple and hid her face. She sings, but most of the time she thinks - thinks about final causes, essences, motivation and St. Thomas. Truth is her business.
Outside of class you wouldn't notice much about her, except her eyes. They are deep brown and two of the finest specimens of activated prime matter I've ever seen. In class you notice her mind and her hands. Her hands aren't particularly beautiful, but when she holds a piece of chalk or illustrates a chart or tries to explain being, the hands come alive. The fingers curve, touch, and hold things in such a way that you think what she is talking about is absolutely precious. I read something this morning that reminded me of her.
"I wished, and understanding was given me; and I called upon God, and the Spirit of wisdom came upon me; and I preferred her before kingdoms and thrones, and esteemed riches nothing in comparison of her. Neither did I compare her to any precious stone, for all gold in comparison to her is as a little sand, and silver in respect to her shall be counted as clay. I loved her above health and beauty , and chose to have her instead of things come to me together with her, and innumerable riches through her hands; and I rejoiced in all these, for this wisdom went before me, and I knew not that she was the mother of them all. This I have learned with out guile, and communicate without envy , and her riches I hide not, for she is an infinite treasure to men! They who use it become the friends of God, being commended for the gift of discipline."
Grandma and Grandpa had nine children: Rita, Frank, Mary Catherine, Helen, Loretta and Lorraine, Jean and Joe, and Theresa. Mary Catherine is my mother. By the time she was my age, she was engaged to Daddy. I like to think of their romance. Grandpa's creamery was thriving so Mom wasn't hard up; but Dad was. He didn't have a nickel. He spent his winters working his way through Georgetown Law School, and his summers at the drug store down the street from Mom's house. One of Mom's friends knew him and fixed him up with her for a blind date.
Mom had red hair and the same delicate, strong features that Grandma had. She was beautiful. She wasn't exotic or glamorous, just beautiful. Dad fell in love with her and gave her his mother's wedding ring and they were engaged. They got married and Mom left her father's house to follow her husband.
Mom is all kinds of things. She's a teacher, artist, diplomat, disciplinarian, and camper. But most of all she's a mother. There was always a baby asleep on Mom's breast and after there were no more babies, then there were big kids asleep on her shoulder. She's everything a woman's supposed to be, because she loves. I remember once when I was mad at Daddy because he made me buy oxfords, and I said to Mom,
"Why don't you divorce him?"
and she just said,
"Because."
That's all she said. I was only eight but from the way she said it, I understood that a woman is supposed to love her husband, even when he makes his daughter buy oxfords, and that she was supposed to love him forever and follow him wherever he goes.
She married a man who is worth following wherever he goes. And she told me when I wanted to enter the convent that it would be the same way with me. If I was going - to go, and follow my husband forever.
She and Daddy had to scrimp and save at first. Gradually our family grew to nine children. We had twelve, but three died. We had to keep moving because we outgrew all our houses. First we lived in a tiny house across the alley from the creamery. It was a paradise for kids. We ate all the ice-cream they threw out and we used to play in the freezers - collect snow off the pipes and slide around on the icy floors. And then there was the coal bin. It was like a dream it was so much fun. Johnny, my brother, used to come out so black you couldn't tell who he was. Mom would get madder than a hornet when we played there. Johnny would say to me, "Annie, can we play here?" And I'd say, "I forgot." And we'd jump in and throw the coal around.
Then we moved to the house on Sixteenth Street, then to the one on Seventeenth. It had too many memories for Aunt Jenny after Uncle Jim died, so she sold it to us. I remember when we first moved in. There was an endless supply of secret compartments, old musical instruments and "Pat DeCoursey books."
Over the toilet in the bathroom there was a medicine chest, and if you pushed the shelves it opened on to a place where you could hide if the Communists were coming. There was a cistern in the back yard. This kind of lost its intrigue after we went down and got all the good stuff out. And then there was the trap door in the attic of the garage for little pigeons and little kids. And for a little while, there was a door in the attic in the house, leading to the rafters. Sister Mary Edwin's dad used to tell her there was a hole in the rafters and not to go through the door. She thought it went to hell. My dad told us there was a hole there too. But he got tired of telling us so he boarded it up.
We found violins and mandolins in the basement and a hand crank Victrola in the attic. John and Mike and I used to play the record "Jada" and laugh ourselves sick. There was a player baby grand piano in the front room that you could hear all over the block. I still remember some of the rolls, "What Can You Say in a Love Song?" and "Two Cigarettes in the Dark." They had the words right on them and all the kids in the neighborhood used to come up and try to sing the words as fast as they went around.
We found enough books to start a library. All the mystery and airplane books had "Pat DeCoursey" written neatly on the first page in about a fourth grade script.
That was a terrific house. Old houses full of little kids are wonderful. There's something about a crystal lamp that's been broken and put back together with airplane glue.
1 Parts of this account are probably based on "Written by Francis Charles DeCoursey, 1964".
2 Records indicate that James Coursey was born in 1827, not 1814. He did not leave Canada to go to California, as other sources indicate that his family had left Canada before 1835. He was living in Illinois at the time before the gold rush.
3 Should be Emma, not Anna. They did have another daughter named Ann who died young.
4 Mary McCormick's sister Margaret was Sister Mary Digna. She entered the noviate in 1880. She lived in Montana for several years, and in the 1920's worked at the Sisters of Charity's orphanage in Leavenworth, St. Vincent's. She died in Leavenworth in 1934.
5 Grandpa is Frank (Frances Charles), the son of Edwin E. and Mary (McCormick) DeCoursey.
[picture] Cheese factory in Moline, Kansas.
