What’s In a Name?

Grampa Max with his sister Rose Elisa circa 1925.

If you read the title to this post, you might think that the woman in the photo would be named Rose.  And you would be correct!  But that is just a happy coincidence.  I wasn’t thinking of the name Rose when I thought of that Shakespearean quote, I was thinking of her middle name.

When researching families, it is helpful that many families use some names frequently.  Not too frequently, because then it gets too confusing.  The Patureau family has gotten close to that point with the name Marie Therese.  I’ve talked about that name previously.

This time I’m talking about the name Elisa.  That’s the middle name of Grampa Max’s sister Rose. (Grampa Max is my dad’s mother’s father Vincent Maximilian Patureau)  She was born Rose Elisa Patureau on April 8, 1863.  She was his next older sibling, so they were probably pretty close.  They were the children of Ferdinand Patureau and Emma Landry.

Ferdinand came from France with his parents and siblings in 1840 at the age of 14.  He went back to France on his own shortly afterwards and eventually came back after a year or so.  Some of the details have been lost to the ages, but not all of them.  We do know that there was a yellow fever epidemic in Louisiana in 1842 that had a huge influence on his life.

On October the 12th of that year, his mother and younger sister named Elisa died in Opelousas, Louisiana, of yellow fever.  I don’t know if he had returned from his adventure in France before their death.  Either way, it was a huge impact on the Patureau family that had just recently come to America to live.  We know that his sister’s death affected him because he named one of his daughters in honor of her.  Wait!  I just realized that his mother’s name was Rose!  So his sister was actually named for both of them.  But she actually went by her middle name and her obituary called her Eliza Dupuy.

Eliza Patureau Laulom Crixell Falcon (edited photo)

But Rose Elisa wasn’t the only one named after Ferdinand’s sister Elisa.  He had another sister named Victorine and she named her only daughter Eliza.  I guess it was a good thing that Victorine’s family moved to Texas, otherwise there would have been confusion over the two Elizas.

Cousin Eliza was given the middle name Patureau and her father was Pierre Emile Laulom.  She then married a man named Vicente Crixell in 1864.  Their first child was born in 1865 in Mexico.  Grampa Max was born the same year in the same place because the Ferdinand Patureau family was in the same area due to the turmoil of the Civil War.

Eliza had seven children with Vicente.  He died in 1880, so she remarried in 1884.  All of this just to say that her full name was Eliza Patureau Laulom Crixell Falcon!  Like I said, she was named for her aunt Elisa.

One of the reasons I’m writing about all of this is that I’ve been in contact with one of Eliza’s (E.P.L.C.F.) great grandchildren over the past week.  He is the son of one of Eliza’s granddaughters.  And that granddaughter’s (his mother’s) name was – you guessed it – Elisa.  She, like the other two named for Elisa, lived a full life.  They got married, had children and grandchildren.

Not like that first Elisa.  She was born in France where she lived for 12 years, then moved to America with her family.  Was she angry about leaving friends?  Excited about a new adventure?  Hopeful for an interesting future?  We’ll never know.  She died after just two years of living in her new country.  Poor, poor Elisa.

To find out more about Eliza Patureau Laulom Crixell Falcon and some of her Crixell offspring, check out this collection of writings and newspaper articles collected by her great grandson:  Eliza’s Crixell Boys in Brownsville.