Grandma Celeste and Her Niece

A few weeks ago I thought about writing a post about the name Celeste.  I think it is a very nice name – heavenly, in fact.  It also has been a common name in the family.  I realized that when I added a few more family members with that name recently.  Then I came across this photo today and I thought I’d do a bit of an edit to get rid of some scratches and spots.

So here is a photo of Marie Celeste Leveque Landry, who was my paternal grandfather’s mother.  Grandma Celeste’s youngest child was named Robert Joseph Landry.  He would later become a Sr. when he and my grandmother named my father Robert Joseph Landry, Jr., their third son.  I was the third son of a third son, but I wasn’t a III.  That distinction goes to my oldest brother Rob.

In this photo, she is the older woman on the right with white hair.  She was in her mid 80s in this photo, which was taken around 1932 or 1933.  The other woman was her niece Amanda Leveque.  Amanda was the daughter of Celeste’s older sister Marie Evelina Leveque Leveque.  Celeste had two older 3/4 sisters (they had the same father and their mothers were Landry sisters), but Evelina was her older full sister.  I wrote Leveque twice intentionally for her, because she married her Leveque first cousin.  That Leveque family line lived in New Orleans.  Amanda would have been in her mid 60s at the time of this photo.

Now to get to the part about that Celeste name.  Our Celeste had a brother named J. A. Leveque, Jr.  He had two children named Joseph Mark and Lucy.  Joseph had a daughter in 1895 that he named after his sister and his aunt, probably a favorite aunt.  He named his daughter Marie Lucie Celeste Leveque.  She went by the name Lucie and that was the name I had for her until recently.  I found out about her full name from a DNA match who was named after her great grandmother.  So the name Celeste is still present in that line.

But it is also present in the descendants of Grandma Celeste.  I’ve mentioned before that she helped her son Sebastien to care for her granddaughter Manette when Manette’s mother died.  To honor her grandmother before she died in 1934, Manette named one of her daughters Celeste Marie Bouquet.  She was born in 1928 and went by the nickname Tessie.  Tessie in turn gave one of her daughters the middle name of Celeste.  That daughter did the same for her own daughter.

There may be more with the name in the Bouquet family, but I do know there is at least one in the Landry family.  By that I mean the Robert J. Landry, Sr. family.  My cousin Doug gave his daughter Adele the middle name of Celeste.  There also happens to be a Celeste in the Patureau line.  I doubt that she was named for our Celeste, but that’s who I think of when I see the name.  Actually Celeste was named after her grandmother Clarice Celeste Bruneteau Landry, who was alive when her namesake was born.  Though the name Celeste hasn’t been with the Landry and Leveque lines as long as the Leobon name has been in the Patureau line (250 years), it has been around a respectable 225 years.

How do you spell respect?