I Am a Patureau

Well, technically I am not a Patureau, I am a Landry. But my grandmother was a Patureau, so that makes me a Patureau, too. It’s funny how you tend to easily connect with those who share your common surname. With all the research that I have done, I tend to connect with several surnames. I was shocked recently when I asked someone what their grandmother’s maiden name was and they didn’t know! How can you not know your grandmother’s maiden name? It’s an outrage!

It seems like I’ve always known that my Mee Maw was a Patureau. But it was not because there were lots of people named Patureau around me. There weren’t. One of the reasons for this is that Mee Maw had more sisters than brothers. My grandmother was Germaine Erie Patureau Landry. Her mother was Marie Therese Landry Patureau, who endured fifteen pregnancies.

She only lived a few days past her last pregnancy. Eleven of her offspring were girls, though only seven of them survived to adulthood. Four of her offspring were boys and two of them died in infancy. Additionally, neither of the two who attained adulthood (Romuald and Vincent) had any offspring.

So my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau had many grandchildren, but none of them carried the Patureau name. I noticed this a few years back and I had to ask Daddy about it because it seemed so unbelievable. To have that many children, yet not have any grandchildren with your last name. I’m sure he was okay with it. His mother was a Landry, his wife was a Landry, and eight of his grandchildren were Landrys. He was a Landry like I am a Patureau. It’s all family.

Then there was Grampa Max’s older brother Louis Leobon. He and his wife only had twelve children. The slackers! They had eight boys, though one of them (Louis Leobon, Jr.) died as a teenager. There were also four daughters named Alizia, Leona, Caroline, and Bertha. All of them were first cousins to my Mee Maw.

I don’t know who had more grandchildren: Max or Leobon. But with all of those male children, I know that Leobon had at least fifteen grandsons with the Patureau name. So even though I don’t have any first or second cousins with the last name of Patureau, I have many third cousins out there with that surname. In fact, if you meet a Patureau in southern Louisiana, it’s almost a guarantee that they are my third cousin.

But there are even more like me. We descend from a Patureau and have a different last name. Be it Landry, Duffy, Raley, Winn, Marionneaux, Barker, Boudreaux, Daigre, Vicknair, Stassi, Gunn, LeBlanc, Wendt, Mouton, Pitre, Pays, Knight, Amann, Zimmerman, Desonier, Conaway, Bourgogne, McLaughlin, Sicard, Guelfo, Scruggs, Written, Cropper, Barlow, Blanton, Rush, Martin, Rabalais, Kerr, McGown, Cansler, Hebert, Thommen, Dupuy, Schroeder, Soliman, Keegan, Hartz, Crandell, Llanas, Laulom, or Crixell – we are all Patureau. We should have a reunion!