Grandma Belite and Family

Almost two years ago I wrote the post “Christmas 1923 With Grandma Amelie” and it included a photo from Grandma Belite’s last Christmas with some of the women in her family.  It was the first photo from that family gathering in Lafayette, Louisiana, that I had seen.  I assumed that it must have been a gathering of women, since that’s the only people in the photo.  But then I found more photos from the same event and they showed that it was a much larger gathering than I initially thought.  I’m posting two more photos from that long ago Christmas day.  They were shared with me by the Tin Can Collection keeper, my cousin Tricia.  I also got versions from my dad’s first cousin Sis and she had some of them labeled.  She has everyone in the photo labeled, which is really nice.  It looks like the photos have the same people in it.  We’ll discover that as we go along.  Right now, I don’t know.  But I should know by the time I finish this post.

When I got this photo from Sis, she had all the names of the people in the photo on the back of it.  So let me tell you who everyone is and say a little bit about them.

First off we have Grandma Belite (Grandma Babin to some family members) on the left side.  She was my great great grandmother.  My dad was Bob Landry.  His mother was Erie Patureau Landry (my Mee Maw).  Erie was the daughter of Marie Therese Landry Patureau, who was the daughter of Belite.  She was born Marie Amelie Bujol in 1843 in Brusly, Louisiana, during the time of slavery.

She was known as one of the beautiful daughters of the Veuve Bujol during Civil War times.  But that was long ago even when this photo was taken and Belite was an elderly woman of 80 years old.  I wish I had a photo of her when she was a young woman.  I may have to try out some of those age-regression photo apps to see what comes out.  But unless a photo of young Belite shows up, we’ll never know just how beautiful she might have been.  This was her last Christmas.  She passed away just over a month later.

Next to Grandma Belite in the front is her granddaughter Hazel Landry.  She was the 7-year-old daughter of Belite’s daughter Clemence Babin Landry.  She was the youngest of six children.  When she grew up, she changed her name to Roberta.  That’s because she became a nun and took on the saint’s name of Robert.  So she was known as Sister Roberta.  I think I went to her Golden Jubilee or something like that many years ago.  She died in 1988.

The next two people in the photo are Emma Patureau Mouton and her daughter Therese Wynhoven.  We knew them as Aunt Emma and Tez.  Emma was my Mee Maw’s sister.  They lived in Duson, Louisiana, where Emma was the organist at the Catholic Church for many years.  She also wrote poetry.  Tez was my dad’s first cousin.  If we got confused as children and called her “Aunt Tez,” he was quick to correct us.  And I don’t think it was just for the sake of genealogical correctness.  She was a link that brought many family members together.  As the saying goes, “Misery loves company.”  And a visit from Tez could sometimes bring misery.  Though she’s been gone almost twenty years, the stories of her visits are legendary.

The last two people in the front are two of Hazel’s older siblings.  The boy next to Tez is Henry Louis Landry.  I saw his grave a few months ago when I visited Belite’s grave in Lafayette.  Just recently I had a DNA match show up on Ancestry who is a great granddaughter of Henry.  I sent her a note to let her know about photos like this that I have of her family.  Maybe she’ll be interested.  Next to Henry is his sister Wana Clemence Landry.  She never got married.  She used to have family gatherings at her home.  She is buried along with her parents and grandparents in Lafayette.

On the back row we begin with Belite’s granddaughter Marie Therese Patureau.  She was another of my Mee Maw’s sisters.  She was known as Aunt Bee, like the character on The Andy Griffith Show.  She was a young woman in this photo and almost ten years later she would marry Clarence Schafer.  She was the mother of Sis and Syl.  For the sake of clarity for this picture, I’ll call her Patureau Sis.  She is the one who provided the names for all these people.

Next to Bee is Belite’s daughter Clemence.  She was the mother of Henry, Hazel, and Wana C.  She was the half-sister of my great grandmother Marie Therese Landry Patureau.  Her father was Magloire Babin, the second husband of Belite.  She had an older full sister named Amelie who died as a child.  She also had a younger sister named Albine who died in 1903 at the age of 18.  So Clemence was the only one of Belite and Magloire’s daughters to have children of her own.  And since Clemence (Aunt Clem) married Pee Paw’s brother Louis Joseph Peter Landry (Uncle Louie), they are double kin to us.  This photo was taken at their home in Lafayette on South College Road.

After Clemence comes three family members in my line of the family.  Vincent Maximilian Patureau was married to Belite’s daughter Marie Therese, who I have identified as my great grandmother.  So he was my great grandfather, but I always refer to him as Grampa Max.  He is standing next to his daughter Lydwin Patureau who is holding his granddaughter Mona Mel Mouton.  Lydwin or Aunt Win also never married and did not have any offspring.  She is holding her sister Emma’s youngest daughter (at the time) Mona Mel who was born earlier that year.  Mona Mel did get married, but she did not have any children of her own.

The next group are the three older children of Clemence and Louis.  Ethelbert was the third child and he went by Bert.  I don’t know much about him.  Call it the middle child syndrome.  Next to Bert is Naomi Landry and for the sake of this post I’ll call her the Landry Sis.  So my dad had two first cousins that were called Sis and both of them were interested in family history and have been helpful to me.  My dad made a video where he talked with Landry Sis about all of the cousins and their families.  She also identified some family photos.  Patureau Sis is much younger and is still around to help out with family history information and photos. 

Back to the photo.  After Landry Sis is Thornwell Fay Landry.  He was the oldest child of the family of six children.  I just realized that they had three boys and three girls, just like the family I grew up in.  They had about the same spacing in ages that we had, too.  I wonder if they enjoyed it as much as I did?  After Thornwell is Mee Maw’s younger sister Sylvia.  A few years later she would marry Son Marionneaux.  Like Mee Maw she would have a large family of four sons and four daughters.

The tall man in the back on the right in this photo is Anthony Joseph Mouton.  He was married to Mee Maw’s sister Emma and was known as Uncle Toby.  He lived in Duson, Louisiana, and died in 1969.  I don’t have any memories of him, but my brother Rob and my older cousins do.  He must have been a pleasant fellow, because everyone seems to speak of him fondly.  The last person on the right in this photo is Mee Maw’s brother Vincent.  He lived in Baton Rouge like I do.  One of my favorite family heirlooms is a banjo that belonged to him.

Now to look at this other photo from the same day.  I decided to post it with the other one because I actually prefer it to the other one.  But the other one had the names provided, so I went with that one first.  It wasn’t until I got to Uncle Toby in my descriptions that I realized that the tall guy in the back right of this photo isn’t Uncle Toby.  He’s in the same location in the photo and he’s even posing the same way, but Uncle Toby is in the front holding Tez in this one.

The new person in this photo to the far right is Louis Joseph Peter Landry.  He was an older brother of my Pee Paw and he’s the father of six of Belite’s grandchildren in the photos.  He was the son-in-law of Belite.  But beside that, Louis’s mother Marie Celeste Leveque was Belite’s first cousin.  That puts a whole new spin on the relationships I talked about in these photos.

But all you really need to know is that they were family getting together to make sure that their cherished Grandma Babin (or Grandma Belite) had a wonderful final Christmas.