My Dad’s Mom Was a Patureau

Recently a Patureau cousin sent me some old family photos.  (Thanks, again Craig!)  Most of the photos were of second or third cousins from the various Patureau family lines.  I talk about the Patureau family frequently on these blog posts.  That’s because there’s so much information available about them.  Maybe it’s because there are so many of us around.  They have traditionally had large families and there have been one or two serious family researchers in every generation of the family.  Maybe not in every family line, but there have been a few.  

The Patureau family came from Riberac, France, in 1840.  It consisted of the 40-year- old Pierre Ferdinand Patureau (born in LaRoche-Chalais), his 39-year-old wife Anne Rose Machet (born in Mareuil), their 16-year-old daughter Victorine, their 14- year-old son Ferdinand, their 13-year-old son Abel, and 12-year-old Elisa. 

It was only the two oldest that had any children.  Victorine ended up settling in east Texas, while Ferdinand had his family in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  Through eight of their fifteen or so children, he and his wife Emma Landry had at least 75 grandchildren.  And many of those grandchildren had large families as well.  There are well over a thousand descendants of Ferdinand and Emma.

So it makes sense that they’d want to have a Patureau reunion every once in a while.  I know that I went to one in the 1970s in Duson, Louisiana.  I don’t know if it was for all of Ferdinand and Emma’s descendants or if it was just through their son Vincent Maximilian.  I descend from him and he was known as Grampa Max, though he is my great grandfather.  My dad was Bob Landry and he was the son of Max’s daughter Erie Patureau Landry. 

Max’s daughter Emma had a daughter named Therese Mouton, and she was the one that had the get together in Duson.  I’d like to see photos of that reunion.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen any.  I’m glad that one of the new photos I recently acquired was a photo of Therese – our family called her Tez – with some of her Patureau cousins.  She was good about visiting cousins all across southern Louisiana.  She made quite an impression and the stories about those visits are still being told today.

I also went to a Patureau reunion in 1993 at the home of Pat and Lora Patureau in Baton Rouge.  Tez was at that reunion, too.  I didn’t hang around her too much, because it seemed like I was cramping her style.  She treated me like I was the strange one!  There had been a 1992 reunion, but I don’t think any of the Max Patureau line was there.  I don’t think I went to any other Patureau reunion in the 1990s.  I don’t even remember hearing about them.  There were several more that I heard about that happened in Bayou L’Ourse.  I heard about them from Craig and Byron and Dana, some cousins I keep in touch with.  

So when I got that big batch of photos a few weeks ago, I went through them looking for anyone familiar.  Fortunately, many of them were labeled with people’s names.   Very nice.  I recognized many of the names, though I didn’t know them personally.  When I saw some photos of Patureau reunions in the 1990s, I looked at those closely. 

I didn’t know if my dad had gone to any of them, but he was very interested in family history.  It makes sense that he would have gone to them.  And sure enough, I found him in three different photos at two of the Patureau reunions.  Besides liking to visit with family and have a good time with them, he also enjoyed all of the history of the Patureau family.  I can see his family history book in his lap that he brought to any family get together.  I’m sure he enjoyed talking with Linda Cansler who was another Patureau researcher.  Why wouldn’t he?  He was a Patureau!