Patureau Home in Lafayette

I’ve wondered about the Patureau Home in Lafayette for a while.  I know that my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau relocated to Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1912.  He was born in March of 1865 in Mexico when the family relocated there during the Civil War.  Later that year, the family returned to Louisiana and settled in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  He grew up in Plaquemine and spent most of his early life there.  But in 1911 he decided to set up his veterinary practice in Lafayette.

He had a variety of jobs once he became an adult.  He set up a business of delivering groceries to people in their homes when he was a young man.  He was also helping out the family sawmill business that his father Ferdinand Patureau had set up and run until his death in 1877.  His mother Emma Landry Patureau continued that business and Max helped out with that.  Max also set up a family store in 1904 or so with other family members.  I think that he must have started his veterinary business when this store was still in operation.

I don’t know if he started practicing veterinary services before or after the death of his wife Marie Therese Landry Patureau in 1909.  When she died, this left 44-year-old Max Patureau a single father with nine children between the ages of six and twenty.  This was a huge change for Max, and he decided to move his family to Lafayette just two years later.  The newspaper article about Marie Therese’s death tells us that her mother and two of her sisters were already living in Lafayette by 1909.  Her mother was Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin, sometimes just referred to as “Mrs. Pierre Magloire Babin.”  Magloire or Mack Babin had helped to set up the family store in Plaquemine.  There are many photos of family get togethers that include Max and Belite, and they seem to be pretty close.

So moving the family to Lafayette brought them close to other family members.  Family members who might help in caring for all of those children.  But another draw for Lafayette was SLI.  Southwest Louisiana Institute was a reputable school in its time, and Max Patureau was known to value education for his children.  I know that some of them, including my grandmother Erie, graduated from SLI.  My grandmother and some of her sisters also became schoolteachers and taught in Lafayette.

I know that other family members not living in Lafayette were invited to stay at the Patureau home if they wanted to attend SLI.  Max wanted to make sure he could help make it possible for them to get the education that he knew would make a change for their lives.  One of those was Tommy Landry (son of Marie Therese Landry Patureau’s brother Thomas Belisaire), who wrote a book about their grandfather Trasimond Landry (first husband of Belite and father of Marie Therese and Thomas Belisaire).  He spoke highly of his Uncle Max, and also said that he was the one who taught him how to drive.  I think Max helped some other family members, but I don’t know specifically who they were.

So I was interested in seeing that home that was in Lafayette and was close to where SLI was located.  It was on Lee Avenue.  I got the photo from my cousins recently. (Yes, another piece from the Box 301 Collection.)  The photo looks like it could be of two of the Patureau daughters back then.  It even looks like one of them might be holding some schoolbooks. I think the photo was taken around 1918 or so.  It’s a nice view of the home of my predecessors. 

I thought I would add this other photo that shows Grampa Max from around the same time period.  I think it was taken around 1925 in Lafayette.  That’s Max Patureau on the left.  He’s the one not wearing priest clothes!  I think the one on the left is a priest who was a family friend.  The name suggested for him was Father Wynehoven.  He was a priest that was well-loved by the family. 

One of Max’s granddaughters was named after him.  That would be my dad’s cousin that we called Tez.  Her given name was Therese Wynehoven Mouton.  The nickname Tez was derivative of her first name.  She was also known by Wynie (sounds like whiney) by some family.  There were other nicknames that she was known by, but I’ll not talk about them at this time.