Landry Centennials

Rob Landry & Erie Patureau

Today completes nine full years of writing a weekly blog about family history.  That’s right!  I’ve written at least one post a week for the past nine years.  I’ve had a few weeks where I’ve added a Surplus Sunday or FollowUp Friday to the mix.  With all of that and including this post, I’ll be just four posts short of 500 posts.  Wow, that’s a lot of words and pictures.  The first post I wrote and the one from last week were about my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.

So it’s time for something from my Landry side of the family.  You would think with all of these posts I would have covered all of the major milestones in my families’ lives.  But I haven’t.  I’ve missed a few important anniversaries along the way.  So instead of giving a greatest hits recap, I’ll give a recap of a couple of posts that should have been.  

Newspaper article from Nov. 12, 1921, in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The post that I didn’t write in November of 2021 was about the marriage of my paternal grandparents Robert Joseph Landry and Germaine Erie Patureau:  Today is the 100th anniversary of the wedding of my paternal grandparents.  Rob Landry and Erie Patureau were married on November 12, 1921, in Lafayette, Louisiana.  I still find it hard to believe that there are no photos of that wonderful event.  I’ve never seen a single one.  According to the newspaper article, Erie was given away by her father Max Patureau and her sister Therese “attended” her.  There doesn’t seem to be any family disharmony going on.  It even says there was a nice reception with friends and family in attendance.  A few years later Therese was married and there are lots of photos of that event. 

I don’t know the story of their courtship either.  I think they knew each other their whole lives.  Rob Landry was a first cousin of Erie’s mother Marie Therese Landry Patureau.  Even though Rob was born and grew up in Westlake, Louisiana, and Erie was born and grew up in Crescent, Louisiana, the families would have gotten together through their formative years.  Even though I’ve heard that back then marriage between cousins was very common, it wasn’t true on my mom’s side of the family or other family trees I’ve seen.  My dad’s family tree is an entangled mess!  I think a big influence on that was the fact that they were of Cajun and French heritage, and they spoke French.  So there was more of a motivation to marry within your own group.  You could understand each other.  It doesn’t happen as much nowadays, so everyone looks at you oddly when you tell them your grandparents were related as closely as they were.

The other post that I didn’t write at the end of April in 2023 was about my paternal grandparents becoming parents:  Today marks the 100th anniversary of the day that Rob and Erie became parents.  On April 30, 1923, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Rob and Erie Landry welcomed to their household little Marie Therese Landry.  Even though they started their family somewhat late, Rob was 30 and Erie was 27, they went on to have seven more children – ending up with a balanced group of four boys and four girls. 

They grew up in a close family and those siblings were close all of their lives. I’m glad to be part of that close-knit family.