Marie Celeste in Color

I posted a story a while back about a family photo of my mom’s family.  It was a black and white photo that my mom had hand tinted.  I talked about a group on Facebook that provides coloring services for free for black and white photos.  Some of them are really good, but I’m not really much a fan of it.

Then there’s the MyHeritage.com site that I’ve been using a lot to enhance photos.  I’ve shared some of them already.  They also have a coloring feature for the photos, but I don’t usually like the results from that either.  It never really looks realistic or flattering.  I’ve been enhancing a lot of my old photos lately, and occasionally I’ll try the coloring feature just to see what it might look like.

When I tried it on this photo on my dad’s maternal grandmother Marie Celeste Leveque Landry, I was pretty excited.  I really liked the colors that it provided.  The shading was a little too severe, but I knew I could fix that.  So that’s what I did.  I think it really brings the photo to life.  What do you think?

I posted the black and white version of the photo of Grandma Celeste almost five years ago.  It is the photo that is on her headstone at her grave in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  But this photo was taken long before then.  It was taken some time around 1868.

I figure it was probably taken around then based on her age in the photo and the fact that she married Simon Alcide Joseph Landry on November 24, 1868, at the age of 21.  The photo looks like an engagement or wedding photo, but I’m not sure if that was done back then.  It’s a nice photo that shows what she looked like as a young adult.  I thought I would give some other details about her life at the time as well.

The best thing to show some detail about her life is the 1870 Census of West Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  This is the first Census after the Civil War and things were decidedly different for Celeste and her family.  The families in the South were having to figure out a new way of doing things.  They were no longer able to use enslaved individuals to do their hard work for their benefit.  And rightfully so!

So in 1870 Alcide is shown as a farmer on his piece of land valued at $1000 and Celeste is ‘Keeping house.’  They are also the new parents of 5-month-old Carmelite.  That would be Marie Marguerite Carmelite Landry, who would later be called Lily.

Directly below their household is listed the household of Celeste’s first cousin Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry.  She was married to Alcide’s brother Trasimond.  Trasimond and Belite were married on November 30, 1867, and they had two children in 1870.  Their oldest daughter Therese was my great grandmother, but she was only two years old at this time.  They also have a 6-month-old daughter named Catherine.  She would be known as Kate.  Also in the household is 75-year-old Narcisse Landry, the father of Trasimond and Alcide.

Like I said, Celeste and Belite were first cousins.  Actually their mothers were sisters with the Landry maiden name.  Their grandfather was Joseph Emanuel Landry, the half-brother of Narcisse.  This means that Celeste and Belite’s children were 1st cousins through their fathers, 2nd cousins through their mothers, and half second cousins since their parents were related.

Yet the two families did not always remain neighbors.  Celeste and Alcide would move to the western part of the state, where their youngest child Rob was born in 1893 in Westlake.  Two-year-old Therese would grow up and marry Max Patureau from Plaquemine.  His mother was Emma Landry, first cousin to Trasimond and Alcide and the Landry sisters who gave birth to Celeste (by Basalite) and Belite (by Adele).  Therese and Max’s daughter Erie was born in Plaquemine in 1895.  Nevertheless, that didn’t stop Erie and Rob from getting together and eventually becoming my grandmother and grandfather.  Even though they were also our first cousin three times removed and second cousin once removed, we just called them Mee Maw and Pee Paw.