A Fortunate Young Gentleman

The main thing I’m sharing today is a letter that I saw for the first time last year.  It was in Box 301 in my Aunt Wana’s attic.  I’ve shared a few wonderful photos that were hiding away in that box, and there are still a few more to come.  There were a few other documents in there as well.  They mostly were associated with the Patureau family name, which is the family of my paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau.  This is a letter that was addressed to her, but in some way it was directed to my grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.

If you look at the head of the letter (which I just did), you’ll see that it is from the desk of Edwin L. Stephens, who was the president of Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette, Louisiana, at the time.  He addressed her as Erie and identified himself as her friend.  Young Erie had left Plaquemine, Louisiana, in 1912 after finishing high school.  Her father Max Patureau moved the whole family to Lafayette that year because he was starting a veterinarian practice in the Lafayette area.  Her maternal grandmother had moved there a few years previous.

That worked out well for Erie because she started at SLI that year.  I think she took three years to get her teaching certificate and started teaching in Lafayette subsequently.  She was teaching elementary school children, so I don’t think she was associated with SLI in any professional way.  In the 1920 Census she is shown in the household of her aunt Clemence Babin Landry.  Clemence was the half-sister of Erie’s mother Marie Therese Landry Patureau, who had died in 1909.  Clemence and Marie Therese were two of the daughters of Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin.  Grandma Belite was also in this 1920 household.  Her second husband had died the year before.  I descend from her and her first husband, who was Trasimond Landry.  Her second husband was Magloire Babin.

I don’t know why my grandmother was in the household of Clemence and her husband Louis Landry.  I think her dad was living in Lafayette at the time, but I have yet to be able to find Max Patureau in the 1920 Census.  Where was he?  Maybe I haven’t searched with all the possible ways of spelling the name Patureau by various people over the years:  Pattero, Paturo, Pacherou, Patterow, Pattercan, Pastureau.  Sometimes you have to get really creative with your spelling to find someone.

If I didn’t know my family, I would think that she might have met her husband-to-be because Rob Landry was the youngest brother of Louis Landry.  But he wasn’t just her aunt’s brother-in-law, he was the first cousin of Erie’s deceased mother.  So she didn’t meet him during that time, but she may have seen him more and heard about his comings and goings from his brother.  

During her time in Lafayette, Rob had been involved with semi-professional baseball and also joined the military.  He went off to training in Virginia.  He never actually saw any action because the war ended and he was discharged.  I don’t know when their courtship began or when they decided to get married.  I have some photos from July 1921 that look like they might be engagement photos, but they could have been engaged for a while.

But when the president of SLI heard about the engagement, he felt a need to send Erie a note of congratulations to the fortunate young gentleman in winning such a fine girl.  I’ve always heard that it was improper to congratulate a woman on hearing of an engagement.  It is appropriate, however, to offer her best wishes.  And that’s what he did – he wished them both long life and happiness. 

So they tried with the best of their abilities to make his wish come true.