Author: Van

Bucklin Burials: Part 2

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Van Landry (author) with the grave of his great great grandfather James A. Bucklin in the Raymond Methodist Cemetery on Nov. 6, 2021.

This is Part 2 of a post that I wrote two years ago.  I wrote that one because I had acquired a photo of my great grandfather’s (Louis Charles Bucklin’s) burial at Raymond Methodist Cemetery in Raymond, Louisiana.  It also showed the original look of his father James A. Bucklin’s grave.  In the selfie I took with that grave this past weekend, there is no obelisk sitting on top of the base.

But that’s not why I was there this weekend.  I was attending the funeral of my mom’s first cousin Ray Bucklin.  Besides being family, he and I shared an interest in genealogy and family history.  I suppose that’s why he was buried at this cemetery.  Even though he had lived in Florida for many years, he was buried at the old family grave site.  He is probably the last of four generations of Bucklins to be buried at that graveyard.

There may be other relatives buried in that graveyard in the future, but it’s likely that he will be the last family member with the Bucklin last name buried there.  His father Herbert Bucklin is buried there, as is his grandfather Louis Charles Bucklin (our common ancestor).  Louis’s father James A. Bucklin was the first Bucklin family member buried there.  He brought his family down to Louisiana in 1884 from Massachusetts.

James Bucklin actually had three sons, but only his son Louis has descendants at this point.  Louis had nine sons, but only three of them had a son.  Herbert was the father of Ray and Ray did not have any children.  Robert, Sr. had a son named Robert, Jr.  He had a daughter, so the Bucklin name did not carry on.  My grandfather Fred had a son.  Austin is still with us and he has grandsons with the Bucklin name, but they are not connected to the Raymond area.

Family members of Ray Bucklin at his gravesite on Nov. 6, 2021, at Raymond Methodist Cemetery in Raymond, Louisiana.

So the family that came to pay respects to Ray are like me.  We’re part of the Bucklin family, but we don’t have the last name Bucklin.  We took a photo at the grave site and that is the picture I’m sharing today.  I warned them beforehand, so I guess that means that I have their permission to do so. 

I’ll name people by how they connect to the children of our common ancestor Louis C. Bucklin.  In the front row is the surviving family of Herbert Bucklin.  From the left is his son-in-law Joseph Connors III, the husband of Louise Bucklin Connors.  She is sitting next to him.  Next to her are their sons Joseph and John Connors. 

On the back row are the cousins.  First up on the left is me, Van Landry.  I am the son of Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and the grandson of Fred Bucklin.  Next is Kristi Jackson Davidson.  She is the daughter of Jeannette Bucklin Jackson and the granddaughter of Roy Bucklin.  To the right of her is Charles Bruchhaus, son of Harley Bruchhaus and grandson of Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  Directly behind Louise is Carol Taylor Fraser.  She is the daugther of Helen Bucklin Taylor and the granddaughter of Ralph Bucklin. 

The next four people are first cousins of Ray and Louise.  First we have a female cousin on the Koll side of the family.  Sorry, I can’t remember her name even though she nicely introduced herself.  Second is Doris Bucklin Lawson.  She is the younger daughter of Roy Bucklin.  That would make her Kristi’s aunt.  Third is a male cousin on the Koll side of the family.  Again, I can’t remember his name.  And fourth is Arlene Keys Ware.  She is the daughter of Edna Bucklin Keys.  She is related to my mom on both sides of the family through the Bucklin and Keys families.  The person on the far right in the back is Lauren Bruchhaus Fruge (not Foley!  I said it incorrectly a few times.  Sorry!)  She is the daughter of Laurence Bruchhaus and the granddaughter of Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  That would make her Charles’s first cousin.

It was good getting together with cousins to remember Ray.    Some of my mom’s Phenice first cousins were at the Methodist Church Annex after the grave site visit because they were helping to prepare the food for lunch afterward.  It was good to see them, also.  With this group of cousins, the common family background and DNA was noticeable.  Certain phrases, smiles, and mannerisms among them reminded me of my mom.  She was a part of all of our lives.

Since today is Veteran’s day, I would like to thank all of those who have served our country in the military.  Ray Bucklin was one of those.  He served in the Air Force.   Hat’s off to him.

Samuel Phenice’s Civil War Record

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It seems like I write a post about my great great grandfather’s Civil War experiences every two years.  This is the third one I have written about it.  (See  A Witness at Ford’s Theatre from 2017 and Eating Tacks in the Civil War from 2019.)  Of course I mention the fact that he was in the Civil War more frequently.  Besides sharing a document about my ancestor Samuel Charles Phenice from the War Department, I’m sharing a photo of him.  The document has a date of December 18, 1890, but the photo didn’t come with a date.  I’m guessing that it is from around 1935.

Samuel Charles Phenice in Almena, Kansas, circa 1935.

I’m sharing the photo of Charles first, because most people are more interested in people photos that old musty documents.  Fortunately for you, I will share both of them.  I find the musty old documents interesting, too.  The photo is not the best photo I have of him, but I still like it.  It comes from a photo of him with two of his daughters and a son-in-law by way of the Lincoln Collection (thank you, Mona!).  The photo is a bit distorted, especially of the other people in the photo.  Maybe I’ll get a bet version of it some day.

From the approximate ages of the people in the photo, I estimated it to be taken around 1935.  Samuel was born in 1844 in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.  That would make him around 90 years old in this photo.  He lived to the ripe old age of 95.  Not too bad for a guy that was shot and could have died during the Civil War when he was just 20 years old.  It was sometime around 1935 that he went to live with his daughter Myrtle.  Not his granddaughter Myrtle who was my grandmother.  Her name was Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  Charles’s daughter was Myrtle Phenice Cozad.

That Myrtle lived in Almena, Kansas, but it’s not like Charles moved far away to live with his daughter.  He lived by himself in Precept, Nebraska, which is near the southern border of Nebraska.  Kansas is on the other side of that border and the first town you come to is Almena in Norton County.  It’s only about 10 to 15 miles away.  It’s out in the middle of nowhere with fields surrounding you as far as the eye can see.  So this photo was taken somewhere in that area.  In 1936, he was one of only two surviving veterans of the Civil War in Norton County, Kansas.

Dec. 18, 1890, document from the War Department for Samuel Phenice.

Though he was known as a Civil War Veteran for 70 years at that time, he only served for a short few months.  That’s because he was injured in the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864.  This document shows the exact dates of when he was injured and the hospitals he was admitted to.  He was a private in Company F of  the 57th Pennsylvania Volunteers.  He mustered in at New Brighton on Feb. 12, 1864.  Following that:

May 5 – received severe flesh wound to the thigh

May 24 – entered Carver General Hospital in Washington, DC, with gunshot wound

May 31 – transferred to Haddington in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

June 16/17 – entered General Hospital in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

October 8 – transferred to Invalids Corps

It doesn’t mention it in this document, but other sources show that he was in a field hospital between receiving the injury and entering Carver G. H. in Washington.  During that time it was taken over by Confederate forces and was unable to get adequate treatment.  He suffered from severe hunger and gangrene.  I’m not sure how long he was under medical care between the June and October dates.  I’ve also seen something that showed that he suffered from that injury most of his life.  It didn’t keep him from farming and homesteading in Nebraska.  He seemed to have an active life.

I’ll leave you with one of the many articles about Charles that I have found.  It concerns his activity while in the Invalid Corps.  He was assigned to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC.  and was there on the night of April 14, 1865.  Cue the curtain to rise for the performance of “Our American Cousin.”

Sioux City Journal on Feb. 21, 1938.

 

 

Passionate for Patureau

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I’ve been thinking about Patureau history this week, so I think it is appropriate to write about that line of my family this week.  It’s interesting that there have been a lot of family members who have been passionate about Patureau family history through the years.  When I was growing up, I knew about my grandmother being a Patureau and looking into family history.  Later on, I’d hear my dad talking family history and would refer to the Patureau Family Records.

In his papers about the family, those records were abbreviated as PFR.  I think they were mainly records that were gathered by my Mee Maw (Germaine Erie Patureau) and her sister Zita – Aint Zita to the family.  Or was it Aint Lorena?  (I just looked it up.  It was Aunt Lorena.)  It wasn’t until 2019 that I realized how much she had collected.  It must have been divided up in 1973 when Mee Maw died (her sister Lorena died in 1972).  But the cousins brought some of it back together and I took photos of them and have shared them on different blog posts.  The most recent thing I’ve shared was the death notice of Emma Landry Patureau, who was the wife of Ferdinand Patureau.  They were the forebears of all of the Patureau family in southern Louisiana.

I erroneously thought that she was the only one that was doing that kind of research in the Patureau family.  I’ve discovered quite a few more.  I suppose I’ll first mention those in my line – the line of Vincent Maximilian Patureau.  After Mee Maw and Lorena, there would be cousin Sis.  She is the daughter of their sister Marie Therese Patureau Schafer.  She has collected a lot of Patureau information through the years and has graciously shared it with me.  Two of the daughters of Sylvie Patureau – Melwyn and Patricia – were also interested in Patureau family history and lived in Plaquemine where the Patureau family first settled in the US.  Then there is Syvie’s son Rhett’s son Wade who has spent much time exploring the family history.  And then there’s me.

But it wasn’t just in our line.  Going back to Grampa Max’s generation, there was his younger sister Victorine Patureau Cropper (called “Aunt Beb” or “Aunt Vic” by family) who settled in Beaumont.  I just recently found out that she started collecting family history information back in the 1890s and continued until her death in 1937.  It was passed on to her daughter Kitty Rush.  Somehow, some or all of her research is now at a library in Beaumont, Texas.  I’d like to see that someday. (I saw it. It’s called the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Papers.)  Max’s sister Eliza had a son named Joseph Lawrence Dupuy and I’ve heard that he also was into Patureau genealogy.  Then there is Gary G. who is a grandson of Max’s brother Abel.  He has a family tree online that was very helpful when I first started looking at Patureau history more intensely.  He has a cousin named Suzi who also shares the passion for Patureau information.

And then there is the Leobon Patureau line.  His granddaughter Linda Cansler was instrumental in bringing together Patureau cousins in the 1990s for Patureau reunions at the home of Pat and Lora Patureau.  Linda collected lots of information and photos and I heard that she was going to write a book about the family.  I don’t think that happened and I recently found out that she passed away in 2019.  I don’t know how I missed hearing about her death.  I thought I was keeping up with the goings on of the Patureau family.  Obviously I do not know it all.  I know that Misty and Dana in that family line are interested in family history, but there could be many more.  There are so many cousins out there!

In the generation before Max and his siblings, there was his father Ferdinand and Ferdinand’s sister Anne Victorine Patureau Laulom.  Max went to visit these cousins in the Brownsville and Corpus Christie areas, but for the most part the families have lost touch.  I have found a couple of them who are interested in the Patureau family history.  I don’t think there is as much of a connection to the Patureau name after so many generations without the surname present. 

Death record for Marie Sicaud, wife of Antoine Patureau in 1794 in Palluaud, France.

And now I’m taking you back a few generations to the family of Pierre Patureau’s grandparents.  Pierre was born in 1800 in LaRoche-Chalais, France, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1840.  He died in 1860 and was buried in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  His father was Leobon Patureau (1768-1851), who was the son of Antoine Patureau and Marie Sicaud. 

Antoine and Marie were married Nov. 3, 1767, in Palluaud, France.  I posted their wedding record before.  It shows that Antoine was a surgeon at the time.  Nine months later Leobon was born.  That seems to be a tradition with the Patureau family.  Leobon was the first of at least eight children for Antoine and Marie.  Three of those children died as infants.

We know that Leobon has many descendants.  I know of at least a thousand from his grandson Pierre.  I would be surprised if any of his siblings had more than that.  But I do know that the next child after Leobon also has descendants.  His name was Francois Patureau Laborie (1769-1840).  The reason I know that is that one of his descendants (Nellie who lives in France) has a blog that she writes and sometimes she writes about her Patureau line.   She is a sixth cousin or so and she is interested in Patureau ancestry.  La passion!

Another interesting fact about this family is that the son Pierre Patureau (1774-1827) fought under Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th Century.  He took part in the Battle in Castel-Nuovo, Znaim, in 1809.  He was injured in both of his legs at some point and in 1814 he was awarded the Legion of Honor award.   Leobon must have been fond of his brother because he named his son after him.

One of the reasons for this post was that I just found the death record for Marie Sicaud from 1794.  She was only 64 when she died and her youngest children were just teenagers at the time.  Her son Leobon had gotten married to Jeanne Lanson in 1787 and started a family a year later.  Since Pierre was born in 1800, he never knew his Patureau grandmother.  Antoine died in 1802, so Pierre probably didn’t have any memory of him.  His Lanson grandparents had died in the 1780s, so he didn’t know them either.  He didn’t even have photos of them to see what they had looked like.  When I discover things like that, it makes me appreciate the time that I had with my own grandparents. 

So now we can return to modern day America.  But don’t forget about those we visited in the past.  You might want to think about Antoine and Marie next Wednesday.  November 3, 2021, will be the 254th anniversary of their marriage.  Oh, how the years go by.

Betty Lou in Grade Two

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Betty Lou Bucklin in 1940 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Here is a photo of my mom from 1940.  It is the second grade school photo from the 1940-41 school year when Betty Lou Bucklin was a student at Hathaway High School.  Was it called Hathaway High School even though you were going there in the second grade?  That just sounds weird.  But I’ve never heard it called anything but Hathaway High School.

I like this photo of her, but I always wonder why she wasn’t smiling.  She was halfway smiling in her first grade photo.  Now that I say that, I realize the same thing about my own first and second grade photos.  I was smiling in the first grade and not in the second.  I never really wondered why I wasn’t smiling, even though I have no idea why.  Is second grade a difficult year for people?  But then again, my mom wasn’t smiling in her photos for the next few school years .  Lately I haven’t minded, because they work much better for animated photos that freak people out.

My mom was a blond back then, as were her younger sisters.  I think she got that from the Hine line of her family.  Her father was Fred Bucklin.  Fred was the son of Addie May Hine.  The photos of Grandpa when he was a child showed that he had the blond hair as a child also.  He would have been called towheaded. Like most towheaded children, their hair darkens as they get older.  In other photos that I’ve posted, you can see that the trait was common with his Hine cousins as well.

When you look at old photos of Addie, you can see that her brothers had light hair as children and it got darker as they got older.  So I say that the trait has been passed down by the Hine line of the family.  But I guess it might have come from the Stanbrough side.  Addie’s parents were George Hine and Sue Stanbrough.  I only have photos of them as adults and I don’t have many photos of their siblings.  But I still tend to think that the trait came from our German Hine line.

Even though her hair got darker as she got older, my mom said that her hair would lighten when she would be out in the sun.  She had brown eyes, but they weren’t dark brown.  They were light brown and when she had highlights in her hair from the sun, people used to tell her that she had golden eyes.  I have to admit that I did edit this photo and one of the things I did was to lighten her eyes.  They looked so much darker than what I remember her eyes looking like.  So I think it reflects what she really looked like back then.  I hope you like it.

Jodie in 1970 – A First Date

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Jodie Landry circa 1970

I thought I’d write a story about my sister Jodie since today is her birthday.  She was born 68 years ago today, but only lived for 36 years.  When I realized that it was her birthday, I decided to write a post about her.  I then remembered this photo that I had worked on a few weeks ago.  It’s a fun photo of her from 1970 and it brings up so many memories for me.

It’s a photo of her playing the guitar in the den of our house at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana.  The guitar was my dad’s and it usually would hang on the back wall next to the ukulele that you can see behind her.  She’s sitting on a rattan chair that we had back then.  On the other side of the room was a matching couch.  In the middle of the room was the pool table, which you can see the edge of in the photo.

It was around this time that things were changing in the Landry household.  Before this time, the family consisted of Bob, Betty (nee Bucklin), Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van (me), and Jamie Landry.  We all lived together in a three bedroom house with one small bathroom.  Around this time we started to accept others into our circle.  Mainly I was thinking about Jodie’s boyfriend at the time.  She started dating him sometime around her junior year in high school.  I call this post “A First Date” because I remember her first date with him.  But I don’t think it was her first date ever.  Since her boyfriend at the time is still alive and I don’t have permission to identify him, I’ll just refer to him as FD (First Date).

Let me set up the scene.  Before this first date occurred with FD, there had been a thunderstorm or heavy rain in the area.  The only reason I know that is because of what happened when we had heavy rains on our street.  We had a ditch across the front of the yard and it would be full of water after a rain.  So I used to go out and play in the ditch and catch little crawfish.  I had two hard, clear plastic containers that we had gotten at Christmas time.  They were just the packaging for gyroscopes that Al and I had bought each other without the other one knowing about it.  They worked perfectly for keeping crawfish.  So I had a few crawfish in  the two containers and I left them at the end of the sidewalk at our house.  The sidewalk was from the front door to about six feet from the edge of the road.

This was on the day of the first date.  I must have known about it because Jodie was getting ready for it and we all knew what was going on in our house.  So FD came to our house to pick up Jodie.  He must have come in the house and talked to my parents.  Then he walked Jodie out of the house through the side door.  At least that’s what I picture now.  And then something got into me to say something encouraging to the departing couple.  So I opened the front door, leaned out, and shouted, “Y’all kiss!”

I never really knew what Jodie or FD thought about this.  I’m sure my sister was somewhat embarrassed that her bratty younger brother would do such a thing.  I probably thought it was funny at the time, and it still makes me laugh to this day.  Maybe it helped them break the ice if there was any ice occurring.  Funnily enough, it didn’t scare him away.  I would think it would be intimidating to meet a family of eight people who are a tight knit family that aren’t used to “intruders.”  Maybe he didn’t see it that way.  We weren’t scary people, after all.

Anyway, at the end of the first date I wasn’t there to grill them or inquire about details.  I was probably asleep in bed or something.  So I woke up the next morning and decided to go check up on my crawfish.  Can you imagine my disappointment when I discovered that they were gone?  Gone!  And the containers that they had been kept in were broken!  Why would someone do such a horrible thing to a young innocent boy in the small town of Jennings?  It was criminal!

I went and told my mom about it and she let me know that it wasn’t done maliciously.  When FD had brought Jodie home from their first date, he walked her from his car to the house on the sidewalk.  And we all know what was sitting at the end of the sidewalk – my crawfish.  He didn’t see them in the dark and stepped on them and sent my crawfish scattering.  At least that’s what I’ve always told myself.  I never looked too closely to see if there were any little carcasses from any injured crawfish trying to crawl to safety.   So the crawfish fled back to their little crawfish families and I got over the loss of their company.

So Jodie and FD started dating and I think he may have even taken this photo.  He was a guitar player and a singer, so he got along well with the rest of us.  I remember a lot of singing, fishing, and making ice cream with the family during that time.  It was the first step in the move to a wider family group.  They didn’t stay together, but it was the start of a change that led to brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, nieces, nephews, and more.

Mee Maw and Her Cousins

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Germain Erie Patureau in the center. Behind her is her sister Zita. On the left is her first cousin Joseph Earnest Cropper. On the right is Clifford Clements and I don’t know if he is a cousin. The boy sitting on the ground is a half cousin Henry Louis Landry. Photo taken in 1921.

I’ve been thinking of writing this post for about a month or so.  I was going to write it on Sept. 2, but then I changed my mind.  But this time I’m not going to let that happen.  Besides I’ve found some other information that will make the whole topic more interesting.  At least I think so.  This photo is a photo of my grandmother with some of her cousins.  Not the cousins I plan to talk about in this post, but they do represent her cousins.  I’ve used this photo before, but it’s one worth reusing.  I thought it fit with the theme.

The topic is about step-families.  Or I guess in this case it’s about about a step-grandfather, half cousins, and step cousins.  I notice that in my writings I tend to discount step-family members.  And I also have a tendency to overlook half siblings.  I’ve tried to remedy that because sometimes you can find lots of family information from everyone connected to your ancestors.  I think I do this because I grew up in a nuclear family that didn’t have a nuclear explosion.  We stayed together and I never had any step family or half siblings.

But in my paternal grandmother Mee Maw’s case, a step grandfather was the only grandfather she ever knew.  Mee Maw was born in 1895 with the name Germaine Erie Patureau given to her by her parents Vincent Maximilian Patureau and Marie Therese Landry.  Max Patureau’s father Ferdinand died in 1877 as a result of a sawmill accident.  I wrote about that in a previous post.  I recently wrote about Max’s mother dying in 1892.  Marie Therese’s father Trasimond Landry died in 1879 as a result of yellow fever.

So when Erie was born, her maternal grandmother Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin was her only living grandparent.  And she had been remarried since April of 1880 to Pierre Magloire “Mack” Babin.  That’s why she was always known as Mrs. P. M. Babin.  So for all practical purposes, Mack Babin was Erie’s grandfather.  They were all very close.  In the early 1900s Max and Mack went in together as owners of a general store in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  I’ve written about that previously as well.  How did I write all of these stories and never realize the connections before?  I probably should have titled this post “Mack Babin Was Mee Maw’s Grandfather.”

June 11, 1923, The Daily Advertiser newspaper from Lafayette, Louisiana. This talks about some visitors to the V. M. Patureau household.

But the reason I didn’t call it that has to do with some things I just discovered this past weekend.  I had saved several clippings from newspapers a couple of years ago.  I was looking through some of them and came across this one.  I noticed that the first four little blurbs on the page are about the V. M. Patureau family – Grampa Max and his children.  Zita (she is in the first photo I posted) and Therese are mentioned, as well as Lidwin, Sylvia, and Emma (Mrs. A. J. Mouton).

But they also mention cousins of the family – S. J. Babin and Edward Bourg.  There are Babin and Bourg cousins all over the place in my family tree, but when I searched for those names I didn’t find anything.  With my growing awareness of the family of Mack Babin being the family of my grandmother, I decided to find out more about the branches of this particular Babin family.

It didn’t take me long to find a Schley Joseph Babin and a Louis Edward Bourg who were the same ages as Therese and Erie Patureau, respectively.  They were grandchildren of Mack Babin’s siblings.  So technically they were step second cousins, but to Mee Maw and her sisters they were just cousins that they motored to Baton Rouge with.  Although technically they didn’t all go to Baton Rouge.  It was only Zita and Therese that went to Baton Rouge with their cousins.  Emma, Lidwin, and Sylvia went to Lake Charles, presumably to visit their sister Erie.

I found those cousins names with the help of a family tree on Ancestry.  It wasn’t just anyone’s tree, though.  It was the tree of my step fourth cousin.  That’s right, she was the granddaughter of Edward Bourg.  When I was looking at her tree, I decided to click on the name of the owner of the tree.  When you do that on Ancestry and you have taken a DNA test, it will show you if you are a DNA match to that person.  I know that most step fourth cousins don’t have any common DNA.  Step siblings don’t usually share DNA.  But I noticed lots of Cajun surnames in her tree that are in our tree, so I had to check.  And sure enough, we share common DNA.  She also shares common DNA with my cousin (and godmother) and my dad’s cousin Sis who is the daughter of Therese Patureau.

So Mee Maw wasn’t just step cousins to Edward and S. J., they were really cousins with matching DNA.  But more importantly, they were family.   And everybody that knew my Mee Maw knew that family was important to her.  Mee Maw loved her family and we loved her back.

Addie and Her Children Circa 1949

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I have a few photos of my great grandmother Addie with her children.  I don’t have a really good one of them, but I’m still surprised that I’ve never posted one of them.  I did post one of her surrounded by her children at the grave of her husband Lou, but that was more about his death.  There is nothing cheerful about it.  And rightfully so.

Addie Bucklin and some of her children circa 1949 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Not that this photo is so cheerful.  But it’s a decent photo of Addie with some of her children.  So let me tell you more about Addie.  She was born Addie May Hine on Sept. 23, 1876, in Noblesville, Indiana.  She moved with her family to Louisiana in 1894 when she was 18.  

I think she may have done odd jobs to get spending money, because she ended up helping Mrs. Mary Ann Bucklin (born McGrath) with chores around her house.  Mrs. Bucklin’s youngest son by the name of Louis Charles was a few years older than Addie and they became fond of one another.  They ended up getting married on June 12, 1898.  They are my mom’s paternal grandparents.

Addie and Lou ended up having twelve children together.  Their fourth child Paul was born in 1903, but lived a short life.  Their fifth child Carl was deaf and may have had some other disability and he didn’t show up in many photos.  Their 10th child was Robert and he died in 1944 when he was almost 33.  I think this photo was taken after that point.  Louis died in 1927.

So I’m thinking that this photo was taken around 1949.  It looks semi-posed and everyone was trying to deal with the wind and the sun.  On the far left in the billowing white dress is Edna Bucklin Keys.  She was the ninth child and the middle daughter.  Next to her is Ralph Bucklin.  He was the third child, yet the first one to have a child of his own.  The next person in the photo is great grandma Addie.  If I have the date correct, she would be about 73 years old in this photo.  I remember Mama talking about her having dark hair even when she was elderly.  Behind Addie may be her son Fred Bucklin, my grandfather.  It’s difficult to tell from this small, somewhat blurry photo.  He and his twin brother Clarence were the seventh and eighth children of Addie. 

The next person in the photo is Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  She and her twin Roy are the last two children.  Roy is standing next to her.  Or is that Leo?  Or is that Leo standing between and behind them?  Or is that one Clarence?  One of the brothers is missing and I’m not sure which one it is.  Maybe this is why I don’t post photos of Grandpa and his brothers.  It’s bad enough that he has an identical twin and I can’t tell them apart.  I do know that the brother on the far right is Herbert.  He was the sixth child of Addie and the middle son.

There.  I’m done.  I think the wind got in my eyes.  That’s what I’m blaming my confusion on.  Or maybe it was the sun.  Again, I am relying on cousins to help me out with the identities on the uncles in question.  Thanks in advance.

Feb. 25, 2023 Update

Boy, I don’t know what was going on when I wrote that post.  I completely overlooked one of Addie’s daughters in the post.  The weird thing is that I’ve never noticed it before now, and neither has anyone else.  Let that be a lesson in genealogy.  Sometimes you overlook things, but it is never too late to go back and make a correction or two.  And don’t ever let it stop you from trying.  

So the photo of Addie May Hine Bucklin with her children include, from left to right:  Edna Bucklin Keys, Ralph Bucklin, Addie, Fred Bucklin, Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus, Mary Bucklin Phenice, Clarence Bucklin, Roy Bucklin, and Herbert Bucklin.  And the photo was not taken in 1949, it was taken in September of 1948 at the celebration of Addie’s 72nd birthday.

Thanks to Carla Bucklin Lafleur for her input on the Bucklin sisters.  

Mee Maw Enjoying Her Grandchildren

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I was planning on posting a different photo today.  I had thought that I would follow up on a topic that I started a while back.  I was thinking I would post a photo of Mee Maw giving one of her grandchildren a haircut.  I posted a photo of my other grandmother cutting someone’s hair a while back and thought I’d show off Mee Maw’s skills as well.  But when I was going through the photos to find that other photo, I found this one.  I tried to be disciplined, so I found the photo of the hair-styling session.  But it didn’t speak to me. 

My paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry was known by her grandchildren as Mee Maw. Her she is with some of her grandchildren around 1956.

But this one did.  So that’s what I’m going with.  It’s a photo from the Secret Collection.  I estimate it to be from around 1956 based on the apparent ages of the cousins that I can recognize.   One of the main reasons I posted this photo is because of the nice smile on Mee Maw’s face.  She looks so happy to be surrounded by all of her young grandchildren and their friends.  It looks to be somebody’s birthday party.

I can’t even tell whose birthday party it might be.  My cousin Douglas Winn is in the center at the front of the table.  Since the photo came from his family, it’s highly likely that it was his birthday.  Yet the cake (I think that is a cake!) is front of another cousin Mark Reeves on the left with the blonde hair.  He is also under the festive balloons.   Whatever the occasion, it looks like they are having a wonderful time.

Cousin Hubey Landry is on the left in the doorway.  He’s got a big smile.  Of course reigning over all of the cousins is the First.  She had to stand on a chair to make sure her prominence was unmistakable!  That would be my cousin and godmother Shirley Landry (now Shaw) with her hands firmly planted on her hips.  That other girl looks like she’s trying to garner some of the attention with a sassy and flamboyant stance.  This might be cousin Daphne Winn (now Morton), though I don’t associate that attitude with her.  It looks like a Paula Raley attitude, but this was way before her time and it doesn’t look like her.

The other cousin that I can identify is Dennis Landry who is sitting in the welcoming lap of our dear Mee Maw.  Wasn’t he the fortunate one!  I know that some of the other children in the photo are definitely friends, though there may be another cousin or two in there.  Is that Patricia Duffy (now Rauser) next to Mark?  I’m sure I’ll get some more information from the First or another of my cousins.  They help us young ones in our quest for older family history.

Sept. 24, 2021 – Follow-up

Two more cousins have been identified with the help of the cousins.  The two children on the left edge of the photo are Daphne Winn and Kenny Landry.  It also was agreed that the event is most likely Douglas Winn’s birthday party.

The Landrys at Hodges Gardens in 1967

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One of my sister Jodie’s good friends from back in the day shared an old photo that I had posted a few years ago.  It was a photo from 1967 of the Northside Jr. High School band party that my dad held at our house every year.  Those were lots of fun when we were young and we could hang around all those older kids.  My mom would make cookies and other snacks, and there were games to play and people to talk to.  The picture from 1967 was really good, but I had cleaned it up and enhanced it since I had originally posted it.  So I went back to my 1960s photo folder and found the new and improved version and shared it.

Jodie, Karen, Al, Rob, Van, and Jamie Landry at Hodges Gardens (south of Many, Louisiana) in May of 1967.

But when I was looking for that band party photo, I came across this photo from the same year.  I had cleaned it up and enhanced it around the same time.  It’s such a great photo of the Landry kids when we really were kids.  And it’s in living color.

Now let me tell you who we all are.  First off, we were the six children of Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Starting on the left, we have Jodie who was the oldest.  She had just become a teenager the past October.  She would be starting high school at Jennings High School later in the year.  Next in the photo is Karen, who is the only one out of order as related to birth order.  She was the third child and younger than Rob, my oldest brother.  He’s the tallest one in the photo, but he didn’t stay the tallest for much longer.  You can see his face even though Al is standing in front of him.  That would change.  Al ended up being the tallest of us all (including our father).

And next in line is me.  My name is Van and I’m the cute little boy in front with the striped shirt.  When I was this age, my mom always said that I was supposed to end up being the tallest.  It was some scientific truth or something.  They measure children at birth and compare it to their size at two years old and then predict their ultimate height.  I was supposed to be 6’4″ tall.  I never liked the sound of that, so I decided to stop at 6’0″.  And I did.  Mind over science wins every time!  I never minded that I was the shortest brother.  Plus I knew that Rob wouldn’t have been happy if both of his younger brothers would look down on him.  It’s the least that I could do.

The Landry kids standing in front of the Country Squire car. It was the perfect car for a family of eight. My mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car.

Speaking of not being happy, that brings us to Jamie.  She looks a bit sad.  This must have been her blue period.  It started the previous Christmas and looks to have continued to this point.  Looking at subsequent photos, she seems to have recovered. But she looks unhappy in both of the photos.  She was the youngest of the six kids and there was less than nine years separating Jodie and Jamie.

I had to post this second photo because it has the old wood-panel station wagon that we had during this period.  Even though my mom is shown in the driver’s seat, she wasn’t the one driving.  She didn’t learn to drive until she was 36, which was about two years later.  I remember sitting in the back seat of that car with Jamie when a woman named Mrs. Langley taught my mom to drive.

These photos were taken at Hodges Gardens.  I always remembered it being in Many, Louisiana.  I looked it up and it is actually in Sabine Parish about 15 miles south of Many.  There were lots of rose bushes and other flowering plants on the grounds.  It was closed a few years ago after spending a few years as a state park.

But our family went there when it was a relatively new place with lots of flowers around.  Good memories.

A Happy Story About Joe Bucklin

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Kat and the Hat

That’s right.  Today I’m writing a happy story about Joe Bucklin.   Joe was the brother of my great grandfather Louis Charles Bucklin.  Two of Louis’s sons were Fred and Roy Bucklin.  Fred had a daughter named Betty Lou, who was born on May 20th.  Roy had a daughter named Jeannette, who was also born on May 20th.  My mom was Betty Lou and she was several years older than Jeannette, who was the mother of Kristi.

Kristi is the reason for this happy story of Joe Bucklin.  She has a friend – a friend named Kat – and Kat had a hat.  It wasn’t just any old hat.  Well, it was an old hat.  It was a very old hat.  And Kat had the hat, but she didn’t remember how she came across the hat.  The hat was interesting, because it had a name in the hat that reminded Kat of Kristi.  She knew that Kristi’s mother was a Bucklin.  Likewise, the name in the hat of the friend whose name was Kat was that.

What am I doing?  This story’s getting twisty, so let’s get back to Kristi.  Kristi heard from Kat about the hat.  She was wondering if she knew her history to possibly solve this mystery.  She wondered if Kristi knew who J. C. Bucklin was and if she had ever seen the hat.  Kristi didn’t have a clue, so she asked the son of Betty Lou.

Joe Bucklin with his hat circa 1909 in Jennings, Louisiana.

I recognized the name and the hat immediately.  I was so excited to see it.  Of course it was Joseph C. Bucklin!  He always looked so dapper in that old hat.  Of course, it wasn’t an old hat when Joe wore it.  It was probably very stylish.  He and his brother Edd had a clothing store in downtown Jennings, Louisiana, in the early 1900s called Bucklin Bros.  One of the things that he sold in the store was Stetson hats.  You can see that listed in this article from 1912 in the Jennings newspaper.

Bucklin Bros. of Jennings, Louisiana, in 1912. From the Jennings Daily Times Record of Sept. 21, 1912.

I was excited to find this photo of the interior of Bucklin Bros. store from over 100 years ago.  I had seen a version of it previously and all it showed was a big blob of black.  This is much better.  There are lots of shelves and display cases for those Bucklin brothers to display their merchandise.  Uncle Joe and Uncle Edd had it going on for a while there.  And to think that a piece of that history has survived until now.

I wish I knew the story of the hat.  And how Kat found the hat.  Joe moved from Jennings a few years later with his third wife.  She had been a milliner.  How about that?  She sold women’s hats.  They moved to Florida in 1915.  I found another newspaper article that published a letter he wrote that said he had settled in his new home on January 11th of that year.  I wonder how that hat made its way back to the Jennings area?  It wasn’t a family member that had possession of it all those years.

It was a woman named Kat that had the hat.  As a matter of fact, I’ve told you that.  You also know that it belonged to Joe,  an uncle of mine, to Lou he was Bro.  But now that hat has a new place to be:  Kristi is posting a package for me!

 

 

 

I’ve previously written two sad stories about Joe Bucklin.  There are lots of tragedies in his life and those stories are not as lighthearted as this one is.

A Very Sad Story

The Sad History Surrounding Joe Bucklin

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