Author: Van

A Dash at the Bash

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I really like this old photo.  It was probably not something that was cherished, however.  It is a bit of a blurry photo.  I think it came from my second cousin Joseph Connors (his maternal grandfather Herbert Bucklin was the brother of my maternal grandfather Fred).  He found an envelope of old negatives from a special event back in the 1920s.

Oct. 3, 1926 – Grandma Sue with her family at her birthday bash.

The special event was Grandma Sue (Susan G. Stanbrough Hine, maternal grandmother of Herbert and Fred) and her good friend Jennie’s (Edessa Jane Welton Havenar, grandmother of our Keys family historian Edith Keys Segraves) joint birthday celebration.  They both had an October 3 birthday and they celebrated together with a joint celebration for at least 20 years.  I know that because there was a newspaper article about that big celebration in 1926.  There were lots of photos taken of family and friends.

You’ve already seen some of the large group photos of most of the attendees because Joseph and I have shared them previously.  Then there were a few pictures of Grandma Sue with her children and grandchildren.  And then there’s this photo.  It might have been a throwaway photo that only survived because the negatives were grouped together.

But I like the photo.  It’s a photo of the family and it includes Grandma Sue, her daughter Addie (my great grandmother), some of her sons, grandsons, and granddaughters.  The fun thing about the photo is its defect.  It’s either a double exposure with the second exposure being a long one, or it was a long exposure and people didn’t realize it.  Because you can see one of the granddaughters in two places.  You can see that she was initially standing in beside Grandma Sue and then she must have made a mad dash to get to somewhere else.

You can also see one of the Hine men (a brother of Addie) on the right is turning around to look toward the men who are talking in front of their sporty new cars.  Another granddaughter on the left with a Y type collar can be seen walking away to the left.  You can just make out some of the feet of people who have moved forward after the first exposure (or after the initial exposure.)

Meanwhile it looks like Grandma Sue hasn’t moved a bit.  It was her 75th birthday celebration after all.  She might have slowed down a little at that point.  So the picture captures more than just a split second from that day.  It captures some of the movement as well.  It’s the closest thing we have to a video or Live photo from back then.

Article from the Jennings Daily Times Record from Dec. 12, 1906

I thought I would also share an article I found that relates to this annual birthday celebration.  This is part of page 8 of the Jennings Daily Times Record from Dec. 12, 1906.  They are giving the news from the Raymond area.  The first few articles are about people I don’t know nor recognize any names.  Then there is a little blurb about some of the Hine family visiting in Jennings.

After that is some information about the weather and how it affects the farmers of the area.  It’s interesting to see what they wrote in the papers back then.  I’m glad they did, because I have been able to find some interesting articles about my family.  Like the next part of the column.

It talks about the goings on of the birthday celebration in 1906, back when Grandma Sue was just 55 years old.  Younger than I am now.  Even though the main course was oysters, which I don’t really care for, I’m sure there were other tasty items on the menu that I could have enjoyed.  It’s obvious that people were having a good time.  I suppose this was the first celebration and it was such a hit that they decided to continue with it.

I do enjoy these old photos and articles about my family.  It makes them much more personable to me.  And the photos from the birthday celebration are great because so many family members were in attendance.  Not just my Hine family, but the Bucklin, Keys, and Phenice ones as well.  A veritable family smorgasbord.

Patureau Passings

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I heard some sad news yesterday relating to the Patureau extended family.  My dad’s first cousin died.  Melwyn Mary Marionneaux Barker (1930-2018) was the daughter of Sylvie Albine Patureau Marionneaux (1903-1962).  My dad Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. was the son of Sylvie’s sister Germaine Erie Patureau Landry (1895-1973).  Sylvie and Erie were the daughters of Vincent Maximilian “Grampa Max” Patureau (1865-1935).  Melwyn was one of the sweetest people that I have ever met.  She always had such a welcoming smile and demeanor.  I’ll miss seeing her at the Plaquemine cousin events.

The other sad thing that happened relates to a sibling of Grampa Max.  Max had an older brother named Leobon (1851-1928).  I posted a photo of the two brothers a while back.  Leobon had a son named Charles Allen Patureau (1887-1956) and on the day before Melwyn died, a son of Allen named Edward Andrew “Ned” Patureau (1933-2018) passed away as well.  He was my dad and Melwyn’s second cousin, and he seemed like a kind and gentle person.  I have read some remembrances of him that make me think he was a genuinely good person.

Ferdinand Pierre Patureau and Marie Emma Landry Patureau’s family circa 1864.

So in honor of these two wonderful people who were second cousins to each other, I’m posting a Patureau family treasure.  It’s the oldest photo that I have of the Patureau family.  It’s a photo of Max and Leobon’s Patureau family in about 1864.  Their parents were Ferdinand Pierre Patureau (1827-1877) and Marie Emma Landry Patureau (1829-1892).  This is the only photo of Emma Patureau that I know of.

It’s not the best of photos, but it’s better than nothing.  It’s actually a scan of a Xerox copy that my dad had.  I don’t know where it came from, but I’m on the lookout for a better copy. (Hooray! The original has survived and it is in a collection in Beaumont, Texas.  In case you were wondering, you are not seeing the terrible Xerox copy, you’re seeing the new improved photo. Updated 1/16/2022) That’s why I put off using the photo before.  But for this occasion I thought I’d share it.  I did work on Emma’s face and the background a little, but it is a rough photo to work with. (Here is an improved version from the original that I found.)

Let me tell you a little bit (or maybe a lot!) about this family.  Emma and Ferdinand were married on Feb. 10, 1847, and she gave birth to their 16 children over a 25 year period.  Doesn’t that sound fun?!  Their first child was Elizabeth Zulma Patureau (1848-1924) who was never married.  I believe she is the older girl in the back on the right of this photo.  I have another photo of her that looks like this.  The next daughter to be born was the other older girl on the left.  Her name was Marie Aline Patureau (1849-1946) and she later married Joseph Omer Hebert.  Their son was one of the banjo players (Ferdinand Hebert) in a previous post.

The next child born was Leobon.  He is the young man standing proudly in front of his father in this photo.  This is a really big family line on its own.  Leobon and his wife Amelia Hebert (sister of Marie Aline’s husband Joseph Omer Hebert) had twelve children, including Marie Caroline Patureau Wilkinson (I posted a photo of her two weeks ago).  Since it was just two weeks ago that I talked about that DNA connection, I won’t mention all of the other DNA matches that I’ve found from this line of Patureau kin.

After Leobon came a daughter named Marie Valentine in 1853.  She lived for just over a year, so did not survive to be in this photo.  Elizabeth Palmire Patureau (1855-1870) was the next one born.  I think she is the young girl standing in the front on the right.  She is in the photo, but only lived for another six years or so.  She died at the age of 14.  After her there was an infant son that was born and died somewhere around 1856 or 1857.  Then in 1857 Mary Zelica Patureau (d. 1925) was born.  She is most likely the young girl in the front on the left.  She first married Roger Allain, but after his death she married Louis Hebert, the brother of Amelia and Joseph Omer.

The next child born was Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, Jr.  He was born in 1858 and only lived for two years.  If you are counting, that would make 8 births in 10 years (only halfway through the children) with 5 children making it past two years in age.  Modern medicine has cut down on infant mortality.  For the most part, we are better off than most of our ancestors in this respect.  This brings us to the next two children who also had short lives.

Anne Emma Patureau was born in 1860 and she survived to be in this photo.  She is the youngest girl standing next to her older brother Leobon.  She looks to be 3 or 4 years old in this photo and she only lives to be about 13 years old. The next child born was Joseph Onesime Patureau who was born in early 1862 and died about six months later.  Next came Rose Elisa Patureau (1863-1940) who lived to the respectable age of 76.  She was married to Hypolite Victor Dupuy and they had three sons and a daughter together.  She was the last child born to Ferdinand and Emma when this photo was taken.  She is the little girl in her mother Emma’s arms.

The date of this photo was determined based on the approximate ages of the children, their sexes, birth order, and how long they lived.  With the number of children increasing and decreasing through the years, the date of 1864 is the only year that seems to fit with the details of the family in the photo.  My only disappointment with the photo is that it was taken just about a year before Grampa Max was born.  I know that he was born in Mexico and I’m not sure when they moved there.  So I’m also not sure if the photo was taken in Louisiana or Mexico. (The back of the original photo I saw in 2021 shows that it was made in New Orleans, Louisiana.)

As you can figure, Vincent Maximilian was born in 1865, followed by Pierre Oscar in 1866 (-1926).  He was married to a Domitille Dupuy.  I’m sure she was related somehow to Elisa’s Hypolite, but I don’t know how closely they were related.  A lot of the information on this family line came from a DNA match at 23andMe, including a sad story that I may share with you all one day. (Here it is: Unnatural Patureau Deaths.)  After Pierre Oscar came Joseph Alcide (1868-1919), another sibling that never married.

I know you’ve been wondering when this next one would show up.  “Where is that other banjo playing Patureau?” you wanted to know.  Well here he is.  Abel Omer Patureau (1870-1917) was a member of Kelly’s String Band and was married to Eunice Constance Pefferkorn.  They had eleven children and their family group is quite large, with many living in southern Louisiana.

And finally we come to the baby of the family.  Marie Victorine (1873-1937) was married to William Albert Cropper and they had a dozen children.  They must have been competing to see who could have the most children.  I never stopped to count how many grandchildren that Ferdinand and Emma had, but I’m sure it’s a rather large number.  Victorine’s family lived in Beaumont, Texas, and a lot of the family still lives in that area.

So there it is.  The family that led to all of the Patureau descendants in southern Louisiana, including our very own Melwyn Barker and Ned Patureau.  Here’s to these two wonderful people.  May we live up to the excellent examples their lives exemplified.

An Orthographic Centennial

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“What is he writing about this time?” you may be asking yourself.  Even if I had mentioned to you what I was writing about this week, you might think that I had changed my mind.  (Or that I’m out of my mind.  Your pick.)  Last week my sister Jamie suggested the topic for this week’s post.  She said that since it was one hundred years since my maternal grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice received a certificate to acknowledge her superior spelling skills, I might consider writing about that.  So I agreed.  Thus the title.

I like to have an interesting title to my posts, which I hope none of you find surprising. Otherwise I have failed miserably!  So I thought I would find a synonym for the word “spelling.”  The word that came up was “orthography.”  Orthography means “the conventional spelling system of a language.”  But I used the adjective form of the word.  In my line of work (drafting or technical drawing), the word “orthographic” has a different meaning.  It is defined as “a method of projection in which an object is depicted or a surface mapped using parallel lines to project its shape onto a plane.”  As you can tell, it is a very different meaning.

So the word has a double meaning.  And hopefully I used the adjective form of the word accurately for the title.  Because it’s supposed to mean a century full of words spelled correctly.  Wasn’t that interesting?  Aren’t words fun?  I think so, and I think my grandmother felt the same way.  She was a stickler for spelling words correctly and speaking with the proper grammar.

April 1918 – My grandmother Myrtle Phenice received recognition for her spelling prowess.

It started early for her, because one hundred years ago she was only eleven years old when she participated in the State Spelling Test.  The test occurred in March, but she didn’t receive her certificate until April.  I’m sure she was very proud of this accomplishment, otherwise we wouldn’t be looking at this old piece of paper.

And if you read it, you’ll see that she spelled five hundred words correctly.  I don’t think I ever had a spelling test with five hundred words on it.  How did they do that?  Pronounce 500 words for a large group of students while making sure that they all heard it pronounced accurately?  That sounds like a monumental task in itself!  It does say that the test was on March 28th and 29th, so I suppose it was spread out over two days.  She was in the second or third grade, so she must have been well-behaved as well.

1920 – Myrtle Phenice at it again.

As you can see from this second document, she repeated the feat two years later.  This time it was only 100 words and just one day.  But she got them all correct again!  That’s an accomplishment.

I wonder if there is a spelling gene?  A few markers in the chromosomes of people who are good spellers?  If there is, I think I got it.  I have always been a good speller, if I may say so myself.  I was looking through some old documents the other day and came across my old report cards.  I always thought that math and science were my strong subjects, but it was spelling that was the only subject I only made As in.  I don’t have any certificates to prove my point, though.

My niece Kelli is an excellent speller like her great grandmother.  She won a district spelling bee when she was in the third grade. (Let’s hear three cheers for Kelli!!!)  When I went to the Keys family reunion last summer, the topic of spelling came up.  It’s funny to hear that other family members are sticklers for incorrect spelling and grammar as well.  It’s that old question of nature vs. nurture.

Grandma was a teacher after all and I’m sure she wanted her progeny to be the best spellers they can be!  Her sisters were also teachers with the same proclivity.  So don’t disappoint them: lets irradicate mispelled words!

 

Marie Carmelite Revisited

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Two weeks ago my post was about my great great grandmother Marie Carmelite Hebert Landry.  Since I wrote that post, I received my DNA test results at AncestryDNA.com.  I really wasn’t expecting much there because I had tested at 23andMe previously and all of the Cajun DNA from cousins marrying cousins is very confusing.  I found a few Patureau and Landry 2nd and 3rd cousins, which was interesting.  Then I came across a DNA match who was a Wilkinson.

Marie Patureau Wilkinson and her first cousin Germaine Erie Patureau Landry in the early 1960s.

I recognize that name Wilkinson because I have a photo of our dear beloved Mee Maw (paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry) with her first cousin Marie Caroline Patureau Wilkinson.

I didn’t do much research into the Wilkinson line when I first saw that Marie had married a Wilkinson, but then I found another Wilkinson connection to the family.  Our cousins Byron and Dana Patureau, son and daughter of Elmo “Pat” Patureau, had a grandmother who was a Wilkinson.  When I discovered that, I was interested to see if I could find a connection between the two Wilkinsons marrying into the Patureau line.

Come to find out, Marie’s husband William was the first cousin of Pat’s mother Geraldine.  William Wilkinson, Jr. was the son of William Wilkinson, Sr and Emily Rivet.  Geraldine was the daughter of William, Sr.’s brother Herman Wilkinson.  I was glad to be able to find a connection at that time.  And then along comes a DNA match with a Wilkinson at Ancestry.

So my first thought was that this match would be a descendant of Marie.  I think I sent a message to her son at some point when I found his family tree online.  I never heard anything back.  But I knew what his family tree looked like, and the Wilkinson DNA match did not have the same tree.  The thing that really struck me at first was that the common ancestors were identified as Diego Hernandez and Anne Theotiste Babin.  Remember them?  Of course you do.  Diego was the grandfather of our little Marie Carmelite.  His daughter Marie Marthe married Simon Hebert in 1800, they had Marie Carmelite in 1802, and Simon died a few months later.

Marie Marthe then married Pierre Rivet, and they had three sons together.  I reported that the three sons had died as infants, but that I hoped that my information was wrong.  Well, when I looked at my Wilkinson DNA match closer, I realized that the actual common ancestor was Marie Marthe Hernandez. (They had her listed as Marie Marthe Marca Hernandez.)  And they showed that they descend from her second marriage to Pierre Rivet!  (I’m referring to my DNA match as ‘they’ because I later found that another sibling is a DNA match to me as well.)

Emily Rivet Wilkinson on the left. Her mother-in-law Frances Johnson Wilkinson is on the right and she is holding Emily’s son Joseph B. Wilkinson. Circa 1904

So Marie Marthe’s third son Auguste Rivet did not die as an infant.  His full name was Auguste Valmond Rivet and he lived long enough to have four children of his own.  So our Marie Carmelite had a brother that survived to adulthood, and she was aunt to his children.  That’s nice to hear after the many tragedies in her early life.

Auguste Valmond’s second son was Joseph Premelia Rivet and he married Marie Amanda Landry (his second cousin through Diego Hernandez!).  They had a daughter name Mary Emily Rivet.  And when little Emily grew up, she married a Wilkinson.

I know you saw that coming.  I already mentioned Emily Rivet marrying William Wilkinson, Sr. earlier on in this post.  So come to find out, Mee Maw’s paternal first cousin Marie Patureau married Mee Maw’s maternal half third cousin William Wilkinson, Jr.  I wonder if she was aware of that?  She might have been because she was into family history and family connections.  I know her brother Vincent would pick her up in Lake Charles and they would visit cousins in New Orleans, which is where Marie lived.

One of the fun things about this discovery was the old photo of Emily with her son and mother-in-law from 1904.  And since Emily’s brother-in-law was Herman Wilkinson, she is not an ancestor of Byron and Dana (and others in the line of Elmo Leobon Patureau, Sr. and Geraldine Wilkinson) and neither is Marie Marthe.  But Frances Johnson Wilkinson is.  The woman in the old photo holding the little boy is their great great grandmother.

Since this family line (and DNA match) comes from Mee Maw’s Landry side of the family, it is also in Pee Paw’s line as well.  No wonder we have common DNA with them; we got a double dose of it.  But since they are half cousins, that should reduce the amount of DNA that we would have in common.  I will leave it up to you to determine the relationships involved and what the expected amount of DNA in common should be.  Get your calculators out and have a few aspirins ready!

Grandma Myrtle the Aviatrix

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My grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin in June of 1963 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

This is Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  Aviatrix supreme.  Flying ace of the Phenice flock.  Not really.  I just like this whimsical looking photo of my mom’s mom.  I always thought my Grandma Bucklin had a humorous streak and this photo proves it.  Not that she didn’t have a stern streak, also.  Many of her former students have attested to that claim.  But this photo of her is a favorite of mine because of a few things.

It reminds me of the days when I was really young.  We would drive out to the country and visit my grandparents (and sometimes our cousins) in Hathaway, Louisiana.  That area is prairie land and has been since my ancestors homesteaded there in the latter part of the 19th century.  It’s very flat with not many trees around.  You could see the line of rain coming from out in the distance.  The haze of the sky in this picture reminds me of that.

Some of my earliest memories of going to their house out in the country has to do with airplanes.  My Uncle Austin has always had a fascination with airplanes.  His room had model airplanes hanging from strings.  I don’t know if he was there at the time or if he had moved away and was traveling the globe, but I definitely remember his room.  And I’m sure that’s where the plane in this photo came from.  I would assume that the goggles came from there as well.  Uncle Austin now lives in the War Vets home in Jennings and there are airplanes hanging from the ceiling of the hallway to his room.  It so reminds me of my memory of his room back then.

But the best part of this photo is the whimsical smile on Grandma’s face.  With a tilt of her head and her sassy stance, it makes for a charming photo.  I’m not really sure what she is doing with the plane.  I can just imagine her shouting “Prepare for takeoff!” followed by her hearty laugh.  She’d give that plane a good heave into the sky.  Then a prairie wind would carry it away as we’d sit by and admire it flying and looping through the air.

After a moment of being mesmerized by the spectacle, we’d ask Grandma how she did that.  But she wouldn’t be anywhere we could see.  How could that be?  We could still hear her laugh echoing through the sky!  But then we’d realize that it wasn’t an echo, it was Grandma flying around in that plane and laughing.  As she’d fly over us, she’d smile down at us and shout, “Let your imaginations soar!”  She’d disappear in the distance with her laughter drifting back down to us.

Marie Carmelite’s Story

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My dad Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.’s family tree showing his paternal great grandmother Marie Carmelite Hebert.

Marie Carmelite Hebert was born on February 3, 1802, in Brusly, Louisiana.  Her parents were Simon Hebert, 24, and Marie Marthe Hernandez Hebert, 21.  This was during Spanish rule of Louisiana and Brusly was a small town on the west bank of the Mississippi River in what is now known as West Baton Rouge Parish.

Though Simon and Marie Marthe look like they might not be related since their last names are Hebert and Hernandez, they are in fact related.  They were third cousins through their common Acadian great great grandparents Anthony LeBlanc and Marie Bourgeois.  They also have common Landry, Dupuis, and Babin lines.  Marie Marthe, though, was the daughter of Diego Hernandez, who was seemingly Spanish.  His ancestry is not known.  Her mother was Theotiste Babin, an Acadian Exile.

On April 17, 1802, Simon Hebert died.  This left young Marie Marthe a widow with a two and a half month old daughter.  There are court documents that discuss Simon’s inheritance and the guardianship of Marie Carmelite.  Her paternal grandfather Pierre Hebert was named guardian.  On March 5, 1806, Pierre appears in court and relinquishes guardianship and passes the responsibility over to his son Ely Hebert.  Pierre then dies sometime within the next ten days.

I’m not really sure why Marie Carmelite needed a guardian since her mother Marie Marthe was alive during that time.  In an 1803 court record it shows that Marie Marthe received her own share of her husband’s property and that Pierre Hebert received Marie Carmelite’s share since he was the guardian.  I don’t know the dynamics of the relationships nor am I familiar with all of the Spanish laws that were in effect at the time, but it sounds like it could be a difficult time for the young mother and her daughter.

Marie Marthe then married Pierre Rivet in 1807.  Her brother was also married to a Rivet.  Marie’s brother was married to Pierre’s sister.  Marie Carmelite was an only child until this point.  Her mother did have three sons with Pierre Rivet.  Pierre was born in 1808, Louis was born in 1810, and Auguste was born in 1812.  According to my information they all died within a year of their births.  That sounds really tragic, so I hope the information I have is wrong, especially for little Marie Carmelite’s sake.  If it is correct, at the age of 11 she would have experienced the death of her father, her grandfather, and all three of her siblings.

I thought about warning you that this was a sad story, but I held back on that.  I only have birth dates and death dates available to me, so I really don’t know the overall experiences of her life.  But having your father die at an extreme young age is rather sad.  At least she had her mother for a dozen years.  That’s right.  Marie Marthe died in 1814 at the age of 33.  So that left Marie Carmelite an orphan at the age of 12.

Marriage record for Narcisse Landry and Marie Carmelite Hebert in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.

She still had her grandfather Diego, but then he died the next year as well.  At least her grandmother Marie Theotiste Babin Hernandez survived until Marie Carmelite had reached adulthood and gotten married.  From the court documents it seems like the different family members in both the Hebert and Hernandez families were willing to help.

She married Narcisse Landry on February 13, 1819, in St. Gabriel.  As you can see in the marriage license, both of Narcisse’s parents were deceased at the time of their wedding.  He was 10 years older than she was and did not lose his parents at as young of an age.  Still, he was only 27 and both of his parents had died.

I hope they had a happy life together.  During the next 25 years they brought 8 children into the world.  I’m glad they kept going until #7 and #8, because #7 is my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry and #8 is my great grandfather Alcide.  It was a different life, though.  Her whole life was spent during slavery times in southern Louisiana.  She and her husband lived on a plantation in Brusly that incorporated slave labor.  It was a terrible institution to be involved with.

She died in 1856.  I am glad that it looks like she did not have to experience the death of any of her children.  With such an abundance of deaths to deal with in her early life, that was a relief to find out.  I wish I had a photo of her and old Narcisse.  They are the only two great great grandparents that I don’t have photos of.  As it is, I only have one photo each of the two sons I descend from.

Of course, photos were not as widespread as they are now.  I suppose there could be a portrait of them somewhere out there, but I haven’t heard of such.  We’ll just have to be satisfied with the few bits of information about them that we can piece together.  So ends the story of Marie Carmelite.

The story continues…

The Irish Homestead

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The McGrath homestead circa 1890. The individual is identified as Dan McGrath.

This is the photo that I’ve been planning on posting for a while.  I waited until now since it is Irish themed and St. Patrick’s day is just a couple of days away.  I got the photo from my fourth cousin once removed back in August.  This is the cousin Matt that provided me with names for my Irish great great great grandparents who came from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine in the 1840s.

Those names are Edward McGrath and Maria Ettadosia Mooney McGrath.  I just love her name.  It has a ring to it.  I like to say, “I’m the great great great grandson of Maria Ettadosia Mooney McGrath” with pride, especially at this time of the year.  I’ve even thought of getting a t-shirt with that printed on it!  Anyway, those names came to me by Matt by way of his great grandmother Madeline McMahon.  She collected and wrote about family history back during her lifetime (1897-1982).  And since her mother was Mary Ann McGrath (McMahon), she wrote about the McGrath family.

If you have been keeping track of our (my) family, you’ll know that my maternal grandfather Fred Bucklin’s paternal grandmother was named Mary Ann McGrath (Bucklin) as well.  Mary Ann Bucklin was the aunt of Mary Ann McMahon.   Mary Ann McMahon’s father was James McGrath, the brother of our Mary Ann Bucklin.  So Madeline had this old photo that came down from her mother.

Back of the photo card.

The photo is of the old McGrath homestead from around 1890 in Ware, Massachusetts.  This is in Palmer County, which is where the McGrath family settled after they immigrated from Ireland.  The family home was on Bacon Road.  I got this information from collected family history and from the writing on the back of the photo.  It doesn’t show a date, but I researched A. W. Howes & Co. and found out that they had a business in Turners Falls from 1888 to 1893.  That’s a pretty narrow window of time, so I just round it off to 1890.

The back of the photo identifies the individual as Dan McGrath.  Edward and Maria had a son named Daniel, but he was born in 1838 (in Ireland) and would have been in his fifties in this photo.  This definitely looks like a younger man.  Mary Ann McMahon had a younger brother named Daniel who was born in 1863.  That seems to be the right age and it’s in the right family line, so I think it is probably the right Daniel.

As you can also read from the back of the card, that old family home has since burned down.  I’m glad I have this photo so I can at least see what the house looked like that my ancestors lived in.  I hope you enjoy the photo as well.  Though I think it will probably be more thoroughly enjoyed by those of us that can say, “My great great great grandmother was Maria Ettadosia Mooney McGrath!”

Erin go bragh!

My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin (Landry), her father was Fred Bucklin, his father was Louis Charles Bucklin, his mother was Mary Ann McGrath. Mary Ann and her siblings and parents immigrated from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s.

The Patureau Home

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I thought I’d continue with the theme of the past few weeks, especially since that is the theme I have planned for next week as well.  I’ve been planning the one for next week for quite a while, but then I found all the information about homesteading recently.  I’ve covered several lines with the ‘home’ theme, so this week I thought I’d apply it to my Patureau line.

Home of Vincent Maximilian “Max” Patureau circa 1912 in Crescent (Plaquemine), Louisiana, at the end of Patureau Lane.

The reason I picked the Patureau line is because of a couple of great photos that cousin Sis shared with me a while back that featured the old Patureau house. You might even call this post Meet the Patureaus of Patureau Lane – Part II.

This is an edited version of the photo.  It is more edited than I usually do.  Sis was wanting a photo of just the house, so I obliged.  I removed a few people and cleaned up the fence line.  This photo was taken several years after the original Meet the Patureaus post.

As you can see, a dormer has been added to the roof.  The trellis in front of the house is no longer there, but there is a nice white picket fence along the front.  The family is growing up and changing as well.  Grampa Max would have been a widower in his mid to late 40s.  His wife died in 1909, leaving him with nine young children to rear. 

According to a newspaper article, Grampa Max stayed in the Plaquemine area until 1912.  He had started a veterinary practice in Plaquemine, but then decided to move to Lafayette where a few other family members had moved. That worked out well for my grandmother Erie, because she started school at SLI that year.

The home of the Patureaus in Crescent, Louisiana.

Here is a copy of the photo before I made the major changes to it.  I only know the identity of one person in the photo.  The girl with her elbow on the mailbox is Zita Patureau.  She was a couple of years younger than Erie and also was a teacher in Lafayette for a time.

I don’t have any photos of their home in Lafayette.  I also don’t have any photos of the family home that Max grew up in.  He grew up in Plaquemine, where his father Ferdinand Pierre Patureau had a sawmill.  Ferdinand died in 1877 at the age of 50 as a result of an accident at his sawmill.  His wife Marie Emma Landry Patureau lived until 1892 and died at the age of 62.  One of these days I will post a photo of her.  I only have one and it is really terrible.  I’m hoping to improve on it somehow.  Maybe I’ll get a better version or I’ll just spend a lot of time improving what I already have.  (Fortunately, I found a better version of that old photo and it was much better of Emma. See post Maman Emma Was a Beauty.)

In the meantime I will leave you with this other photo that shows the old Patureau home in the background.  I haven’t done any editing on it.  I wish I knew who all of the people were in the photo.

I do know one person.  Again it is Zita at the mailbox.  Something makes me think that if she’d have been born into today’s world, she’d be one of those young adults with their eyes glued to their cell phones.

 

Homesteading in Southern Louisiana

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I recently wrote about how my Landry family came to southern Louisiana.  That was 250 years ago and it was before the United States was formed.  My mom’s side of the family came here more recently.  Not all at the same time, but pretty close.  The main lure was the opening up of this area by railroad and an offering of land for homesteading.

I found some documents online last week that show when the homestead papers were filed for some of my ancestors.  They keep putting more and more historical information online.  Of course, I have to look in the right places to find those things that are already there.  So I was excited to find these records that I hadn’t seen before.  They pretty much support the information I had concerning when my ancestors arrived in southern Louisiana.  The first group to arrive here was the Bucklin family.

1884 register of homesteads in southern Louisiana

The names on the register start with my great, great grandfather James Bucklin.  He and two of his children – Joseph and Jennie – filed for homestead claims on April 2, 1884.  They had come from Hampden County, Massachusetts, by way of Coffins Grove, Iowa.  Even though her name is not on the register, my Irish great great grandmother Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin was involved with the whole endeavor as well.

My great grandfather Louis was only 11 years old at the time and was not able to file a claim of his own.  He did work on the claim and kept a journal for many years about the day to day farming that was done.  I remember seeing the name of Shoesmith in that journal and now I see it on this homestead register.

1887 homestead register for southern Louisiana

According to the information I found, the next to show up in the area was Martha Ann Keys.  Her claim was filed on November 11, 1887.  She was born in England and had arrived in America with her five children just four months earlier.  I know they lived in a chicken house for a while (thank you Thomas Lord MacVey!), but I’m not sure how long it was before a house was built.  A photo of the house they lived in has information on the back that says the house was built in 1888.  Another factor that comes into play was the second husband of Martha Keys.

“What’s that?” you ask, “Another husband?  Say it isn’t so!”  Yes, there was another husband that isn’t talked about much.  It was in the days before social media, after all.  She and William T. Davis were married for only a short time because she got rid of him.  It was said that she did not like the way he treated the kids.  (Maybe they had gotten in the habit of scratching the floor with their toes – you know, like chickens! – and it drove him crazy and he’d send them to the barn.)  Whatever the issue was, they didn’t stay together.

This next part doesn’t make sense to me.  In the family history book it says she lost her claim because of this marriage.  In the register you can see that the claim was “cancelled for relinquishment” on  November 13, 1889, which is just over two years after the start of the claim.  She never divorced Mr. Davis, but did not take his name.  Details have a way of being lost with the death of a few generations.  (An interesting name on this page in the register is Thomas Buller, who I think is the great grandfather of Pam Buller.)

1892 register for homestead in southern Louisiana

Our next arrival was the Hine family from Indiana.  This claim was dated February 10, 1896, though other information says they arrived in Louisiana in 1894.  The name on the register is George H. Hine, my great great grandfather.  He came was his wife Sue and their six children ranging in ages from 10 to 20.  The oldest was my great grandmother Addie.

To help out with the family or possibly to earn some money on her own, Addie would help people with chores around the house.  One of these people that she helped was Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin, whose son Lou just happened to be the right age for marrying.  (Lou’s journal entry for July 6, 1896 – I went over & got Miss Hines to help mother, she commenced work at noon.)  Addie and Lou were married in 1898.  (Notice the name in the register under George Hine.  It is Henry Kohl, an ancestor of Joseph Connors.)

H. C. Phenice signed Daisy’s autograph book on Dec. 24, 1900, which was three days before their marriage.

That leaves the Phenice side of my mom’s family.  That generation of the Phenice family did not immigrate to southern Louisiana.  They were from Pennsylvania and had homesteaded in Nebraska.  One brave son name Harry – my great grandfather – came to Louisiana seeking his fortune.  Why he came to Louisiana is a mystery.  But he arrived in 1898 at the age of 24.

He did not homestead.  At least I have never heard of him homesteading and did not find a record of it.  And according to the verse he wrote in Daisy Keys’ autograph book, he found his fortune in a little English girl.  He said she was “all to me.”  They were married in 1900 and lived in the China/Hathaway area for the rest of their lives.  Though they did spend a year in Colorado hoping to find that monetary fortune at a gold mine at Cripple Creek.

So that’s how those families came together to bring about my maternal grandparents and my mom.  They came from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Indiana, England, and Ireland with dreams and ready for hard work.  I, for one, am glad they did.

My mom’s family tree.

Me and My Sisters

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I had a hard time deciding what to write about this week.  Not really.  I just didn’t have anything that stood out this week for my mom’s side of the family.  Since I wrote something about the Landry family last week, I thought it should be time to write about her side.  I was thinking that the Keys family was due a posting.  There were some interesting things going on with the Keys family this week, but there wasn’t a good photo to go along with it.

I also thought that the interesting thing about the Keys this week wouldn’t be interesting to too many people.  “What was it?” you ask?  Ok, I’ll go ahead and tell you.  I had a couple of new DNA matches at Ancestry this week.  Actually they are matches to aunt Loris.  She’s the only one I tested there until recently.  I sent a DNA sample in recently, but haven’t got my results yet.  I did a DNA test in 2013, but that was at 23andMe.  The interesting thing about the Keys matches is that I think Ancestry has finally passed up 23andMe as far as Keys family members who have tested.  There are about 40 descendants of Henry Keys and Martha Cook who have tested.  And now that I think about it, if I count all of Julie’s family that have tested, 23andMe still has more.

So the interesting thing that happened this week with the Keys family didn’t really happen.  Now I’m glad that this post is not about that!  So the other thing that happened this week is that my brother Rob sent me some old photos that he took back in the 70s.  They were really fun to see, but I didn’t think I would be using any for Throwback Thursday.  Throwback Thursdays are for things that happened a long time ago and the 70s were only 40 years ago.

Then a post that I wrote almost two years ago started getting some attention.  A few people liked it and made a comment about it, and that was that.  But when I was thinking about a theme for this week, I remembered these seemingly unrelated events.  And there was a common theme.  The post that got the attention included a photo of Daddy with his sisters, and one of the photos that Rob sent me was a photo of me and mine.

Van, Jamie, Jodie, and Karen in 1974 under the old mimosa tree.

I had even edited it and got rid of the spots and dust that show up on scans of slides.  So here is a photo of me and my three sisters.  My name is Van and I am the boy in the photo.  I estimated that I am thirteen years old in this photo.  This is based on the fact that I’m not wearing glasses and I got contacts in 1974.

Then there’s my sister with the longest hair in this photo.  That’s my younger sister Jamie and she didn’t have long hair much longer.  She cut her hair really short either in late 1974 or early 1975.  So that would put the time as the summer of 1974.  Jamie and I were in junior high school then.  I was probably still a paper boy, too.

Continuing counterclockwise (and to shorter hair) brings you to Jodie.  She was the oldest of all of the siblings.  She graduated from high school in 1971 and had gone off to college.  She was the oldest, yet she lived the shortest amount of time.  She died in 1989 at the age of 36.

And that brings us to Karen.  She also got contacts in 1974 (as did Al), so I know that it wasn’t just me taking a photo without my glasses so I’d be cuter.  (Something I never did!  Big clunky black glasses in every photo!)  Karen was just starting her senior year in high school (or getting ready to) because she graduated in 1975.

This is my favorite photo of me with my three sisters.  Actually it’s the only one that I can think of.  I probably looked for one when I wrote those posts about sisters two years ago and couldn’t find one.  But now I have one.  Thanks, Rob.  I’m glad you climbed up in our old mimosa tree all those years ago and snapped that picture of us.  It’s a keeper.

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