Author: Van

Betty Lou at Hathaway High in 1947

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9th grade class at Hathaway High School in 1947 included my mother, Betty Lou Bucklin. Hathaway, Louisiana.

Hathaway High School.  My mom’s alma mater.  The home of the Hornets.  I suppose that since this is a photo of my mom’s ninth grade class, this is the year that she was officially in high school.  I’ve always heard the school called Hathaway High School, even though it had grades 1 thru 12.  At least that’s the way my mom always explained it to me.  It might have changed since then.  It was a long time ago.

In fact, it was in 1947.  At least that’s what the little chalk board says.  Actually it says that this was the photo of the 9th grade class at Hathaway for the school year ’47 + ’48.  From what I can remember about school activities, I seem to recall that the school photos were taken at closer to the beginning of the school year.  So I would think that the photo was taken in the fall of 1947.

Some of you already know that my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and you’ve already picked her out from the photo.  But others are not so fortunate to be familiar with my dear, sweet mother.  Fourteen-year-old Betty Lou is the second one from the right in the middle row.  She has a nice, big smile on her face.  It’s the first school photo that she is smiling like this.  In previous years she was either not smiling at all or just smiling with a grin.  Part of that could be that she was standing next to her friends.  The girl on the left of her was her best friend Lavelle Krumnow.  On the right of her is Lela Mae Jester, another good friend.  Sitting in front of her was Carol Bryan.  She was a friend, and she also was our next-door neighbor when we moved to Lucy Street in Jennings in 1964.

My mom didn’t name everyone in this photo like she did in some of her other photos, so I’m not going to try and figure them all out.  Not that I’d be able to do that if I tried.  There are probably a few Gary family members and some Cajun names as well.  I don’t know who the teacher is either.  If someone knows it, I’d appreciate the information.  Irregardless, I’m sure you are enjoying this old sepia-tone photo that includes my precious mother in her youth.

Landry Centennials

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Rob Landry & Erie Patureau

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

Myrtle Phenice Bucklin in 1954

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Myrtle Phenice Bucklin in 1954 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I’ve been wanting to post this photo for a while, so the only problem I had with it was determining the date of it.  I had a date of 1947 for it, and I even started the post with that in the title.  This photo came from my Aunt Loris a few months ago.  She is my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry’s younger sister.  I like this photo so much, so I was wondering why mom didn’t have a copy of it in her possession.  It is a photo of their mother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin after all. 

So I went to the family photo album that I put together when I was in junior high school to see if I could find it.  There on the first page of the album was a small photo of my grandmother in 1954.  My grandmother was Mrs. Bucklin who taught the 3rd grade at Hathaway High School back in the 1940s through the 60s.  And one of the things they’ve always done at school is take school photos.  There were usually one or two photos to choose from.  The nice thing about those old photos was that they put the year on the bottom of the photos. 

The 1954 photo was taken on the same day as this one.  It seems that Loris liked this version of the photo, while mom liked the other one.  I have to agree with my aunt on this one.  It is a much more striking photo than the other one.  Sure, she is smiling a bit more in the other photo and it shows the date, but this one is just more dramatic.

Myrtle was born in 1906, so she would have been 48 years old in this photo.  When I was growing up, I remember my mom saying that Grandma was known as a “handsome” woman.  Well everybody knows that you’re supposed to call women either pretty or beautiful, and men are known as handsome.  I always took it to mean that she was attractive in a masculine sort of way.  And I went along with it.  After all, she was my grandmother.  That means that she was much older than I was.  My concern was that she was nice to us and she fed us well when we went to visit.  She also had an infectious laugh, especially when her sisters were around.

But now that I’ve been looking through these old photos of her, I notice that she had striking features.  She had high cheekbones, full lips, and really pretty eyes.  She and her sisters were beautiful young women.  And in this photo of her when she was 48, she could still strike a pose.  Come on, vogue!

My Father and Godfather in 1936

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Bobbie, Johnny, Wana, and their mother Erie Patureau Landry in 1936 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

It was pretty easy to pick out a photo for this week’s post.  I wanted one of my dad when he was a young boy.  When I saw this one of him with his younger brother Johnny when he was just a baby, I knew it was the one.  But then coming up with a name for the post was trickier.  While the main focus of the photo are the two boys, there is also a sister and their mother in the photo as well.  I don’t want to slight them!  I stuck with the focus of the photo.  Plus it is somewhat of a continuation of the post I did a few months ago when Uncle Johnny died.  

Actually it is a prequel to all of the photos that I’ve posted that include Uncle Johnny.  This is a photo of when he was a fresh little infant.  Isn’t that the sweetest little photo?  I kept the border on it, because it has a charm about it, and it points to the period of time when it was popular.   His full name was John Alfred Xavier Landry and he was born August 2, 1936.  I estimated that the photo was taken shortly after that.  He was the last of eight children.

On the left is my dad.  He was born on January 31, 1929, and was given the name Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  He was named after his dad, obviously!  He was called Bobbie back then.  That name carried on, but he acquired more through the years.  Standing in the background, you can easily see their sister Wana.  She was four years old.  It’s surprising to see her with her hand covering her mouth.  That wasn’t typical in her later years.  She was a talker!  There is another sister standing in the background.  I’m not sure if that was Germaine or Marie.  I can’t really make out her face.  Too bad.

On the right edge of the photo, you can make out part of the profile of my dear sweet Mee Maw.  She was the mother of the children in the photo.  Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau Landry, but at the time she was just known as Erie or Mama.  She had been a teacher in Lafayette, Louisiana, in her early 20s, but gave that all up to get married and raise a family in Lake Charles.  I think she made the right choice.  She looks so content looking down at her youngest son.  She loved her children and later on, she loved all of her grandchildren.

Mon Pere et Mon Parrain en 1936.  I only have one negative thing to say about my grandmother.  But it’s not really something negative about her.  It’s about the situation that led her to make a decision.  There was a movement back then that led some educators in different parts of the state to punish children who grew up speaking French in the home.  The children would mainly speak French and that was frowned upon in some parts.  I’m pretty sure MeeMaw grew up speaking both French and English.  All of her ancestors spoke French.  She might have seen as a teacher the difficulty the French-speaking children had at school. 

She decided to only teach her children how to speak English.  I think she spoke French with Pee Paw or her sisters when she wanted to say something in private, but she didn’t speak it enough for her children to learn how to speak it.  So just like that, the family went from French-speaking and bilingual to English-speaking.  I am of two minds on the subject.  Part of it is the inevitable assimilation into a culture whose primary language is English.  Resistance is futile!  On the other side is the maintaining of different cultures within the large group. 

Her decision to teach her children only English led to another change:  they also married outside of the cultural (Cajun or French) group. (Or outside the family as I sometimes say!)  So I never wanted to speak French when I was growing up.  Actually, when we heard it on the local radio, it sounded funny to us.  We would just listen to the Cajun songs and laugh.  It wasn’t until I looked into our family history and saw so much French documentation that I started to regret the loss of something. 

If only we could have maintained both English and French.  There is a movement in southern Louisiana to preserve some of that Cajun and French heritage.  I, for my part, am learning French. Veut-tu faire quelque chose?

The Bucklin Children in 1949

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The Fred D. and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin family in 1949 in Hathaway, Louisiana

This is a photo of my mom and her siblings in 1949.  I’ve posted a photo of the same group from 1948.  Then there is one from 1950 that I’ve shared, and it has both of their parents in the photo as well.  These photos don’t exactly seem like formal portraits, because they look to be taken in my grandparents’ home at the time.  Plus, in this one it looks like my mom was just wearing a t-shirt and she added a scarf around her neck to dress up her appearance a bit.

From that bit of information, you can tell that my mom is the girl on the right in this photo.  Her name was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was the second child of Fred D. Bucklin and Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  She was born on May 20, 1933, in Hathaway, Louisiana.  Her older sister Sylvia was born in March of 1931.  You can see her sitting in the front on the left with the black dress. 

Alma was the next one born, though she looks like she is shorter than her younger sister Loris.  That didn’t stop her from being a really good basketball player.  The family was big into basketball.   Grandpa and Grandma both played when they were younger.  Mama always talked about working on Alma’s game by guarding her really hard when they practiced.  With height comes long arms and mom knew how to use them for blocking basketball shots.  So Alma learned to deal with this and one of the things she perfected was a hook shot that mom said was the best around.  She was proud to help her younger sister develop that.

Betty Lou Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, in 1949.

Loris was the youngest of the sisters, and we can thank her for sharing the group photo with me.  I had never seen it before she sent it to me in June.  Mom didn’t have a copy of it, but she did have this individual photo of herself taken the same day.  I’m kinda surprised that I’ve never shared this photo before.  I thought about waiting to share it as a post on its own, but the story calls for it to be shown now.

This was probably one of my mom’s favorite photos of herself.  She had an enlargement of it in her photo album.  Even though she’s smiling better in the group photo, this pose is better.  I didn’t realize she was just wearing a t-shirt until I saw the group photo.  The scarf fooled me into thinking she was all dressed up!  She looks older than 16 years old.  She kept this look for most of her life.  Most people find her easy to recognize in photos whether it was taken when she was three or when she was an elderly woman.

I can’t finish this post without identifying my mom’s brother Austin in that first photo.  He was the only boy with four older sisters.  He was five years younger than Loris, so there was an age gap that seems larger when you’re a kid growing up.  Fortunately for him, there were several male cousins who lived nearby.

 

Unnatural Patureau Deaths

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Pierre Oscar Patureau Jr. circa 1908 in New Orleans, Louisiana

I thought I would continue with the theme from last week.  Like last week, it is about the unnatural deaths of family members.  But this time, the deaths are from my Patureau family line.  My maternal grandmother was the Phenice, while my paternal grandmother was the Patureau.  All of the stories are about young people whose lives were cut short by tragic events.  For the three I’m talking about this week, their ages were 17, 19, and 21.  Way too young.  This is another post that I’ve thought about doing for quite a while.

A little over seven years ago I first saw this photo of Pierre Oscar Patureau, Jr. sitting in a chair.  I got it from a member of one of his siblings’ family.  I don’t think I knew the details of his death when I first saw it, but it wasn’t long afterward that I found the tragic story of his death.  I’m pretty sure he went by the name Oscar, and he was a first cousin to my grandmother Erie Patureau Landry.  He was six years older than she was, so she probably looked up to him. 

Their fathers – Pierre Oscar and Max Patureau – were brothers and they seemed to be pretty close.  They were close to the same age and they were both doctors – Max was a veterinarian in Plaquemine, Louisiana, and Pierre Oscar was a dentist in New Orleans.  Even though Pierre Oscar wasn’t participating in the Largest Patureau Family Contest – like his siblings Max (15 children), Leobon (12), Zelica (8), Abel Omer “Pat” (10), or Victorine (12) – he probably still valued family.  It’s a Patureau thing.

From May 21, 1909, New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper, pg. 12 col. 5

What I’m getting at is that this death would have had an impact on my grandmother when it happened in 1909.  The two families lived not too far away from each other, and they probably saw each other at family get togethers somewhat regularly.  I’m sure it wasn’t as tragic to young Erie as the death of her own mother later that year, but it was still a loss of a family member.

I wonder how she found out about the death of her cousin.  Grampa Max probably found out about it soon after it happened.   Either he or my great grandmother Marie Therese Landry Patureau would have been the one to break it to their children.  From what the newspaper explains, Oscar checked into room 802 at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans on May 17, 1909.  He was enamored with a young lady from Mobile, so he might have been hoping that she would join him there.  He was there for a few days and did not call any attention to himself.

Death notice for Oscar Patureau, Jr. in 1909

That changed drastically.  On May 20st he made the fatal choice to shoot himself.  That got the attention of the staff at the hotel.  When the house detective arrived on scene, he could tell that it had been self-inflicted.  Oscar was still alive at that point, and he didn’t deny that he had done it.  He stated that he had done it because of a love affair.  Another article stated that it was because of unrequited love.  He was asked who the young lady was, but he would not answer.  The newspaper article said that a photo of a young woman was found in his suitcase.

Of course, the newspaper wasn’t correct about everything.  They say that he was 22 years old, but he was not even 20 years old yet.  As you can see by his death notice, he was 19 years, 10 months, and 25 days.  But wait, from my calculations that is incorrect also!  Using digital calculations (counting with my fingers!) I say that he was actually 19 years, 9 months, and 25 days.  If you want to check to see if I’m correct, I have to tell you that he was born on July 26, 1899.    Either way, a life cut too short.

I didn’t want to talk about lives cut short in the Patureau family without mentioning one of the closest relations to me that died unnaturally.  As you know, my grandmother was a Patureau.  She had a younger sister named Sylvie.  Sylvie has a grandson who is very close to the same age as I am.  Unlike me, he has children.  In 2003, he was hit with the tragedy of his 17-year-old son Joshua’s death.  He was found in a car with a shotgun.  I don’t know many details, but according to investigators it was declared that there was no foul play.  I don’t have a newspaper article or photo for this, but it reminds me of another Patureau death that I do have an article for.

John Gerald Patureau death in 1933 in Plaquemine.

This event happened in 1933.  John Gerald Patureau was born in 1911 and he was the grandson of Leobon Patureau.  Leobon was the older brother of Max and Pierre Oscar.  In 1933 Gerald was living with his aunt Edna Landry in Plaquemine.  It sounds like he was an outdoorsman, because he was hunting alligators on that July 21.  From what I can tell, he went out hunting in the morning off of Plaquemine-Addis highway in West Baton Rouge Parish just past the Iberville Parish line.

It doesn’t say whether he was successful in getting an alligator.  Around noon he came back to his car, and according to reports he was putting his gun back in his car when it went off.  The gun was pointing right at his stomach when it went off and it resulted in his death.  There was an investigation into his death, and it was ruled to be “accidental.”  What’s with the quotes there?  That makes it sound somewhat questionable.  Was there a possibility of someone else involved or were there suggestions of it being self-inflicted?  Unresolved questions have got to be unsettling in situations like this.

But really, the main thing is that deaths like this are always tragic.  I think they’re important to remember, but they are somewhat depressing to write about.  So next week I’ll try to find something a little more cheerful.  That shouldn’t be too difficult.

 

Oct. 19, 2024 Addition

Pierre Oscar Patureau, Jr. circa 1900

I meant to include this earlier photo of Pierre Oscar Patureau, Jr. in this post.  It is a photo that came from the Tyrrell Historical Library’s Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection (AC-824) in Beaumont, Texas.  The death notice for young Oscar was also in that collection.  His aunt Victorine Patureau Cropper must have been fond of her nephew and saved these mementos of his life.  I’m glad she did.

This photo was taken around 1900 when Oscar was about 11 or 12 years old in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I think the family moved there in the mid 1890s.  This would have been a photo from his Solemn First Communion.  The Patureau was a Roman Catholic family in southern Louisiana.  At that time, the first communion would have happened a few years earlier when they were in first grade or so.  Then later they would have their Solemn First Communion and there were photos like this to commemorate the occasion.

Unnatural Phenicie Deaths

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I’m finally getting around to writing a post about a story I found almost eight years ago.  A week before Christmas in 2016 I must have been doing some research on Phenice relatives, because that’s when I found this information.  I said at the time that it was a story that needed to be told.  I didn’t tell it then because I had found another story that was very tragic, and it was about a family that had some striking similarities to my own family when I was growing up.

That other story was about my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and her third cousin Dolores Henke Yule and their respective families.  They were related through the Stanbrough family name.  They were around the same age, they got married around the same time, and then they moved to California after they were married.  Their first two children were born within days of each other, and each of their third children was a girl with the last name of Jean.  Then in 1961, both families got into separate accidents.  My family lived to tell about it.  Theirs didn’t.

The story that I’m talking about today is concerning relatives from the Phenice line.  In the case of these cousins, they spelled their last name Phenicie.  It has some similarities to the Yule tragedy.  Their car accident happened on Sept. 17, 1961.  The accident that happened to the Phenicie cousin was on Sept. 17, 1948.  In the 1961 accident Dolores Yule died.  In the tragedy of the Phenicie family, Dolores Davies Phenicie passed away.

I had thought about writing this post last week but decided to put it off because it was an anniversary for my great great grandmother’s birthday.  So this was to be the week that I would talk about the tragedy.  The weird thing is that I heard about two deaths at different chemical plants that happened this week.  And the two projects that I’ve been working on this week were for those plants.  The first death I’m talking about happened at a chemical plant, but that was back in 1948.

Here is what happened.  On September 17 there was an explosion in Lewiston, Pennsylvania, at the American Viscose Corporation.  A blast in the vulcanizing tank turned the door of the tank into a missile that struck Wayne Rhodes Phenicie in the side.  He died shortly afterwards.  Two other people only suffered minor injuries.  It was such a tragic event.  Wayne and Dolores hadn’t been married for very long and they had a son named Jeff who had been born at the beginning of the year.

But that’s not the end of this sad story.  Dolores was not able to cope with losing the love of her life.  The second newspaper article states that the couple had been deeply in love and that she was suffering from depression.  She went to stay with family members who were willing to help out in hopes of an improvement.  But sadly, the young widow shot herself on December 22, 1948.  In just over a two-month period, little Jeff Phenicie lost both parents before he had reached the age of one.

One of the reasons I didn’t write the story in 2016 was because Jeff Phenicie was still alive.  I thought I might contact him and see if he had anything to say about the situation.  But really, what can you say about a tragedy that happened when you were so young.  And how would I even bring that up to someone?  So I put it aside for a while.  Time passed and I forgot the names of the people involved.  I’ve got thousands of people in my online tree, and I don’t make notes about people like I probably should.  I looked half-heartedly a few times but wasn’t too concerned about it.

Then a few weeks ago I had a DNA match with the last name of Phenicie.  (Yes, they still spell it differently.  They even pronounce it differently.  They rhyme their name with Tennessee.  We rhyme Phenice with Venus.)  When I looked at the match’s tree, I saw the name Wayne Phenicie and a death date of 1948.  It seemed familiar.  Sure enough, the DNA match is a great grandchild of Wayne and Dolores.  I also saw that Jeff Phenicie had died in 2017.  In the Yule case Dolores Henke Yule was a third cousin to my mom.  With Wayne Phenicie, he was a third cousin to my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  And what that means is that Wayne Phenicie, my third cousin twice removed, had common DNA with me.  Otherwise his great grandchild would not be a DNA match to me, my brother Rob, and my cousin Charla.

I’ve mapped my mom’s and some of her siblings’ DNA sources.  Even though the match happened at Ancestry, I can still tell how we are related.  We have some common matches that tested at other sites that have chromosome browsers.  One match named Bradley matches this new Phenicie match and me, Rob, and Charla.  Bradley also matches Aunt Loris.  Mama matched Bradley with two large segments, but Aunt Loris matches him only on one.  So since the new Phenicie match doesn’t match Aunt Loris, the connection must be through the other segment that the others of us have.  So I know that along Chromosome 10, there is a section within each of my cells that is identical to a section of Chromosome 10 that was in Wayne Phenicie on the day he died.  Evidence of a family connection.

 

 

Double View of Grandma Sue

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October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana. The George Henry and Susan Stanbrough Hine family at Grandma Sue’s 75 birthday celebration.

I’ve shared several pictures from this event back in 1926.  The photos are just so good because they have so many of my family members in them.  Though it says that it is a double view of Grandma Sue in the title, it’s not a double exposure from the event.  I shared that one two years ago.  That was the last time that I shared a photo from that event, so I thought it was time to look at that event again.  I was looking very thoroughly through those photos a few weeks ago to look for something specific, but I can’t remember what it was.  I didn’t have any new revelations about the photos either, but I still want to share these photos from 98 years ago.  

And it was exactly 98 years ago today.  My great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough was born on October 3, 1851, in Westfield, Indiana.  That was 173 years ago.  She married George Henry Hine in 1873.  Their first child was my great grandmother Addie Mae Hine and she was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana.  They went on to have five more children – all of them boys.  In 1894 the family moved south to Louisiana and settled in Hathway, Louisiana, in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Addie got married in 1898 to Louis Charles Bucklin, who had moved down to Louisiana from Iowa with his family in 1884.  Their seventh and eighth children were Fred and Clarence Bucklin, who were born on October 2, 1907.  Fred is my grandfather, because he was the father of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

View no 2 – same family, same place, same time

Let’s go back to the year before my grandfather was born.  In 1906 Grandma Sue and her friend Jennie Welton Havenar decided to have a joint birthday celebration.  You see, Jennie also had a birthday on October 3, though she was a few years younger than Sue.  According to the newspaper, the first birthday celebration must have happened around the beginning of December in 1906.  It was reported to be a great turnout with over seventy of their friends and family in attendance.  The reporter wrote about “hearty wishes given to the two ladies for many more such happy occasions in their lives.” 

Sue and Jennie must have taken that to heart, because that’s exactly what they did.  They had a joint celebration for their birthday for the next twenty years at least.   And it seems that the number of family and guests grew along the way.  We know that the following year at least two new family members appeared – Fred and Clarence.  And their birthday is just a day before Sue and Jennie’s.  I wonder if that was a good thing for the boys.  For at least the first twenty years of their lives, there was a big birthday celebration that everyone showed up for – and it was for their grandmother and her friend!  I’m sure that at least a time or two it actually fell on their birthday.  Hopefully people remembered to wish them a happy birthday as well.

The photos I’m sharing today were from the 20th Anniversary of the Double Birthday Celebration.  The two photos look like they were taken at almost the exact same time by two different photographers.  Very interesting.  According to the newspaper it was held on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the home of Mrs. W. E. Havenar – that would be our Jennie.  They both had one daughter and four sons alive at the time, as well as many more grandchildren and extended families.  These photos were taken of Grandma Sue’s family.  Uncle Rowe died in 1916, and Grandpa George died in 1919, so they were not there.  Addie is standing just behind Grandma Sue, a habit she had in family photos taken through the years.  Fred Bucklin (Addie’s son – my grandfather) is the nice looking 19-year-old young man on the back row toward the middle of the photo.  He seems to be happy to be celebrating his grandmother’s birthday.  Maybe they had a birthday cake for him, too!

The 1926 newspaper article called this event the climax of these double birthday celebrations.  Did he know something that he didn’t mention?  Maybe Sue and Jennie had decided that this would be their last one and they decided to have a big send-off for the event.  If not, at most they could only have had three more joint celebrations, because Jennie passed away in March of 1930.  She was only 63 years old, younger than I am now.  Three years later Grandma Sue died at the age of 81.  

Here’s to Sue and Jennie.  Let’s celebrate their births all those years ago.  Hear, hear!

Another Photo of Alcide

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That title really deserves an exclamation point at the end of it.  It’s not like I have several photos of my great grandfather Alcide Landry.  With some of my other ancestors, I have several photos of them and I don’t get as excited about finding new photos of them.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m always glad to find another photo of my ancestors.  That is especially true when the photo is over 100 years old.  That’s true about this photo, plus there is only one other photo of Alcide that I know of.  So to find a second one after all this time is very exciting.  It is exclamation point worthy!

Alcide Landry with railroad coworkers circa 1900

This is another photo from Box 301.  It was a box in my Aunt Wana’s attic that was recently rediscovered and shared with me.  I wasn’t really that excited when I got this photo, because it wasn’t labeled with any names or dates.  I didn’t look at it closely, because we were rushing through the photos so I could decide which ones I could take home with me to scan.  

I found this photo interesting because one of the reasons my Landry family moved from West Baton Rouge Parish to Calcasieu Parish around 1889 was for the railroad industry.  Those definitely look like railroad wheels in the photo.  My great grandfather Simon Alcide Joseph Landry moved their family to Westlake and began work at the railyards.  Some of his sons also worked in the industry.

Great grandpa Alcide was born in Brusly, Louisiana, on August 16, 1845.  Once he reached the age of 18, he joined the Confederate Army to fight in the Civil War.  A few years after the war ended, he married Marie Celeste Leveque.  I’ve written much more about her because she lived longer, and I have more photos of her.  My dad and his siblings had a few memories of her and spoke fondly of our Grandma Celeste.  Their first eight children were born in Brusly, and the last two were born in Westlake.  My grandfather Robert Joseph Landry was their last child born in 1893.

When I first started examining this photo to see if I recognized anyone, my focus was on the younger men.  I was wondering if my grandfather or one of his brothers was in the photo.  I have several photos of my grandfather and his brothers when they were young men, and they definitely had a look to them.  None of the young men in this photo had that look.  That’s when I looked closer at the older man in the dark overalls and the dark moustache.  There was something about him that looked familiar.

Alcide Landry circa 1890

Alcide went to work in Westlake at the age of 44, so he wasn’t exactly a young man.  When I compared the man in the photo to the only photo that I have of Alcide, I was surprised.  The hat in the group photo threw me off and I didn’t see the resemblance as much.  But it’s got to be him.  I think his nose looks somewhat wider in the individual photo of him, but that could be from the lighting.  The narrower bridge of the nose is a trait that all of his sons had.  The moustache looks the same in both photos.  I estimate the photo to be from around 1900.

You also have to consider where the photo came from.  It was in a box of old photos from my grandmother, but it had more photos of my grandfather’s younger days than any other collection.  So the photo is likely from my grandfather’s family.  Given that it is a photo of people at a railyard, that makes it even more likely that it is from his family.  It looks just like great grandpa Alcide, so who else would it be?

So I say yes, it is another photo of Alcide.  Behold!

Thunderbird Beach in 1961

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The Landry Family arriving at Thunderbird Beach in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 22, 1961.

I’ve been thinking about posting about Thunderbird Beach for a while.  I finally got around to cleaning up the photos from the time that our family visited “The Baton Rouge Riviera.”  These are some photos from early in my life.  This was way before our family was the entertainment at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  It was before I got my first pair of contact lenses.  In fact, it was before I even wore glasses.  It was several years before our visits to Six Flags Over Texas and Astroworld.  We hadn’t yet visited NASA after the first moon landing.  It was even before we had our baby sister Jamie.  That’s a long time ago!

I have some vague memories from way back then.  I remember sitting in the back of that Volkswagen van when it was in the driveway of the house we lived in back then at 1317 Clover Drive in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I don’t remember the curtains that are in the back that you can see in this photo.  My brother Rob said that my mom made them and put them up back there so we could change clothes after swimming and such. 

The Landry family entering Thunderbird Beach. The rides! The train! The slide!

These photos were taken on July 22, 1961.  I don’t know where that date comes from, but I don’t think I made it up.  My mom and dad were pretty good about putting that kind of information on photos from back then, but I can’t find the source of that date right now.  But it looks right from the ages of us kids in the first photo.  I was the little boy in the arms of my mom.  My name is Van, and my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  I would have been nine months old at the time.  My older siblings from left to right are Karen, Rob, Al, and Jodie.  The family lived in Lake Charles at the time, so it would have been quite a trek to go to Baton Rouge back then.  It was before Interstate 10 was completed.

When we went to Baton Rouge then, we took the ferry across the Mississippi River.  There isn’t a photo of that from this trip, but there are some from other trips.  My dad had gone to LSU and got his Master’s degree from there in 1960, so he was familiar with the area.  If it had been up to my mother to go there, it wouldn’t have happened.  She wasn’t keen on driving in unfamiliar places.  She didn’t even get her driver’s license until around 1969.  But she knew how to accessorize a van to make it multifunctional!

The Landry family on the train at Thunderbird Beach in 1961.

When I asked Rob what he remembered about Thunderbird Beach, he mentioned the carousel.  I didn’t think I had a photo of that, but it’s in the second photo right behind his head.  I always tend to focus on Rob and Jodie with their rafts, Al standing out by the road looking back at the camera, and Karen helping Mama to push me in the stroller.  And then I would look at the sign identifying the place as Thunderbird Beach – Swimming – Dancing – Concessions!  There was something for everyone.

This third photo is my favorite.  It’s such a good photo of everyone and you can see our faces better because we’re not as far away from the camera.  Karen looks like something has caught her attention and she looks very interested in what she sees.  I wonder if it was the large slide at the park.  If it was, it’s because she hadn’t learned yet that she and slides do not get along.  I can still remember seeing her roll out the end of the big slide at Six Flags.  She was not too happy.  

I remember this little train that went around the park.  For some reason it made a lasting pleasant memory for me.  It wasn’t very big and it didn’t go very fast, so it couldn’t have been that exciting.  But for a little boy just learning about the world, I guess it was interesting enough.  Jodie looked pleased to be sitting and holding on to me so I wouldn’t fly out of the train.  She was always helping Mama to watch out for us.  That’s how she ended up being called “Little Mama” by the younger kids.

It wasn’t long after this that we got in a wreck and the Volkswagen was replaced by a Ford van.  I think we returned to Thunderbird Beach a time or two more.  I can’t imagine that I remember that train from just one trip when I was nine months old.  I did find another photo of the carousel from a year later.  But there weren’t all the great family photos like there were for this trip on July 22, 1961.  What treasures.

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