Family History

I wasn’t sure what to write about this week until this photo of my dad caught my attention.  I wasn’t sure about it, because I don’t really have much to say about it.  But it kept calling to me, so I’m going along with it.  It’s not a photo that I am overly familiar with.  I don’t remember where it came from and I don’t remember seeing it when I was younger.  It was a photo of my dad that he must have liked.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept it.

I estimate that it was taken around 1945.  Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. was born on January 31, 1929.  I’m thinking he looks around 16 years old based on other photos of him through the years.  That would put him as about a junior in high school.  His family lived in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he went to school at Landry Memorial Senior High School. 

His junior high and high school years occurred during World War II.  He graduated from high school less than a year after the war ended.  My dad was in ROTC from 1942-1944.  I commented once that I didn’t know why he had done that, but it must have been because of the war.  The ROTC program was instrumental in training officers for the war effort.  

Another influence of the war was the there was a shortage of teachers at the schools.  It was the time that young Bob Landry became really interested in band music.  He learned how to play the baritone and several other instruments.  He taught himself for the most part and at some point, he began teaching other students at his school.  He continued teaching music to people for the rest of his life.  He always said that anybody could learn music.  He never changed his mind about that even when rock and roll became popular.  He would call a lot of it “trash,” so he really didn’t consider it music.  He would say that they might sound good if they sang instead of all of that yelling.

I often wonder what it was like during World War II at the time this photo was taken.  The fighting was pretty intense in several places and the outcome was uncertain.  Things could have turned out so differently.  When I think of that backstory for this photo, it gives it a different look.  Context is important.

 

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while.  But it’s going to be a bit difficult.  It’s a sad story.  That shouldn’t be a problem, I kinda like a sad story.  I think I’ve mentioned that before when writing other tragic stories.  But this one was so long ago and there aren’t any cute photos to go along with it like last week.  I haven’t even decided what photo I’m going to use with the story.  Maybe a photo of a Landry ancestor.  Maybe an old map.  Maybe a screenshot of the family tree.  I’m just not sure.

It’s about my Landry ancestor who was Exiled from his homeland of Acadie in 1755.  His name was Pierre Landry, and he was born in Pisiquit, Acadie, in 1690 to Antoine Landry and Marie Thibodeaux.  He was the sixth of their known twelve children.  I also descend from his sisters Anne and Francoise.  Pierre grew up and married Marguerite Forest in Pisiquit in 1712.  They had seven children together.  I descend from their son Augustin and from their daughter Anne Marie.  By the time that 1755 came around, he already had twenty-one grandchildren.

When I look at this blank white page with a few black marks on it, I’m wondering how I’m going to get them to color the picture of Pierre Landry’s life and what I presume to be a stark contrast in the before and after pictures.  Because he was living in a community of mostly family and close friends.  Travel and communication were not as fast-paced then as they are now.  Acadie as a whole only consisted of several thousand individuals and it’s not likely that he knew everybody.  He lived in a tight-knit community with cousins, children, and grandchildren living nearby.

Another thing that makes the story difficult to tell is that there is not that much information about Pierre.  We know about when he was born and got married.  We know of his marriage to Marguerite Forest and their children together.  We also know that Marguerite died around 1745.  That death date is very uncertain, and it could have been closer to the 1755 date when so much turmoil began.  If she did die around 1745, Pierre would have had his large supportive family around him to help him through his loss.  If she survived through the beginning of Exile, his support system would have been shattered at that point.

Because that’s what happened during the Exile.  Families were broken apart and sent to various places to live.  The English were not happy with those French speaking Acadians in North America, so they removed them from their homes and shipped them to remote, unwelcoming ports.  Their homes and churches were destroyed, their livestock was killed, and their families were divided.  This time is known by various names – The Grand Derangement, The Great Deportation, or The Acadian Exile.  

It was a terrible time for the Acadians.  Many of them lost their lives.  There is an Acadian genealogist/researcher named Nicole Gallant Nunes who has set about gathering the names of all of those Acadians who died during that time.  I’ve been adding those names to my tree as a remembrance for those terrible times.  You quickly start to notice how many people died who were close to your ancestors. 

I’ve talked about Pierre Landry before because he was separated from his son and grandchildren in my line because of the Exile.  Augustin Landry was my 4x great grandfather and he ended up in Louisiana with his family.  I descend from his son Joseph Ignace Landry, who was born around 1753.  He most likely knew his grandfather his first few years, but then the Grand Derangement happened.  No other generation in my Landry family line knew their Landry grandfather.  Joseph Ignace could have but was prevented by tragic events.  

But that was not all that Pierre lost.  I want to talk about all of the people he lost during this period.  I thought I would start with his cousins.  Since he was sixty-five at the start of the Exile, he had already lost his parents, aunts, and uncles.  Like I said, he had a large family.  I counted that he lost at least fifty first cousins.  I’m counting their spouses in this number as well.  That’s a huge number of people to lose and it was people that he most likely knew well.  Of course, he wouldn’t have known about all of those deaths.  People were separated from their families and were not given information about them.  I’m sure they heard news about deaths and drownings and such, but not specifically about the family members you were concerned about.

I won’t even try to count the number of deaths among his first cousins’ children.  I also descend from some of his cousins and know some tragic stories in those lines.  In 1755, Pierre had nine siblings who were alive.  They were in their sixties and seventies, so not a good age to try to survive such upcoming trauma.  Within fifteen years, all of them had died.  Some of them died in various places of Exile, and a few of them died soon after settling in Quebec. 

Among Pierre’s children, three of his seven died during the first few years of the Exile.  My ancestor Anne Marie Landry was one of them.  She was married to Joseph Babin, and their family was Exiled to Upper Marlboro in Maryland, which is where she died at some point before 1763.  Her daughter Dorothee died then as well.  The rest of the family ended up in Louisiana.

Pierre’s oldest daughter Marie was Exiled to France.  Her husband Jean Theriot died at sea during the voyage in 1756.  Marie died in 1778 in France.  The Exile in France continued until 1785 for many Acadians.  Yet some decided to stay.  Maybe she had decided to stay.  I don’t know what happened to her eight children.  It’s unlikely that Pierre ever heard about what happened to his daughter.

Augustin’s family fared well during the Exile, considering what happened to other families.  They were in Maryland for 12 years and then made their way to Louisiana and settled in St. Gabriel.  His next-youngest sister Marguerite did not fare so well.  She was Exiled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with her husband Bruno Trahan.  She died there in 1757.  She had one known daughter – Margaret.  Younger brother Basile, his wife Brigitte Boudreau, and their two daughters were sent to Maryland.  They also survived and settled in Louisiana.  Bridgitte Landry was Pierre’s other daughter who did not survive the Exile.  She died before 1763 in Maryland.  The youngest son named Joseph was Exiled to Upper Marlboro with his wife and three children.  They survived and settled in Louisiana.

It’s strange that I keep thinking that Pierre “only” lost three of his seven children during that time.  There were other family groups that suffered more deaths.  Then I think of when my sister Jodie died and the effect it had on my parents.  I never wanted them to have to deal with that again.  It’s hard to know if Pierre was ever aware of those deaths.  He settled in Quebec, where he lived until 1786.  He was around 96 years old.  I would think that he found other Acadian friends and family to live nearby.  His children and their families mostly settled in Louisiana, so I don’t think he saw any of them during the last thirty years of his life.

Now that is tragic.

 

This is a great old photo from 100 years ago.  I haven’t known about it that long, though.  The first time I saw it and the other one like it was in 2019 when a few cousins got together to share old photos.  Those two were in the Tin Can Collection that Aunt Wana had in her attic for many years.  The photos are not only old, but they are also very long.  Actually, they were rolled up in a tube.  So they weren’t actually in the tin can per se, but I still refer to them as part of the Tin Can Collection.  I had to scan the photos in three separate scans and then stitch them together.  The main difference between this photo and the other one is that the men are not wearing their hats in this photo.

But look at this great old photo.  It’s definitely worth it.  I cleaned it up a little also to make it look a bit more cared for.  The photos have writing on them, and they give the date of August 1918.  The group is identified as Co 2 Advance Detachment E.O.T.C.  I’m not really sure what that means.  It was taken at Camp Humphreys, which was in Virginia.  My grandfather Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry was stationed there in1917 to 1918 for training purposes.  He joined the military when he was 24 years old.  

He seemed to have had good memories of his time in the service.  There are several photos of him by himself, with friends, and in large groups.  There’s even some of him playing his favorite sport – baseball.  He wasn’t having fun the whole time, of course.  Like I said, he was there to train.  One of the things he was training on were large guns, like cannons.  It’s the reason he had hearing loss for the rest of his life.  He also never saw action.  Just a few months after this photo was taken, the Great War came to an end.  He was honorably discharged on Dec. 4, 1918.  Those papers say he was in Company 1.

Here is a crop of the photo so you can see which one is my Pee Paw.  He’s in the middle of this one.

Can you believe it?  I almost forgot about writing a post today.  I was reminded earlier, and it slipped my mind.  Then we started watching a movie.  It was interrupted by a phone call.  When the caller asked what we were doing, I was reminded again about it.  You would think after doing this for ten years that I wouldn’t forget about my Thursday night obligation.  Not that it’s really an obligation.  I forgot about it last Christmas, too, and was two days late with my post.  Not this year.

I thought I would go ahead and do another Christmas post this year since it is Christmas Day.  Merry Christmas!  It’s what I had planned all along.  Three Christmas post this year seemed right.  The first one included a photo from the 1970s.  The second one had a photo from the 1960s.  So I thought I’d follow the trend and include a photo from a decade earlier.  

This photo is from 1958 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  That’s a long time ago.  I wasn’t even born yet.  But I would soon be joining these siblings and cousins in the Landry Christmas traditions.  Back then the event would occur at my grandmother’s house in Lake Charles.  She was born in Crescent, Louisiana, which is near Plaquemine.  She was given the name Germaine Erie Patureau, though she usually went by Erie.  She would grow up in Crescent and Lafayette, get married to Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, and then reared a family in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

She became a grandmother in 1948 when my cousin Shirley was born.  We call her “The First” because she demands it.  It was at that point that my grandmother went from Erie and Mama to Mee Maw.  My grandfather was called Pee Paw and he was around for most of these earlier cousins, but he died in 1957, so I never knew him.  I didn’t think about all of those things back then.  I just knew that we all loved going to be with our aunts, uncles, and cousins at Mee Maw’s house.  You could tell that she loved all of her grandchildren very much.  I’m pretty sure I was her favorite, though.

But in 1958 I wasn’t there, so someone else must have been the favorite at that point.  It could have been Shirley.  She was the first, as we all know.  And I will admit that she is loveable. But then my sister Jodie was pretty special too.  Doesn’t she look angelic in her pink dress?  She was the first in my family.  That’s always a special thing.  Look at Doug, who is in the black shirt in front of Jodie.  He was the first in Aunt Germaine’s family.  He looks really happy.  Maybe Mee Maw told him that he was her favorite (so far!)

I think that’s what she wanted.  How could she not love all of those little kids who were her grandchildren?  She wanted them to feel special and that she loved them best.  I think she accomplished that.  She had lots of love to go around.

IPSIWHFT