July, 2016 | Family History

Jennie Has Been Very Sick

July 28, 2016 Joseph 2 comments

This is a letter from Joseph Bucklin to his brother Louis Charles Bucklin who was away at business/military school in Ada, Ohio. Soon after this letter, their sister Jennie Bucklin Taylor died, sometime after June 13, 1893. Jennie had not been well since at least early in April.

Louis was unusually emotional in his June 5th journal entry, stopping mid sentence, “A fellow a thousand miles from home and all he loves. feels although he may have”. He didn’t write in his journal again for five months. His daughter Edna Bucklin told us that Louis was very upset when Jennie died. He never went back to school.

You can click the images to read the letter or scroll down to see it transcribed.

Lake Arthur Sa. May 15, ‘93.
L. C. Bucklin Esq.
Ada Ohio

Dear Brother: Mother wanted me to write to you again for she dislikes to write so much, she has been here with Jennie 2 weeks watin [waiting] on her and is all tired and worn out. Jennie has been very sick and is no better at this writing, she has sinking spells nearly every day, twice mother thought she was dieing. Ben has gone up to Jennings today for the Dr. to see if he cannot change her medacine. We will keep you posted every few days as to how she is getting along.

Ed. and Clarence came down from the farm yesterday and say everything is looking nice on the farm the rice on the maria is about ready to flood and is looking fine. The corn the boys had to plant over again and is now about knee high.

Ed told me that there would be lots of peaches if nothing happens. They have been using new irish potatoes. Ed. has been having the chills and fever lately. I suppose every body up where you are, are healthy and look fine, was thinking yesterday that it would be so nice for you to be up there just at your age you can realize and enjoy everything more now than at any other age your military exercises must be nice and healthful. Mother says there are two of your last letters in the office at China which she has not read, she told me to direct your next letter to her at this place as she will get it quicker than at the other place.

Ben. and I have gotten along finely with our work will be done with our plowing this week if nothing happens and our rice we have sown is all up nicely some of it nearly ready to flood then comes the work unless we get our levees done and can catch rain.

There is not much news to write to you. Chas. Shoesmith is going north about the 1st of June and of course will take in the worlds fair.

Mr. Gardener and Fannie starts about the same time wont Charly have some highly entertaining [??] abroad if Fannie should go along when he does my wouldn’t the journey be short though.

Ed tells me that Mrs. Blessington died week ago Thurs. That one of her daug-hters got here the night before she died. Mrs. Tuppers sister and her daughter have come. Tuppers will soon reveal the advantages of this country to them. Well my store of news is about exhausted so will close. Write to mother at this place. from bro Joe

Bucklin

Myrtle the Graduate of 1925

July 27, 2016 Van Leave a comment

1925-05-29 - Myrtle Sylvia Phenice H.S. Graduation

In 1925 Myrtle Phenice graduated from Jennings High School

The woman I knew as “Grandma” was born December 19th, 1906 to Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice. She was the third of their seven children and she was named Myrtle Sylvia Phenice. The family lived in an area known as Hathaway. I’m not really sure what the ‘borders’ of Hathaway are, but it’s just down the road from China and Raymond. A few miles to the west is Kinder and a couple of miles to the east is Elton. And all of those places are about ten miles north of Jennings.

I’m not sure of the details of her early life. That’s kinda sad now that I think about it. And there are no early photos of her to give me a clue. At least none that I know of. I have photos of her parents from before she and her siblings were born, but then none until this photo. Maybe they didn’t take many photos during that time. Maybe my grandmother didn’t like any of the photos of herself as a child and destroyed them. If anybody knows more about this, please let me know. (See update.)

This photo is her high school graduation photo. She graduated from “the Jennings High School, an Authorized State High School” on May 29, 1925. I think it is a lovely photo of her. She continued her education at Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette and graduated there in 1928. This all led to a long career as an elementary school teacher at Hathaway High School.

1925 - Myrtle Sylvia Phenice H.S. Diploma

Myrtle Phenice’s diploma

Phenice

The Uninvited Guest

July 20, 2016 Van 26 comments

Nothing could strike fear into my childhood heart like the unexpected and undesired visit from The Uninvited Guest – or as we liked to call it – The UG. We all acquired a sixth sense that alerted us to the approach of the UG. As we played our fun little innocent childhood games without a care in the world, something unseen would hit us. We would all stop at once as if in a trance and chant together in a whispered voice, “Hell – fire! will kill a bug, but nothing stops the bumply UG.” We all knew what that warning meant. My younger sister would start crying, so my oldest sister would swoop her up and run as we all scrambled to our favorite hiding places.

But it wasn’t just our family who responded in this way. The neighborhood kids would scatter in all directions as they ran home to their parents. Their moms would look out the window, spit out a silent curse in our direction, and withdraw while pulling the shades tight. It’s like there was a small dark cloud that settled down over our little section of the street.

Yet for some strange reason, the adults in our family were in thrall to this creature. They went so far as to even allow it to rub its slimy bumply lips on their vulnerable necks. It still makes me shudder when I picture it. Once this bizarre ritual had been completed, they would go inside and things would settle down a bit. Then one by one each of us kids would sneak back into the house to see what manner of evil was taking place. Many times the UG would be ordering my parents around and demanding what kind of feast they were to prepare for its dinnertime. Thankfully, none of us kids were on the menu for the whims of the vile creature.

Later on in the night as we tried to sleep, I would be overcome by a feeling of dread. I just knew that something was prowling around our bedroom, hoping to fulfill its desire for an innocent’s blood. As I lay in bed with my skin crawling with goose bumps – goose bumps, mind you, not bumply bumps – I felt a need to see what was going on. When I forced myself to pry open one eye, I would see this huge dark hand on the ceiling coming down to get me. I realized it was the shadow cast by the nightlight of a hand coming toward me. And not just any hand – it had the bumply bumps of the bumply arms of that bumpfully bumpedy bumply UG. As I stared in terror I heard it rasp in a gravelly whisper, “Hell – fire! will kill a bug, but nothing stops the bumply UG.” At that, it turned around and headed out the door snickering its evil little bumply UG snicker. The end.

I admit. This is quite a bit different than my usual Throwback Thursday, but I was inspired! When I say that all of my cousins on the Landry side will know what this story is about, I mean every single one of them! And probably most of the other relatives on that side of the family. This story was inspired by and dedicated to Therese Wynhoven Mouton, my dad’s first cousin on the Patureau side of the family. But everyone knew her by her nickname “Tez.”

She was quite the character, though she was not the detestable creature that I write about in my story. Like I said, she was just the inspiration. She did show up at our house unannounced and uninvited, we did run away from her when she showed up trying to kiss everyone, she did like to tell people what to prepare for dinner or what to watch on TV, and she told us scary stories at night. Oh, yeah, and she did have bumps all over her body.

1970 - Tez Mouton and Erie Patureau Landry travelling

Tez and Mee Maw traveling circa 1970

The poor creature! She didn’t ask for those bumps and she probably didn’t have slimy lips. She was just a lonely single woman who was trying to connect with family. She was very independent too. She was a school teacher, she enjoyed writing stories and poems, and she liked to travel. But she also liked to scare little boys who probably gave her bumpy profile a hard stare. As she brought that shadowy hand down on me from the ceiling, she didn’t say anything about a bumply UG, she was reading a poem by James Whitcomb Riley, “…and the goblins gonna get you if you don’t watch out.” And that’s why I’ve been such a good boy ever since!

Patureau

Addie with Great Grand Kids

July 14, 2016 Joseph Leave a comment

Van Landry’s post this week is about Addie Hine and Louis Bucklin with a photo of them when she was 29. Ray Bucklin said she was really good with kids. She had lots of experience. They had 11 children that survived to adulthood, a total of 19 grand kids. I am not going to try counting the great grand kids. Here she is with some great grandkids. Charles and Kurt Bruchhaus? She lived at Ruth Bucklin and William Charles “Budda” Bruchhaus’ house in her later years.

Addie & Lou

July 13, 2016 Van One comment

Addie and Lou Bucklin in 1905

This is a photo of my mom’s paternal grandparents in 1905. They were married in 1898 and by the time this photo was taken, they already had five children. But before I finish counting off their children, let me tell you a little bit about the two of them.

Addie May Hine was born in Noblesville, Indiana, on Sept. 23, 1876. She was the oldest of six children born to George Hine and Susan Stanbrough. She had five younger brothers and the youngest was only eight years younger than she was. From the earliest photos of the family, it looks like they lived in a frontier area with a rough wood home. The family moved to Louisiana in 1894 and settled in the Hathaway area of Jefferson Davis Parish.

Louis Charles Bucklin was born in Masonville, Iowa, on April 11, 1873. He was the youngest child of James Bucklin and his second wife Mary Ann McGrath. James was from a family line with a long history in Massachusetts, while Mary Ann was an Irish immigrant. Louis had five older siblings – a half-sister and half-brother by his father and his first wife Rhoda Marie Gove, plus two brothers and a sister by his parents. In the 1880 census they were living in Coffin Grove, Iowa, which was a very small community in rural Iowa. Four years later the family moved to the Jennings, Louisiana, area and acquired homestead property in the Hathaway area. Louis was too young to stake a claim, but his father, brother and sister were able to.

Louis kept a journal starting in January of 1893 when he went off to school. He returned home at the death of his sister Jennie in June of 1893. From that point on his journal was mostly about farming and such. Except when he occasionally mentions a certain “Miss Hine” or “Addie” who came to help his mother with chores around the house. I suppose she was worth mentioning because he ended up marrying her in 1898, which brings us back to the top of the story.

Soon after this photo was taken, the three most important Bucklin offspring were sprung! In 1906 there came Herbert, who is the grandfather of our Joseph. Then in 1907 there was a double dose of goodness – the identical twins Fred and Clarence. Fred is my grandfather and Clarence is the father of Carla. There were a few more after that, but they’re hardly worth mentioning. I really shouldn’t joke about that because the next one, Edna, is the reason we have so many wonderful photos from way back when. She collected and protected many photos, though this one was kept by Ruth. Joseph and Louise visited and scanned numerous photos from both of them.

All in all, Addie and Lou had a nice even dozen children. Now I’m feeling a little obligated to name them all, so here goes: Leo, Mary, Ralph, Paul, Carl, Herbert, Clarence, Fred, Edna, Robert, Ruth, and Roy. That’s a lot of names to come up with. From the look of the photo, they seem like somewhat happy people – salt of the earth. I’d like to say that they lived long and happy lives, but sadly Lou died at the age of fifty-four. Addie went on the live into her eighties and died less than a month after I was born. I don’t have any personal memories of either Addie or Lou, but I do feel like I get to know them a little from the photos and stories that they left behind. And now, hopefully, you do too.

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Update for July 9, 2026 – Added a few slight bits of information for a reissue of this post on Facebook after ten years. I’m changing all of the older posts to change the spelling of Addie’s middle name to be consistently May.

Bucklin
Hine

Trasimond the Tirailleur

July 6, 2016 Van 2 comments

Jean Trasimond Landry in 1861

I realized recently that I haven’t posted one of the oldest photos in my collection of old photos. It is a Civil War photo of my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry. He was my paternal grandmother’s maternal grandfather. And being that he was from the South, he was in the Confederate Army. The photo is dated as 1861. It’s a pretty clear photo considering how old it is.

I won’t talk about the politics of the Civil War. Oh, well, maybe just a little. Slavery is wrong. It is so hard for me to understand how people can treat their fellow human beings so cruelly. I hear things like, “But they treated them so nicely.” or “They kept the buildings they lived in nice and comfortable.” or “He really cherished him and left him a gold watch in his will.”

“Really?” I think, shaking my head. If you treated them so well, why weren’t we freed? If you liked the buildings so much, why don’t we trade? If you want to leave something, leave me my free will – worth innumerable gold watches compared to the life you stole from me. But I wasn’t there (thank goodness) and people are more enlightened now (hopefully).

So I’ll get back to talking about my great great grandfather, who grew up in a culture saturated with the slavery mentality. When he was born in 1839, his family had seven slaves on their property. The number increased continually until the time of the Civil War. In 1859 Trasimond went off to St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown, Kentucky, to finish his education. When that was completed in 1861, Trasimond then became part of the West Baton Rouge Tirailleurs. This group mustered into service of the 4th Louisiana Infantry Regiment. (For more information, see the book titled Tirailleurs by Thomas H. Richey, a cousin and fellow descendant of Trasimond.)

Trasimond fought in many battles during the war with people falling all around him. The story about his battles is very riveting. Fortunately for me and my relatives, he survived all of those perilous encounters. Of course all of us descend from survivors of famines, pestilence, and wars, but to read a book that describes the experience makes it a bit more personal.

After the war Trasimond married Amelie Bujol and they had five children together. In 1879 he was bitten by a mosquito. But not just any mosquito. This one carried the virus for the yellow fever. It proved fatal. To make it through musket fire, cannon shot, and slicing bayonets only to be taken down by a lowly mosquito. When the pesky bug bit him, he wouldn’t have known that it would be his downfall. Just the same, I hope he swatted it flat!

Feb. 26, 2021 – The website MyHeritage now has a feature that animates old photos. Of course I had to try it out on this old photo. It came out really well.