October, 2016 | Family History

The Week of Bob and Betty

October 27, 2016 Van Leave a comment

This week my focus has been on my mom and dad. They were both in the hospital with different medical problems. Mama fell and broke her left hip and shoulder. She had surgery to repair these problems and then my dad fell and scratched his arm. It wasn’t really his arm that was the main problem, it was the underlying medical conditions. The blood thinners he was on for his heart started to be counterproductive because of undiagnosed conditions. Add to that some internal bleeding and anemia and he was admitted to the hospital, too. Little to no energy makes for a slow recovery, but we are hoping for the best. There have been some signs of returning energy levels.

1952-03-28-Bob Landry and Betty Bucklin in the Merry Widow

Bob Landry with Betty Lou Bucklin on Mar. 28, 1952.

But this post is not about their individual problems. Or their individual health. This post is about their relationship. Mainly about the start of their relationship. I’ve been wanting to post this picture since I found it a few months ago. This photo was taken on March 28, 1952. I know the date because mom is dressed in a costumer for an operetta at McNeese called “The Merry Widow.” She also saved the program for the event and wrote the information on the back of the photo. They were both in the production, but that is not where they met.

They actually met almost two years earlier at LSU. She was there for a state solo and ensemble competition and he was a student helper who just happened to be the one helping the sweet, cute girl from the country. It was a short encounter, but when my mom went to McNeese in the fall of 1951, my dad recognized her name and made sure to meet up with her again.

So this photo is from the first year of their courtship. Such a sweet and intimate photo. And who could have known the long history the two would share? They were married on November 1 later that year and started their married life on an Air Force base in California. That means that this coming Tuesday will be their 64th anniversary. It’s another reason that I wanted to post this photo now. Happy anniversary to the best parents I could have ever hoped for.

At Their Best

October 19, 2016 Van Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I erroneously stated that I had posted photos of all of my great grandparents. I was wrong about that. There was someone that I had left out. I’ve mentioned her in other posts, but no photo was shown. She was the first of them to die in 1909, so there aren’t as many photos of her. Still, I hope you will forgive this oversight. And curiously no one pointed out this error to me. I thought everyone was reading these posts and keeping track of all of the information in them. I’m going to have to start giving tests!

So if you haven’t gone back through all of my posts and figured it out yet, I will give you a minute to take the time to do so. In the meantime I will write this sentence. There. Now you’ve had time to find it if you want to. If you haven’t figured it out, I will let you in on this morsel of information.

The person that I’ve left out was Marie Therese Landry Patureau. She was born Sept. 25, 1868, in Plaquemine, Louisiana. She was the oldest child of Trasimond Landry and Marie Amalie “Belite” Bujol Landry. She had two younger sisters and two younger brothers before her father died in 1879. Her mother remarried and gave her two younger half sisters. A few years later she met the man of her dreams. (He also happened to be her 2nd cousin.)

Oct. 10, 1888 - Vincent Maximilian Patureau married Marie Therese Landry

A Landry-Patureau wedding in 1888.

This photo is of the marriage between Marie Therese Landry and Vincent Maximilian Patureau on Oct. 10, 1888. It is a beautiful photo of these two people. I first remember seeing it in the home of Patricia Marionneaux Nelson last year after her funeral. I was on the lookout for it until it somehow popped up in my cousin Tricia’s house while she was cleaning. (Thank you, Tricia.) She brought it to the latest reunion and I took a few photos of it.

The only thing I knew about the wedding before I saw the photo was a description that was allegedly in some newspaper. It stated, “The lovely bride, arrayed in her snowy wedding robes, looked even more charming than usual, while the manly groom, proud in the consciousness of the conquest he had made, appeared to the best advantage.” When I read that, it made me want to see what they were talking about. It’s so much better to have the photo of the event. They certainly do appear to be at their best.

I found the “alleged” newspaper article I mentioned in my post.

Feb. 5, 2020 Update

Feb. 7, 2021 Update continued – I was looking at the newspaper article and noticed the names of the bridesmaids and groomsmen. I had never bothered to look them up in my tree to see if they were there. Sure enough, many of them were. That’s because they were related to the couple getting married. The bridesmaids were all relatives. Kate Landry was Marie Therese’s younger sister who was 18 at the time. The youngest sister Manette was only 12 years old and was not mentioned. She was probably too young to be a bridesmaid. Olive and Della Bergeron were two other bridesmaids and they were first cousins to Marie Therese. Their mother (Marie Adele Bujol Bergeron) was the sister of Marie Therese’s mother (Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry). Anoise (Marie Constance Anaise) Doiron was a first cousin to the others. Her mother Marianne Celile Bujol Doiron was a sister of Belite and Marie Adele.

Louis Aillet was the first groomsman listed. I’m assuming he was the best man and Kate was the maid of honor. Louis Aillet was the first cousin of Max Patureau. Max’s mother was Emma Landry Patureau and Louis’s mother was Emma’s sister Henriette Zulma Landry Aillet. I couldn’t find a connection between the other groomsmen. They were probably friends and/or business associates of Grampa Max. N. C. Roth is one of the groomsmen and I did find a Nicolas Celestin Roth who was about the same age as Max and lived in Plaquemine. Though he is not related, in a few years he would marry Pauline LeBlanc who was related to both the bride and the groom through the Landry family line.

Old Photos

October 12, 2016 Van Leave a comment

Old family photo from some time around 1880s.

This past summer I went to Hathaway to visit cousins – my mom’s first cousin Louise and her son (my 2nd cousin) Joseph. They have been into genealogy and old photos for a lot longer time than I have. They’ve been collecting old Bucklin and Hine photos for over ten years. So we share photos with each other. (I am usually on the receiving end of this!) When we were in Hathaway, they pulled out a small, tattered looking book-like object. It was an old photo album from well over 100 years ago. It was so amazing to see all of these small, yet sharp photos of people who have been long gone.

This photo of a pensive looking woman was one of those photos. The sad thing about this (beside the obvious one being that she is no longer alive) is that we don’t know who she is. There are a few hints. The photo was taken some time around the 1880s or so. Some of the photos around it have IDs that show they were taken in Iowa. The Bucklin family had lived in Iowa during that time, so it’s probable that the photo is of a Bucklin relative. Or a friend. Or a neighbor. Or who knows? The point is that we don’t know and probably will never know. I could do some revisionist history project and give her a name and tell a story about her and post it all over the internet. If it shows up enough times, it must be true! Right?

My mom was always good about writing people’s names on the back of photos and I picked up that habit myself. She said that she remembered seeing old photos when she was a young girl and nobody knew who the people were. It was probably these same old photos that her cousin was showing to me. Of course, back when these photos were taken, nobody ever had that problem before. Photography was new and there weren’t any unidentified photos lying around. Taking a photo was a luxury and you probably only had photos of people you knew. They didn’t think about the photos lasting for over a hundred years and someone posting it on the internet for everyone to see.

But now we know. So make sure to identify the people in your photos. Especially the old ones. And if any of you cousins of mine want to share any of those old photos with me, send them my way! (A good scan will do nicely.) I’ll edit them as best I can to make them look like new. I may even be able to identify a few of the people for you. It could become the subject of a good story. I’d definitely try to preserve them for generations to come.

PS – If any of you happen to know the identity of the woman in this photo, I would appreciate the information. (And I won’t let anybody know that you’re an immortal!)

Bucklin
Hine

…to the Country

October 5, 2016 Van Leave a comment

Last week I talked about how one family left England to head for the New World. Of course, in 1887 you really couldn’t call it new anymore. People had been immigrating from Europe to North America for over two hundred years. But in some ways it still was very new. Especially when comparing it to England, Ireland, and France, which is where most of my ancestors came from. I showed you the one photo I have of my ancestors’ home in Europe. Most of the other ancestors immigrated before the invention of the camera. My next most recent ancestors were the McGraths who came from Ireland around the middle of the 1840s. And just before them the Patureaus came to Louisiana in 1840.

Patureau Lane circa 1900

This photo is a photo of where those Patureaus settled after returning to Louisiana after the Civil War. This is Patureau Lane in Plaquemine. As you can see, it was definitely a new town. And this was about 30 years after they moved to the area! Just a dirt road with a few chickens scratching around, a ditch with a few boards spanning them to cross over to your house, some fences, and a few houses are all you see.

But if you think this looks bad, think about the Keys family that I talked about last week. They left a brick home with venetian blinds, no less. When they got to southern Louisiana and decided to do a little homesteading, they didn’t have a house. But their friendly neighbors (the MacVeys) were more than accommodating. They had a roomy chicken house that they were willing to put them up in. It wasn’t any ordinary chicken house, so you couldn’t call it a coop. This chicken house had a window. Pretty snazzy, right? I seriously doubt that it had venetian blinds, though. How is that for civilized?

All I can say is that we take a lot for granted – running water, a sewerage system, electricity, roads with fancy automobiles to drive around in – to name a few. Those people had to have vision and fortitude to make such huge steps into the unknown. So here’s to our ancestors – those crazy, driven, brave, believing in themselves survivors.

June 11, 2017 Update

I’ve recently discovered information about the MacVey (not to be confused with the more Irish McVey surname) family that helped out my Keys family back in 1887. The family consisted of Thomas Lord MacVey his wife Rebecca Noble MacVey, and their two sons William Lee and Frank Lincoln. One important thing I discovered was that the family had just recently started homesteading in the area and their chicken house was brand new. That’s somewhat of a relief, isn’t it? For more information about their connection to my family, read the post The Bucklin/Keys/Ausman/MacVey Connections.