Month: February 2017

Hats in Hand and a Fob to Boot

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Southern gentlemen from 100 years ago.  Note the fob on my great grandfather Max Patureau on the left. This photo has been edited and colorized.

This photo has a bit of Southern charm about it.  Don’t you think?  The men are dressed nicely with their jackets and hats.  I guess hats on your head were not for  indoors or for photos.  I’m not really sure about hat etiquette from 100 years ago.  The setting is very nice as well.  It looks like these men are standing around old live oaks with Spanish moss hanging from them.

I’m pretty sure this was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana.  I’ll tell you why I think this.  The man on the left is my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau, who we all like to call “Grampa Max.”  He lived in Plaquemine until 1912 and then moved to Lafayette with his family.  Part of the family was his son Romuald or Rome (rhymes with foamy) who is standing next to him in this photo.  Next in the photo is Louis Joseph Peter Landry who was the brother of Robert Joseph Landry, Sr., otherwise known as my grandfather Pee Paw aka Pappy.  So Louis was my grand uncle.

Louis and his wife had moved to Lafayette by the time their first child was born in 1906.  And since his wife was Clemence Babin, aunt of my grandmother Erie Patureau (Mee Maw), the families would have associated with each other.  They were pretty close according to Tommy Landry’s account of the family.  In fact my grandmother was living in Louis and Clemence’s household at the 1920 Census.  And with family get-togethers like the one in this photo, there would be chances for her to get to know her mother’s first cousin Rob Landry quite well.  Well enough that they were married in November of 1921.  (Which makes me wonder:  Is there a photo of Mee Maw and Pee Paw’s wedding?  If so, someone is holding out big time on me!)

Getting back to the photo.  The man on the far right is Pierre Oscar Patureau.  He was Grampa Max’s younger brother.  He was a dentist and he lived in New Orleans.  That doesn’t help my theory that this photo was taken in Lafayette, but it still points to southern Louisiana.   And since Uncle Oscar died in 1926, this photo was taken earlier.  I estimate the date as around 1920.

The main inspiration for posting this photo was DNA related.  On 23andMe daddy had a match with someone that showed as his 2nd or 3rd cousin.  This is not unusual because everybody with a good amount of Cajun DNA shows up at this predicted level of relationship.  Even the fact that the match had the last name of Landry wasn’t too significant.  But his name showed up on my tree, so I checked to make sure he was the same person in my tree.  And sure enough he is.  He even has a son named Van Landry!  The DNA match is the great great grandson of Louis Joseph Peter Landry, the man in this photo.  But this DNA match didn’t know it.  He only knew that his grandfather’s name was Dickie Landry.  With the great legacy of family tree information and old photos that my dad left behind, I have been able to share lots of family history with him.  I hope he appreciates it as much as I do.

A Keepsake Letter: Much love, Myrtle

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This letter has been on my mind the past few days, so I thought it would make a good post in the Keepsake series.  My cousin Mary texted me a note about the song “Amazing Grace” that was played so wonderfully at my parents’ funeral by a family friend Marcus Davis.  She also talked about how it had been Grandma and Grandpa’s favorite song.  That put me on a quest to find this letter that I had acquired a few months earlier.

It came from a stash of some of my mom’s treasured mementos.  It is a letter that my grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin wrote to her childhood friend Emily Brown Stothart.  It was written a couple of months after the death of my grandfather Fred Bucklin.  They had been married for almost 54 years.  That should be enough information to set you up to read the letter I’m posting.  It mostly speaks for itself, and thankfully she had nice penmanship as well.

I think it is a wonderful letter to have.  So touching and sweet.  There is something that I want to accentuate, though.  She kind of casually makes the statement, “A person can’t help but grieve…” and continues on.  Grieving is not the same as, “I shed a few tears” or “I felt a bit sad.”  After witnessing firsthand the grief of someone losing their spouse of many decades, I’m sure it was a powerful feeling and experience for her.  And this letter was one of the ways that she dealt with some of that grief.

It is also interesting to see her talk about some childhood experiences.  I really liked how she talked about fixing their hair in the “new styles” that they had seen on their favorite blog (Oops, wrong time frame.  Must have been from magazines.)  In another letter her friend talked about riding the buggy to school and sometimes Myrtle’s brothers Henry and Orville would ride horses to accompany them.  Oh, the good old days.

Patureau Lane Properties

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Circa 1905 Patureau Lane in Crescent, Louisiana

 

I came into possession of this photo a little over a year ago.  I had seen it in the book “Trasimond Landry: Soldier and Public Servant” by Thomas R. Landry (my Mee Maw’s first cousin) and was on the lookout for a good copy of it.  That book is one of two books that I have about my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry.  It has some history of the Landry family and also lists all of the descendants of Trasimond Landry.  But this post is technically a Patureau post since he was my grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau’s maternal grandfather.

When I started writing these posts, I knew I was going to have to track down more photos because I really didn’t have that many to begin with.  So I referred to this book to see what photos I wanted and this was one of the top ones I wanted.

Then we moved my parents out of their home in Jennings when they moved to assisted living in Lake Charles in August 2015.  Someone saw the “happy house” at 758 Lucy Street and decided they wanted it, so my siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws and I cleared out their home in January 2016.  As you may have guessed, this photo was discovered while clearing out the house.  My brother-in-law Allen found it with some other old photos that I had never seen before.  I’ve already posted some of the others, but now it’s time for Patureau Lane Properties.

I called it that because this is a south-facing view of Patureau Lane in Crescent, Louisiana, around 1905.  It was named Crescent because of the crescent shaped bend in Bayou Plaquemine about 4.5 miles west of Plaquemine proper.  For a period of time it was a central portage area for travelers in that area of Louisiana.  This led to a community in Crescent in the early 1900s that consisted of many members of the Landry and Patureau extended families.  (Which made it easy to find and marry your not too distant cousins!)

One part of that community was the Star Club.  This was long before social media, so people had to have some place to get together to share news with their neighbors.  It was a social club, but it also performed services for the community.  But the big event was a ball that they had at the end of the year.  The ball was held in the Star Club Hall, which is shown on the right in this photo.

But another important fact about the Star Club was that the secretary for the year of 1902 was my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau and the treasurer was my great great uncle Thomas B. Landry (Thomas R.’s father).  In the photo V. M. Patureau’s home is the house that is to the left (across from the Star Club Hall).  The home on the right belonged to the Leobon Patureau family.  The Thomas B. Landry family lived across the bayou road from V. M. Patureau. (The horse and carriage in the full-frame photo was in front of that home.  This photo was taken at the intersection of Patureau Lane and the bayou road.)

The main problem with this photo is not really a problem with the photo.  It’s a problem with my knowledge.  I don’t know who all of these people are!  Even though there are several little girls in the photo and they look similar to old photos of the Patureau family, I can’t definitely identify anyone.  But I’m sure they must be family.  Why else would we have the photo and the photo was used in the book about descendants of Trasimond Landry?  I sure would like to know who they were.  Does anyone know?  There may be other copies of this photo out there.  If anyone knows more or finds out more, I would appreciate being kept in the loop.  Inquiring minds want to know!

Patureau Lane circa 1905

Full-frame photo of Patureau Lane looking south from the bayou road. Behind to the left would be Thomas B. Landry’s home, to the left is V. M. Patureau’s home, Star Club Hall is in the middle to the right, and to the right is the home of Leobon Patureau. Circa 1905.

Keys Reunion 2017

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I thought I’d use my Throwback Thursday series to encourage everyone to try to attend the 2017 Keys Family Reunion.  It will be held on June 3 from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm at the Lutheran Church in Jennings.  It is being hosted by our cousins Julie Phenice Campbell and Diane Phenice Prejean.  It should be a nice celebration of 130 years of our family in the United States.

Keys Family reunion in 1973This photo is from the first Keys Reunion that I remember.  It was on June 10, 1973, at a KOA campground near Jennings off of I-10.  The newspaper article for this event is on the first page of a scrapbook that I kept back then.  It was written, of course, by the family historian Edith Keys Segraves.  The original immigrants who came from England in 1887 were Martha Cook Keys and her children Henry Alfred “The Judge”, Leonard James, Daisy, Ruth, and Mabel.  None of them survived past the year of 1967.  So the oldest generation present in 1973 were the grandchildren of that brave pioneer woman Martha Cook Keys.  My grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin was one of those grandchildren present. (She is sitting right of center in a greenish dress.) One of the things that surprised me in my research is that one of those grandchildren is still alive. (She has since passed away.  Martha Bryan Boose was born in 1920 and she was present at many of the reunions.

Keys Family Reunion

1973 Keys family reunion near Jennings, Louisiana.  Descendants of Daisy Keys Phenice are shown.

This photo is from the Daisy Keys group.  If you look at the left of this photo, you will see a small boy standing with a greenish shirt on.  That is my first cousin Dale Bucklin.  I am standing next to him in the brown shirt and wearing my cool 70s glasses.  Standing next to me is my younger sister Jamie.  We are standing in front of aunt Margaret and uncle Austin Bucklin (holding Anita, I presume). Next to Jamie is our cousin Keith Woolley.  In front of Grandma is my cousin John Bucklin in a lavender shirt.  Behind her are my siblings Karen, Jodie, and Al.  My mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) can be seen toward the right with a noticeable navy Y collar shirt.  My brother Rob is behind her to the left.  Behind her to the left is her father (Fred Bucklin).  My dad (Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.) is to the right of them with a red striped shirt that matches the background.  There are a few others I recognize; enough of them to realize that this is a photo of the descendants of Daisy Keys Phenice.  (See another version of this photo with names on it below.)  The top photo (which was used for the newspaper) includes descendants of all five of the children of Martha Keys.

I have a few memories of this reunion, but the most intriguing memory is what I haven’t seen – the videos that were taken that day.  I remember a few men walking around with these huge video cameras and lugging around extra batteries and such.  You had to put forth a lot of effort in those days to make a short video.  And they probably didn’t even have sound!  But I would still like to see some of that live action recorded on that long ago day.  So if any of you know who might have those videos or where they might be found, I would love to see them.  Or have a digital version of them.  I don’t ask for much!  I’m sure if they were found and brought to the reunion, they would be the highlight!

But this was not the first party for the Keys family.  I found an even older newspaper article from June 25, 1895.  That was before any of her children were married or had children of their own.  The article stated that in China, Louisiana, “the party at Mrs. M. A. Keys was enjoyed by all present.”  Hopefully the same will be said about our get together this year.

Newspaper photo from June 1973 showing most of those in attendance at the Keys Family Reunion

Photo from the Cook-Keys book by Edith Keys Segraves. My mom labeled some of the people. This is the Daisy Keys group from the 1973 reunion.

Keys Family Reunion 1973 - Descendants of Daisy Keys

Original photo of the one above. I was able to scan this from the collection of Edith Segrave’s daughter Carolyn.

Keys Family Reunion 1973 - Descendants of Daisy Keys

Photo from above that includes the names of most of the people in the photo. Thanks to all of the cousins on Facebook who helped to identify the faces.