Month: February 2018

I had a hard time deciding what to write about this week.  Not really.  I just didn’t have anything that stood out this week for my mom’s side of the family.  Since I wrote something about the Landry family last week, I thought it should be time to write about her side.  I was thinking that the Keys family was due a posting.  There were some interesting things going on with the Keys family this week, but there wasn’t a good photo to go along with it.

I also thought that the interesting thing about the Keys this week wouldn’t be interesting to too many people.  “What was it?” you ask?  Ok, I’ll go ahead and tell you.  I had a couple of new DNA matches at Ancestry this week.  Actually they are matches to aunt Loris.  She’s the only one I tested there until recently.  I sent a DNA sample in recently, but haven’t got my results yet.  I did a DNA test in 2013, but that was at 23andMe.  The interesting thing about the Keys matches is that I think Ancestry has finally passed up 23andMe as far as Keys family members who have tested.  There are about 40 descendants of Henry Keys and Martha Cook who have tested.  And now that I think about it, if I count all of Julie’s family that have tested, 23andMe still has more.

So the interesting thing that happened this week with the Keys family didn’t really happen.  Now I’m glad that this post is not about that!  So the other thing that happened this week is that my brother Rob sent me some old photos that he took back in the 70s.  They were really fun to see, but I didn’t think I would be using any for Throwback Thursday.  Throwback Thursdays are for things that happened a long time ago and the 70s were only 40 years ago.

Then a post that I wrote almost two years ago started getting some attention.  A few people liked it and made a comment about it, and that was that.  But when I was thinking about a theme for this week, I remembered these seemingly unrelated events.  And there was a common theme.  The post that got the attention included a photo of Daddy with his sisters, and one of the photos that Rob sent me was a photo of me and mine.

Van, Jamie, Jodie, and Karen in 1974 under the old mimosa tree.

I had even edited it and got rid of the spots and dust that show up on scans of slides.  So here is a photo of me and my three sisters.  My name is Van and I am the boy in the photo.  I estimated that I am thirteen years old in this photo.  This is based on the fact that I’m not wearing glasses and I got contacts in 1974.

Then there’s my sister with the longest hair in this photo.  That’s my younger sister Jamie and she didn’t have long hair much longer.  She cut her hair really short either in late 1974 or early 1975.  So that would put the time as the summer of 1974.  Jamie and I were in junior high school then.  I was probably still a paper boy, too.

Continuing counterclockwise (and to shorter hair) brings you to Jodie.  She was the oldest of all of the siblings.  She graduated from high school in 1971 and had gone off to college.  She was the oldest, yet she lived the shortest amount of time.  She died in 1989 at the age of 36.

And that brings us to Karen.  She also got contacts in 1974 (as did Al), so I know that it wasn’t just me taking a photo without my glasses so I’d be cuter.  (Something I never did!  Big clunky black glasses in every photo!)  Karen was just starting her senior year in high school (or getting ready to) because she graduated in 1975.

This is my favorite photo of me with my three sisters.  Actually it’s the only one that I can think of.  I probably looked for one when I wrote those posts about sisters two years ago and couldn’t find one.  But now I have one.  Thanks, Rob.  I’m glad you climbed up in our old mimosa tree all those years ago and snapped that picture of us.  It’s a keeper.

Before there were digital cameras or computers; before there were footprints on the moon; before there was FM radio, photography, or Morse Code; before there were cars, dandy horses, or hot air balloons; and before there was a Declaration of Independence; there were Landrys in Louisiana. Or was it Louisianne or Luiciana? Whatever you want to call it and whoever it was owned by, a Landry was there two hundred and fifty years ago.

In St. Martinville, a wall was erected to honor those Acadian Exiles who made it to Louisiana. You can see our ancestors Augustin Landry, Marie Madeleine Babin, and their son Joseph Ignace on the list.

After spending about 100 years in Acadie, which is the area of modern day Nova Scotia, our Landry family was part of the Grand Derangement that was started in 1755.  Thousands of Acadians were driven from their lands by the English.  Even though the Acadians tried to maintain a neutrality in their community in North America, they still fell victim to the ravages of wars between England and France in the 1700s.  After their homes were burned and they were separated from their families, they were boarded onto ships and carried to places where they were mostly not welcome.  Some of them didn’t survive the passage.

Some of those survivors were our Landry family, who at the time consisted of Augustin Landry (b. 1719) and his wife Marie Magdelena Babin (b. 1725).  With them were a daughter named Marie and a son named Joseph Marie from his first marriage, a son named Joseph Ignatius (b. 1748-our ancestor), daughter Marguerite, and a son Mathurin.  There was another child, too. He was either Louis (according to Daddy), or she was Madeleine (according to the Wall).  (I have found further documents that show that there definitely was another daughter named Madeleine.  No Louis, so my dad was incorrect this time.  It happens.)  (2021- Oops.  More investigation shows that there was also a Louis Landry born in 1769.  So there was a Madeleine and a Louis.  Daddy was correct after all!) The family spent some years in Maryland where one or two of the youngest children may have been born.

There were other family members that were exiled in Maryland as well.  I don’t know all of the details, but some of Augustin’s close family were there.  He actually had two sisters (Bridgitte and Anne Marie) that died in Maryland during their time of exile there.  They did not have many fond memories of their stay in Maryland.

Then there was a spark of hope in 1767.  The Spanish crown was in possession of land along the Mississippi River and they were looking for people who were willing to populate the area.  Somehow the Landry family heard this news and it sounded promising.  So they loaded up all of their worldly possessions – two trunks is what they were known to have – and went to Louisiana.  And sure enough, they were given a land grant encompassing 8 arpents frontage along the Mississippi River at St. Gabriel (about 6 miles from where I work).

And now we get to the whole reason I am telling this story!  I found a document the other day that I was very excited to find.  I had read about it on someone’s information about Augustin, but had not seen it.  After Augustin had been in Louisiana a couple of years, the Spanish king must have gotten a little worried about the people he had given land to.  So once they had grown accustomed to having the land and putting much labor into developing it, they were required to swear their allegiance to Spain.  After decades of arguing with the English about oaths of fidelity and trying to maintain neutrality, the only thing it got them was a harsh eviction notice and a dozen years of being nomads.  They were probably read to just sign on the dotted line.

August Landry made his mark to signify his unconditional oath of allegiance to Spain in 1769.

In this case, it was more of an “X marks the spot.”  Obviously Augustin could not read or write.  At least that’s what I infer from someone who cannot write his own name.  Wouldn’t that be the first thing you’d learn to write? Not that I’m implying that there was something wrong with him.  We are all a product of our time and our experience.

And if he couldn’t read or write, it amazes me how people learned the news of their relatives in different places.  There was no TV or telephone, but the Acadians did hear news of their families in Louisiana one way or another.  I suppose those that could write wrote to those that could read.  The news spread, and many more of them came here to start anew.  And the Landrys were among them.

When the cotton gin was invented and made its way to Louisiana, a Landry was there to use it.  When the telegraph came around, I’m sure some of those Landrys could read and write and make use of it.  The same could be said for many more innovations through the years.

In fact one Landry in Louisiana is typing words on a computer this instant and a short time after that quite a few other Landrys and their kin all over the world will have access to those words.  Quite a bit of a difference from the ancestor they will be reading about.

Have read about.

For more information about my Landry family’s Exile experience, check out this post:

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 1 – Landry/Babin