Month: September 2018

Magloire et Henriette

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I thought I would add a little French to the title since the subjects of this post spoke and wrote in French.  For those of you that may not know, “et” is the French word for “and.”  I never learned French when I was younger, but I wish I had.  It would have come in handy since I have French ancestors.

It would have really helped with this letter, which was written by one of my ancestors in 1799.  I found out about the letter when I was exploring some family connections on a Facebook group about southern Louisiana ancestry at the beginning of 2018.  Someone posted rough, blurry photos of the letter and the transcription.  Come to find out, it was a love letter from Magloire Dupuy to Henriette Serrette.

To find this couple in my family tree, you have to go through my paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry (Mee Maw) and her father Vincent Maximilian Patureau (Grampa Max).  Grampa Max’s father was Ferdinand Patureau, who is the patriarch of all of the Patureau families in southern Louisiana.  But the matriarch of all of these families was his wife Marie Emma Landry Patureau.  Emma’s parents were Eli Onezime Landry and Jeanne Zerbine Dupuy.  Jeanne Zerbine was one of the eight children of Magloire et Henriette.

So now that you know the results of the letter, I’ll tell you a little more about Magloire and Henriette.  Magloire (I’ve seen it spelled “Magluar” in Spanish documents.  It must have been spelled phonetically.) was born in 1777 in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.  His parents and all of his ancestors were Acadians, so he would be the first generation Cajun.  Henriette was also the first generation born in North America, but her parents and ancestors were born in France.

They lived and met in Louisiana when it was still under Spanish rule, but they both were part of the French-speaking culture.  I don’t know the particulars of how Magloire and Henriette met, but this letter gives a little bit of insight into their relationship.  It’s amazing that it survived through the years.  I don’t know those particulars either.  I just know that at some point it was in an attic and rediscovered. Then at some later point someone posted a blurry copy of it on Facebook.  I decided to search for a better copy.

It didn’t take too long.  I went to some type of Cajun reunion/social gathering in West Baton Rouge Parish and started asking people.  Most people didn’t know what I was talking about, but then I came across Lucy Landry.  She is related to me, but not through the Landry line – that’s her married name.  We are related through Magloire & Henriette and she had a good copy of the letter that she was willing to share.  Woo hoo! Thank you, Lucy!

So I got a copy of the original letter and transcription.  I decided to edit it to try to bring it back to closer to what I thought it might originally look like.  There were age spots from tape that was used to put it back together.  It also had writing on top of it to fill in for parts that had been more damaged.  I got rid of those things and then copied words from other parts of the letter.

I also changed the transcription a little bit.  I took poetic license with the help of Google Translate.  People nowadays are turned off by the phrase “I want to possess you as my dutiful wife.”  The meaning of “have” and “possess” are very close, and the phrase “I want to have you as my faithful wife” sounds a little better.  Things were a bit different back then.

So let me go ahead and give you my version of the transcribed letter.  Imagine yourself sitting in your parlor back in June of 1799.  No air conditioning, so it could have been rather warm in Iberville Parish in southern Louisiana.  Here is the letter:

Iberville June 2, 1799

Mademoiselle

The esteem which everyone has for your virtue and your modesty, and my own familiarity with them which  I have had for a long time, lead me to take the liberty of writing you these lines and telling you simply and genuinely that I should consider myself the happiest man if I could win a small place in your thoughts.  Certainly I may often be found in the presence of a number of young ladies of very great merit, though I must acquiesce that none of them has been capable of significantly touching my heart as you have.  O to Heaven that I might have enough good qualities that you might honor me with some consideration, and that this kindness might surely lead to my goal which would be to have you one day as my very dear and faithful wife.  I should have nothing more to desire on earth, since I would have in you what I esteem more than everything else in the world put together.     I am, Mademoiselle, with the most sincere devotion,

Your humble and very obedient servant,

Magloire Dupuy

That’s it.  I hope you enjoyed it.  I think it is a great treasure to have from an ancestor from so long ago.

One day I would like to see the original.

I thought I’d go ahead and post the original transcript that I got.  It was very useful in working out some of the original words that were so illegible.  As you can see, it is from the Peavy Family Papers.  (Thanks again, Lucy!)

For a follow-up to this post, you can readMagloire et Henriette: After the Happily Ever After.

Bucklin Blood

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James A. Bucklin circa 1880s.

This is not my favorite photo.  It was taken at some time in the late 1800s.  Since it is a photo of my great great grandfather James A. Bucklin, it was taken before his death date of May 15, 1890.  He was 69 years old at the time of his death and it is difficult to tell how old he is in the photo.  The reason I’m not fond of the photo is the same reason it is difficult to tell how old he his – it has been tampered with.

I think it was some combination of painting or coloring on a photographic negative.  So I can’t really tell what was actually part of the original image.  Was there any hair on the top of his head?  Was this the alternative they had back then for Hair Club for Men?  Was his beard that full?  I doubt it.  But it could have been somewhat long.  Like I said, it’s hard to tell.

But nevertheless I do like it because it is an old image of my ancestor and there aren’t that many of him around.  He was born in 1821 in Palmer, Massachusetts, which was before practical photography became popular.  At least there is an image of him.  He came from a long line of Bucklins that lived in Massachusetts.  Sadly, there are no photos of those previous generations.  He was actually the fifth generation born in the United States.  I should really say North America, since the first Bucklin arrived in 1635 in Hingham, Massachusetts.

There was some question about the connection to that long line of Bucklins in Massachusetts, but that has been settled for the most part.  Still, I was beginning to wonder about the connection myself because of the lack of DNA matches that come from that family line.  There is no question about the Landry, Phenice, and Stanbrough connection.  I have lots of DNA matches with those names in their family tree.

But then again, those family names are also associated with large families.  But the family name that has the most matches is the Patureau family.  I keep thinking I have tracked down all of my third cousins in that line and then another DNA match pops up with a new Patureau name.  And they are usually big families, so I’m adding twenty or thirty or more names to my tree.  I have found hundreds of cousins along the Patureau line.

The reason I have DNA matches with some of them is that there are so many available to test.  I kept wondering why I didn’t have any Bucklin third cousins show up as matches.  Then it dawned on me that there must not be any at all.  I wrote a sad story about one of James’s sons Joseph.  He was married three times and had four children (or so).  But they mostly died young and none of them produced offspring.

The same is true for the other children of James, except for his son Louis.  Louis was my great grandfather.  He and his wife Addie Hine Bucklin had a dozen children, so I have lots of second cousins.  But that doesn’t prove James’s connection to the Massachusetts Bucklin line.  It just shows that we all descend from James.  And once you get past third cousins, your chances of matching a distant relative decreases.

Thankfully, it is not impossible.  I do have one match that shows the connection.  One.  (I say that with emphasis, but not enough to deserve an exclamation point.)  I do have a fourth cousin once removed who descends from James’s brother William Livere “Willie” Bucklin.  That was exciting, but I would like to have a few more.

Actually I do have many more that point back to the Massachusetts connection.  James’s father was born in Barnstable, and there are a lot of our (mine, mom’s, Aunt Loris’s, and Uncle Austin’s) DNA matches that have ancestors from that same area.  I just can’t tell who our common ancestors were.

So if you are related to me through this man, know that you too have deep roots in colonial Massachusetts.

Erie Alone

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I noticed that many of the past few posts have been large groups.  I like those old photos with lots of people in them, but they are more work to identify them all.  Not that I can I identify them all, but I try to.  So I thought I’d post a photo with fewer people in it.

It’s also time to post something for my dad’s side of the family.  I thought I’d post something about my Mee Maw.  I had some group photos from when she was in school, but I don’t want to post a group shot.  You see the dilemma I have when trying to find the perfect post every week?

But lucky for me, there is a photo of Mee Maw by herself that I’ve been wanting to post for a while.  I posted another photo of her that was taken on the same day, but that was over two years ago, so I should be good to post it now.

Erie Patureau sitting pretty in 1921.

Here it is.  This was taken in July 1921 somewhere in southern Louisiana.  Germaine Erie Patureau was born in Crescent, Louisiana, (near Plaquemine) on August 6, 1895.  Her parents were Max and Therese Landry Patureau.  Her mother died in 1909 when Erie was just 14 years old.

In 1912 she went off to college in Lafayette at SLI.  She may have stayed with Grandma Babin at that time.  Grandma Babin was her mother’s mother.  I always refer to her as Belite.  Her full name was Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin.  She was one of the beautiful daughters of the Widow Bujol who made a flag before the Civil War to see off the soldiers in the Brusly area.  But in 1912, she was just Erie’s grandmother.  Belite and her second husband Magloire Babin had moved to Lafayette a few years earlier.

In 1915 Erie graduated from college and began her teaching profession in Lafayette.  I’ve shared a photo of her with her classroom once before.  She was living in Lafayette in 1920 according to the Census.  She was living with her mom’s half sister and her family.  Her mom was the daughter of Belite and Trasimond Landry, and her mom’s half-sister Clemence was the daughter of Belite and Magloire Babin.  Also in the household was Clemence’s husband and their six children, as well as Belite.

As it turns out, Clemence’s husband was her own second cousin Louis Peter Landry.  Louis had a younger brother by the name of Robert Joseph Landry.  We all know what happens next.  In 1900 Rob’s brother Sebastian had married their first cousin Manette.  Then in 1905 Louis married their second cousin Clemence.  So really, a cousin marriage was long overdue!

Because that’s what Erie did in November of 1921.  She married her mom’s first cousin Rob and moved with him to Lake Charles to start a family of her own.  So much for Erie being all alone as the title suggests.  But as we all know, she lived happily ever after.

Stanbrough or Hine?

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The family of George Hine and Susan Stanbrough with relatives (presumably) circa 1898.

Here is an old photo from the collection.  Maybe I should say it is from the collective.  (Resistance is futile!)  It is from a collection of photos from my mom’s side of the family.  My grandfather’s sisters collected old photos and passed them on to my mom’s cousin Louise.  She and her son Joseph have scanned them and generously share them with family, including me.  This photo has been edited quite a bit to clean it up and make repairs.  Joseph started it and then shared it with me.  I cleaned it up a bit more and brought it to this version.

The first version I ever saw was quite decrepit.  I’ll tell you why.  It looks like one of the things that Louise did was to print out many of these old photos and made photocopies.  Then she went around (or mailed them out) asking the aunts and cousins to identify as many of the people as they could.  There were some identifications attributed to my mom.  She had a good memory for many years and was pretty good at recognizing those old relatives.  The famed family historian Edith Keys Segraves was questioned for some of those photos.

For this photo, Edna Bucklin Keys was consulted.  She identified the older couple sitting to the right as “Grandpa” and “Susan Stanbrough Hine.”  On the left border of the photo it read “Stanbrough family?”  Evidently no one knew who the other people in this photo were, but it was assumed that they were family.  I tend to agree.

1898 – Detail with names

I’m pretty sure that their daughter Addie Hine is standing behind Grandpa George Hine and Grandma Sue.  (Addie was the mother of my maternal grandfather Fred Bucklin.) She is usually standing behind her parents in photos, and in some she has her hand on her mother’s shoulder.  I recognize their sons from other photos that I’ve seen.

On the right is their son Rowe.  To the left of Addie is Jim and the next male to the left is Lonnie (also in dark jacket).  The youngest son Ollie is sitting on the ground and also wearing a dark jacket.  There is another son named Bert and I assume that it is him standing behind Addie.

The other people in the photo are a mystery.  As Aunt Edna indicated, they could be extended Stanbrough family. Grandma Sue had eleven siblings and one older half brother. The other possibility is that the others were part of the extended Hine family.  Grandpa George had six siblings.  Both sides of the family lived in Indiana.

I’m thinking this was two families taking a photograph together.  The older woman sitting on the left and the man standing next to her are likely the parents or grandparents of the other people in the photo.  I looked through my family tree to see if any family grouping looked similar in structure to the one in the photo, but I don’t think I have enough information to come to any conclusion.  So a mystery they remain.

In the meantime I will be looking to see if anyone from those extended Stanbrough and Hine families post the same photo or photos of the same people.  If you perchance should know who any of them are, do let me know.  I would greatly appreciate it.