Month: December 2018

Landry Christmas Circa 1938

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Now that we are looking back at Christmas, I thought I’d take it back to a Christmas of long ago.  I’ve written at least two Christmas related stories that were about tragedies, but I’m not going to do that this year.  Our family has been hit with a tragedy this week, so I will look back to a photo that shows some peace and calm.

Germaine, Johnny, Frances, Wana, and Bobbie Landry at Christmas in 1938.

This is a photo of my dad’s family at Christmas from the late 1930s.  From the apparent ages of the kids in this photo, I estimate it to be from the Christmas of 1938.  That’s the month before my dad turned 10 years old.  I still remember how I thought it was such a big deal when my age turned from a single digit age to a double digit age.  Plus you got to use all ten fingers to show how old you were!  Oh, the joys of childhood.

And one of those joys of childhood is Christmastime.  It was such a magical time.  The expectation was so high.  And the wait was so painstankling long.  From comments from my siblings this week, I realized how well our parents protected us from the turmoil that can show itself in the world.  We all have cherished memories from childhood.

And what led to that was probably similar memories that my parents had, such as the scene from this week’s photo.  That’s my dad on the far right of the photo.  He came from a family of eight children.  The oldest three (Marie, A. J., and Hubert) are not shown in the photo.  A. J. died at the good old age of 94 last week, leaving three surviving siblings.  Those three siblings are the first three children shown in this photo from left to right.  On the left is Germaine,  who was 11 years old at the time.  Her nurturing skills were already starting, because as you can see, she seems to be comforting 2-year-old little brother Johnny in this photo.

The little girl with her head down is 4-year-old Frances Mae.  I’m not sure what she is doing.  She might have something in her lap, but my photo isn’t clear enough to make it out.  Wana, of course, is the little girl with the curly hair.  She was a happy 6-year-old who looks like she was getting ready to tell her sister a funny little story about the boy next door.  Bobbie (my dad) looks mostly happy. Or should I say content?  He doesn’t really have a big smile, but you can’t say he is sad or upset.

So there it is.  A flash into the past.  Happy times at Christmastime.  These siblings would continue to get together for Christmas for decades to come, which provided a lifetime of great memories for more people than I’ll ever know.

Fred Bucklin Circa 1928

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Fred Bucklin circa 1928

This is a nice old photo of my maternal grandfather Fred Bucklin.  I’m thinking he was around 21 years old in this photo, so the estimated date in 1928.  I’m not sure of why this photo was taken.  It was with a group of other photos from the same time.  Some of them were of him and his identical twin brother Clarence and others were of the land where their family lived.  I posted one of them a few weeks ago that looked like the beginnings of his nursery.

The other thing that I noticed about the photos is that both Fred and Clarence had a boutonniere or something with a ribbon streaming down from it.  They were both dressed up as well.  Their father Louis Bucklin died in November of 1927, but I’ve seen a photo of that and nobody was wearing anything like what is seen in this photo.

I also wondered if maybe it was some prize ribbon that they got at some fair or something.  This is probably the time that they started gaining interest in plants and nursery work.  They graduated from high school in 1926 and I know they had a business together at least by 1930.

This was also when Fred was still a single young man.  He was married to Myrtle Phenice March 12, 1930, in Raymond, Louisiana.  I would assume that the wedding took place at the Raymond Methodist Church.  I’ve never seen a photo from their wedding, but I don’t doubt that it happened!  In the 1930 Census, the record shows that Fred and Myrtle Bucklin were married at age 22 and they both were still 22.  So they were newlyweds.  He was listed as a laborer in the farm industry.  He probably worked on the Bucklin farm for his mother Addie Hine Bucklin.  Myrtle was not working at that time.

Bucklin Bros. Nursery 1931 price list

As I said, he was in business with his brother at least by 1930.  I have this copy of the price list from the 1931 growing season and my cousin Joseph has posted the one from the previous year.  As you can see from the photo, the name of the business was Bucklin Bros. Nursery.  The sheet says Elton, LA, but it was really in Hathaway.  Elton was just the closest “big town” around there.  I wonder if the name of the business was an homage to their uncles?  Their dad’s brothers Joe and Edd had a mercantile business in downtown Jennings in the early 1900s (approx. 1899-1914).  It was called Bucklin Bros. and was  a successful business for a time.

The Bucklin Bros. Nursery later changed names because there was a falling out between the two brothers.  I don’t know the particulars of the why and when of this, I just know that they ended up both having nurseries down the road from each other.   My grandfather stayed in the business for a long time.  I remember him puttering around the greenhouse in front of their property when I was a kid.

And though he retired and later died, there are still plants and cuttings of plants that he rooted and sold all of those years ago.

I enjoy coming across them from time to time.

Grandma Celeste and Her Niece

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A few weeks ago I thought about writing a post about the name Celeste.  I think it is a very nice name – heavenly, in fact.  It also has been a common name in the family.  I realized that when I added a few more family members with that name recently.  Then I came across this photo today and I thought I’d do a bit of an edit to get rid of some scratches and spots.

Amanda Leveque with her aunt Celeste.

So here is a photo of Marie Celeste Leveque Landry, who was my paternal grandfather’s mother.  Grandma Celeste’s youngest child was named Robert Joseph Landry.  He would later become a Sr. when he and my grandmother named my father Robert Joseph Landry, Jr., their third son.  I was the third son of a third son, but I wasn’t a III.  That distinction goes to my oldest brother Rob.

In this photo, she is the older woman on the right with white hair.  She was in her mid 80s in this photo, which was taken around 1932 or 1933.  The other woman was her niece Amanda Leveque.  Amanda was the daughter of Celeste’s older sister Marie Evelina Leveque Leveque.  Celeste had two older 3/4 sisters (they had the same father and their mothers were Landry sisters), but Evelina was her older full sister.  I wrote Leveque twice intentionally for her, because she married her Leveque first cousin.  That Leveque family line lived in New Orleans.  Amanda would have been in her mid 60s at the time of this photo.

Now to get to the part about that Celeste name.  Our Celeste had a brother named J. A. Leveque, Jr.  He had two children named Joseph Mark and Lucy.  Joseph had a daughter in 1895 that he named after his sister and his aunt, probably a favorite aunt.  He named his daughter Marie Lucie Celeste Leveque.  She went by the name Lucie and that was the name I had for her until recently.  I found out about her full name from a DNA match who was named after her great grandmother.  So the name Celeste is still present in that line.

But it is also present in the descendants of Grandma Celeste.  I’ve mentioned before that she helped her son Sebastien to care for her granddaughter Manette when Manette’s mother died.  To honor her grandmother before she died in 1934, Manette named one of her daughters Celeste Marie Bouquet.  She was born in 1928 and went by the nickname Tessie.  Tessie in turn gave one of her daughters the middle name of Celeste.  That daughter did the same for her own daughter.

There may be more with the name in the Bouquet family, but I do know there is at least one in the Landry family.  By that I mean the Robert J. Landry, Sr. family.  My cousin Doug gave his daughter Adele the middle name of Celeste.  There also happens to be a Celeste in the Patureau line.  I doubt that she was named for our Celeste, but that’s who I think of when I see the name.  Actually Celeste was named after her grandmother Clarice Celeste Bruneteau Landry, who was alive when her namesake was born.  Though the name Celeste hasn’t been with the Landry and Leveque lines as long as the Leobon name has been in the Patureau line (250 years), it has been around a respectable 225 years.

How do you spell respect?

Keys to the Ship

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The ship Aurania of the Cunard Lines brought my Keys family to America in 1887.

I was excited to run across this photo a few weeks ago.  It is a photo of the ship that my Keys ancestors boarded when they were immigrating to the United States from England.  The name of the ship is Aurania.  It was part of the Cunard Lines.  I’ve mentioned the name of the ship before, but I had never seen a photo of the ship until I saw this one.

Martha Ann Cook Keys was born in Great Wigsborough, England, on November 8, 1836.  Henry Keys was born in Chipping Ongar, England, on April 18, 1822.  Martha and Henry were married on Martha’s 33rd birthday.  They went about starting a family of their own.  Henry Alfred was born in 1870 and Leonard James was born in 1873.

Their next child was my great grandmother Daisy Henrietta Martha, who was born in 1876.  (Daisy’s daughter Myrtle would become my maternal grandmother.)  Henry and Martha’s last two children were daughters Rosetta Ruth born in 1879 and Mabel Olive born in 1881.  The family lived in Hackney and Tottenham around London when the children were young.

Part of the list of passengers of the Aurania on that fateful trip. At the top of the list is my great great grandmother Martha A. Keys.

They decided that they wanted to move their children to America because of some increased incidents of crime where they were living.  They also had some family members already living in the United States and they must have heard some positive reports.  They began saving up money for the move, but then tragedy struck.  Henry fell ill with bronchitis.  He fought it for four months, but then succumbed to the illness in 1886 at the age of 63.

Martha mourned the loss of her husband, but did not let their dream die along with him.  She continued to save for the journey and the following year decided it was time to make the move.  They sold off most of their belongings and went to London to meet up with the Aurania.  It was the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and people were celebrating during the week that they went to London.

More details about the Aurania and the date of arrival for Martha and her family.

On June 21, the queen took part in a procession or parade.  I don’t know if my ancestors had a view of this event, but my great grandmother told her children about the celebratory atmosphere when her family was boarding the ship.  She was a child herself at the time and remembered the other passengers on the upper decks throwing candy and treats down to them.

I’m not sure when the ship left port in England, but it arrived in New York on June 27, 1887.  The family did not immediately head for Louisiana.  They spent a short amount of time in New York at the Great Exposition or some such thing.  It was some type of fair that you could enter your handiwork into competition.  Leonard entered a handkerchief and Daisy submitted a pinafore.  They both won honorable mention.

They then moved on to Louisiana.  Their intention was to go to Louisiana by boat, but for some reason none were available.  The Cunard Lines set them up with train tickets.  The tickets were for Beaumont, but according to the passenger list for the Aurania, their destination was Louisiana.

They arrived in Louisiana in July 1887, and the rest, they say, is history.