Month: February 2020

Aunt Framay Has Passed Away

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The Landry family had sad news this week.  My dad’s youngest sister Frances Mae Landry Raley died on February 26, 2020.  She was born May 6, 1934, to Robert Joseph “Rob” or “Pappy” Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie (our beloved Mee Maw) Patureau Landry.  She was the seventh of eight children.  She was the youngest of four girls.  And she was a real sweetheart.

The Landry and Raley cousins visiting in June 1964 in Jennings, Louisiana.

My earliest memories of her were when I was just a kid.  Aunt Frances would not be considered a dainty woman at this point.  So when she came toward this little 3-year-old boy with her loving heart and big kisses, I was a little bit intimidated!  Like in this picture from June of 1964, she is bending down to greet me with a kiss and I am nowhere to be seen! 

My dad’s Landry family tradition of kissing one another in greeting was off-putting to my mom’s sensibilities and I probably took after her when I was a kid.  But don’t get me wrong.  I always liked my Aunt Framay, but I did avoid those kisses from time to time.  It wasn’t like with Cousin Tez.  We avoided her like the coronavirus.  We didn’t want to catch those bumps.  There is a huge difference.  If you don’t see it, then I didn’t explain it well.

July 4th picnic in Lake Charles circa 1965. Rob Landry, Colleen Raley, Joe & Frances R., Jodie, Van, Betty, and Jamie L., Greg R., Al L., and Scott (I think) R.

This photo is from a year later when the family got together in Lake Charles.  I’m sure it was a July 4th get together for the whole Landry family.  But this picture again shows mainly the Bob Landry family and the Frances Landry Raley family.  I’ve always liked this photo even though it is overexposed. 

Mama is smiling nicely in the photo and Aunt Frances is acting all nonchalant like she’s not thinking about sneaking a kiss from me.  But as you can see, I’m not buying it for an instant!  I’ve got my head turned slightly, just in case she tried a sneak attack.  That woman was light on her feet!

I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t talk like that, especially since she is recently deceased.  But she had a great sense of humor, so I’m sure she’d approve.  The only thing I’ve thought about this photo before tonight was that I wished I had been looking at the camera.  There were no worries about a sneak attack that I can recall.

Me with Aunt Frances at my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in 2002 sharing a laugh.

What I do remember about Aunt Frances was that not only was she very loving, there was a strength about her.  Very specifically at two tragic events.  The first one was at Mee Maw’s funeral in 1973.  It was the first time I remember witnessing my dad crying.   I also remember him being comforted by his sisters, particularly by Aunt Frances.  She was an emotional rock for the family.   The other event was the funeral of my sister Jodie in 1989.  My parents were really torn up at the loss of their firstborn child.  Aunt Frances’s hugs and kisses were exceptionally comforting on that day.  She had a big heart.

I remember her being a comfort to me at my parents’ deaths in 2017, but at that point her superpowers were starting to wane.  Not that she was any less loving, that power continued until the end of her life.  But her body was giving out slowly as it does with age.  There was no more sneaking around with her powerful hugs and kisses.  That was a definite shame.

There is a line from one of my favorite movies that goes something like, “I can’t continue being stingy with my loving.  Before this I would measure it out and only return what I was given.  Now I see that one must get on with one’s loving.  Giving love is what matters.”  That is the way I saw my Aunt Frances.  Always ready to love.

Even silly little boys who didn’t know what love was when it smacked them in the face! 

Kudos for VMP’s Veterinary Skills

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Article from Saturday July 18, 1908, in the Weekly Iberville South in Plaquemine, Louisiana.

My cousin Wade posted a few old newspaper articles about our great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau recently.  Those old newspaper articles are great.  In small towns they’ll talk about who is visiting who, and in some cases they’ll say how the people are related.  Those have been really helpful to me many times in the past.  The ones Wade posted were helpful in figuring out when Grampa Max relocated his family to Lafayette (April 1912).   I thought I’d post a few newspaper articles talking about his work as a veterinarian.

There are quite a few old articles about Grampa Max, both in Plaquemine and in Lafayette.  Either people were interested in what he was doing because he was an influencer in his time, or he was instrumental in getting the articles published.  Of course sometimes the two go hand in hand.  In fact the first one I have here is a letter that was send to Grampa Max from E. B. Schwing.   It looks like he gave the letter to the newspaper for publishing.  A rave review indeed.

The Weekly Iberville South published this article on June 26, 1909.

I’m glad I found these articles, because before I found them, I questioned his abilities.  In a previous blog I pointed out that he was self-taught and hung a shingle calling himself a veterinarian.  So I enjoy seeing that he was respected and appreciated for his work in the community.  Also in those previous posts I included a photo of a horse and one of a cow.  I wonder if those animals were among the ones he saved for his clients?

I just noticed something after I placed the article titled “Card of Thanks.”  I didn’t recognize the name A. T. Bennett at all.  The Schwing name I have seen in other articles.  It seems to be a respected name in the community.  I think that maybe Mr. Bennett was African American, since he  encouraged his “colored friends” to use the services of Grampa Max.  It sounds like he treated all of his clients well.  That’s a good thing.

Articles from August 9th and 13th, 1912, in the Lafayette Advertiser

It also looks like Max made sure to look after his human customers as well.  A Mr. Begneaud and his son were bitten by their yard dog, which had also bit two other dogs and two cows.  When one of the cows died and another one began to show signs of sickness, Grampa Max came to the rescue with his handy bag of verterinarianish tools!  When he noticed that the dogs were showing signs of rabies, he used his most lethal tool he carried – his Colt No. 2 derringer.  Dr. Patureau strikes again!  He did carry that gun around with him on rounds for that very specific purpose.  Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!  He also made sure that Begneaud & Begneaud received the proper treatment in New Orleans.

Now I’ll say it again – Dr. Patureau strikes again!  This time it is in reference to him providing the newspaper with a letter he received showing what a wonderful diagnostician he was.  Grampa Max provided the lab in New Orleans with a sample of the infected cow’s blood and it showed the results he had suspected.  So it looks like Grampa Max knew what he was doing after all.  He deserves a bit more respect.  Maybe I should refer to him as Dr. Patureau more often.

Here is a photo of VMP doing his work in Lafayette around 1912 or so. After reading those newspaper articles, it makes me wonder what Dr. Patureau is going to be doing next.

Soldier’s Joy by HC in ’43

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I got the recording!  Whoo hoo!  I was thinking that I would go ahead as I usually do and write a post about my dad’s side of the family since I wrote about my mom’s side last week.  But I couldn’t get this catchy little tune out of my head.  And besides, I didn’t want to keep you waiting when I already had access to the songs I mentioned last week.  So I decided to continue from last week’s post.

It really is an amazing recording.  Not that the songs all sound wonderful, or it’s a great recording of the songs.  It’s just such an historic record of my great grandparents playing music.  I recorded just a clip of one of the tracks on my iPhone.  It starts off with one of the Phenice family women (if you are able to identify who it is, please let me know) introducing the music by saying, “June the twelfth nineteen hundred and forty-three (1943) will very likely become a memorable day to all the members of this Phenice family, because for the first time we are to have a phonographic record of our family reunion instead of the usual photographic one.”  I’m so glad that they said the date. 

Since they said the date, I thought I’d find a photo from around the same time.  So I looked in my Phenice folder and found a good photo.  I had posted a version of the photo previously, but in the meantime I have obtained a better quality image.  At least I thought I posted it before!  I just looked again and can’t find it anywhere.  I guess I posted it on Facebook before I actually started this blog over four years ago.  My how time flies!

I had estimated the date of the photo as 1943 based on the age of my uncle Austin Bucklin.  He is the toddler in the front of the photo.  But then when I looked at the photo this time, I realized that Grandma Phenice (my mom’s maternal grandmother Daisy Keys Phenice) was holding a baby.  I looked through my family tree information and found that in 1943 Daisy had a new granddaughter named Linda Phenice.  She’s the one who got this recording to me!  So the photo was taken a few months after March of 1943, which is pretty close to June 12, 1943.

I wonder if the photo was taken on the same day as the songs were recorded?  She says on the recording that it was a Phenice family reunion.  This photo is a Phenice family group.  But in the recording she says that they were making a phonographic record of the family “instead of” a photographic one.  So maybe it was on a different day.  Or maybe she meant to say “as well as” in her statement and she misspoke.  You know how it is when you talk on one of those newfangled recording instruments – you get a little nervous!  Then again, Sylvan Phenice is not in the photo and he was the one that made the record.  He could have taken the photo, but then his wife Mary would have been in the photo.  Oh, well, we know that the sound recording and the photo were taken close to the same time.

The rest of the clip of the recording that I’m sharing this week is a song called “Soldier’s Joy” with Harry Clifton Phenice on the fiddle accompanied by his wife Daisy on the piano.  It’s a very old timey sounding fiddling song.  I looked it up and it originates from around the mid 1700s and has its roots in Scottish fiddling tradition.  There has been some talk that the Phenice family and name may have Scottish origins, so I find that fact fascinating.  The song was associated with the Civil War, too.  HC’s dad Samuel was a soldier in the Civil War, so I wonder if he thought of his dad when he played it.

The song is not only associated with the Civil War, but the term “soldier’s joy” came to refer to the combination of whiskey, beer, and morphine used by Civil War soldiers.  In fact, when talking about it Wikipedia quoted these song lyrics:

Gimme some of that Soldier’s Joy, you know what I mean’
I don’t want to hurt no more my leg is turnin’ green

That kinda made me laugh because Samuel was shot in the leg in the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War.   While staying in the hospital, skirmishes around the area kept medicine from being delivered and Samuel ended up getting gangrene.  I hope he got some morphine eventually!  That sounds mighty painful! 

So enough talking about the song.  It’s time to listen to it.  Just click on the link below.  And now I can say that I did my part in making June 12, 1943, a memorable day for this Phenice family!

 

Musical Keys and Phenice Family News

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I’ve had some exciting news about the Keys and Phenice family lately.  Sometimes I look for things and can’t find them, which can be frustrating.  Other times I find hints about them and have to track them down for a while.  Sometimes I give up altogether and go searching for something else.  Occasionally something that I’ve given up on will fall right into my lap.  That’s what happened in the first part of this blog.

Clockwise from top left: Irma Hetzel Phenice, Daisy Keys Phenice, Marguerite Phenice, and Sylvia Bucklin. This photo was taken around 1932 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Before I tell you that story, I thought I’d share a related photo.  I’ve been thinking of sharing this one for a while.  There is an old timey charm about it.  I took a photo of a photo at the Keys Family Reunion in 2017.  I can’t remember who shared it with me, but I do appreciate it.   The older woman on the right is my great grandmother Daisy Keys Phenice.  She was my mom’s maternal grandmother. 

The younger woman on the left is her future daughter-in-law Irma Hetzel.  She would marry Daisy’s son Henry in 1934.  The dark-haired girl in the photo (her face can’t be seen) is Daisy’s youngest child Marguerite.  Marguerite would marry Thomas Hill in 1943.  The youngest person in the photo is my aunt Sylvia Bucklin.  She was oldest daughter of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, who was the middle daughter of Daisy.

I’m not sure what they are doing in the photo, but it looks like they could be listening to music.  This brings us back to the story I was wanting to tell.  Many years ago, about 1972, my mom somehow got a collection of old records from her Uncle Sylvan.  He was a son of Daisy and he was big into sound systems and recordings.   He had a company for many years called Sylvan’s Sound Service and one of the things he did was put intercom systems in the schools of Calcasieu and surrounding Parishes back in the day.

So if you are from that area and are old enough, you probably heard your morning news at school through the sound system of old Uncle Sylvan.  But the recordings that my mom got were even more special than that.  He had some old recordings of family conversations and singalongs from back in the 1940s or so.  I’ve shared some of those before.  I shared my grandmother Myrtle singing a few songs and my mom’s paternal grandmother Addie telling a story.  It’s nice to hear those old voices from the past.

I had some of the recordings, but not all of them.  I heard somewhere along the way that there was a recording of my great grandparents Daisy and Harry singing “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built For Two)” together.  There was also a recording of Harry playing a song on the fiddle.  Supposedly, a recording was given to my dad and he was going to digitize it for them.  So when we were clearing out my parents’ home, I was on the lookout for it.  That’s when I found the recordings of Myrtle singing and Addie telling her story.   I couldn’t find the recordings of Harry and Daisy.  I even went through the archives at my sister and brother-in-law’s house, but it was nowhere to be found.  I gave them up for lost.  I didn’t tell you all about that, because I don’t like to tell sad stories.  (Ha!)

I’m telling you now, because it’s a happy story!  One of my mom’s cousins sent me a note that said that she has the recording of Daisy and Harry singing, as well as the recording of Harry playing the fiddle!  Whoo hoo!  She said the recordings were in bad shape and needed some help.  I offered to help.  Even if I didn’t know how to do any editing, I would have offered.  I would have learned just so I could hear those old wonderful recordings that I had thought were lost forever.  Don’t get too excited, because I don’t have them yet.  I think they are near and I hope to get them soon.  Then I will share them with everyone.  Remember, patience is a virtue.

The other news I have is a bit more rewarding.  While the other is a preview of something in the future, this is a realized view of something from the past.  A couple of years ago when I was looking at the Phenice side of the family, I came across some information about Grandma Myrtle’s first cousin.  Her name was Doris Enola Phenice and she lived in Colorado.  Like my grandmother she was a schoolteacher for many years.  When she was an elderly single woman, she befriended a couple who ended up caring for her at the end of her life.  They also put together a book about her life and her family that included photos and such.  There was some contact information, so I wrote them a note and said that I’d be interested in seeing that book.

So I waited patiently.  I didn’t hear anything back from that first message I sent.  I mentioned it to a distant Phenice cousin and she tried contacting them the same way and got a response.  She shared the phone number of the couple who put together the book.  I tried writing an email again…  And waited again.   Sometimes I think I confuse forgetfulness with patience. 

Anna Armina Stockton Phenice and Chauncey Phenice in Victor, Colorado, in 1900.

Then one day recently I was looking for some information about a DNA match.  This person was a descendant of Chauncey Phenice.  Chauncey was the oldest brother of my great grandfather Harry Phenice and he was the father of Doris Enola.  I found the phone number of that couple and decided to call.  The woman is still alive, but sadly she recently became a widow.  She was very friendly and said that she would be glad to send me a copy of the book that they put together.

She followed through and now I have the book!  I found out a few more interesting things about the Phenice family, but the thing I was most excited about was finding a photo of Chauncey.  I have several photos of Harry’s sisters and his brother Edd, but I didn’t have any of his brothers Chauncey or William Emory.  Now I just need to find one of William Emory!

The picture of him is when he and his wife were living in Victor, Colorado.  They went there with Will (William Emory) for a short time to try their hand at gold mining.  One of my favorite photos of my great grandfather Harry is one of him in a gold mine.  I didn’t realize that gold mining was a family tradition.  You can see from the photo that includes Harry and Edd that there is a family resemblance in the three brothers that are in the photos.

1906 in Nebraska. Top row: Daisy Keys Phenice (wife of Harry), Lola Myrtle Phenice, Emma Orra Phenice. Bottom row: Harry Clifton Phenice and James Edmund “Edd” Phenice.