Month: October 2020

Bobbie Landry circa 1930.

Now here is an old photo.  I guess it’s not extremely old.  It’s only from 90 years ago.  It’s funny what you consider old when you get to certain ages.  When I saw these photos when I was a kid, they seemed so very ancient.  They were less than 40 years old back then.

This is a photo of my dad Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. when he was about 2 years old.  He was born at the end of January in 1929 and I’m thinking this photo was taken late in 1930.  I know for sure that it was taken in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at the home that he grew up in on Nichols Street.  I’ve seen that house in lots of other photos and it always seems to have a ladder leaning up against it.  What’s up with that?

And then there’s that horsey he’s riding.  Or is it a trike?  It looks like a cross between a rocking horse and a tricycle.  I looked it up online and found several images of this type of contraption.  Most of them are even older than this version.  They were a thing in the mid to late 1800s and some had steel wheels.  Maybe Mee Maw had one (or wished she had one) when she was a child and got one for her kids.

I looked further and thought that I found a name for them – velocipede.  I thought it was an interesting name, because it wasn’t a velociraptor.  It’s a horsey!  But then I saw that the definition of a velocipede is a human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels.  Come to find out, I had a velocipede when I was a kid.

But it wasn’t a horsey velocipede!  My only consolation is that when I was riding a tricycle, we actually had horses to ride, too.  Yes, I had a pony!

The research that I’ve been doing for the “From Acadian to Cajun” blog series has taught me a lot.  I’m working on a follow-up to the posts I’ve written about my Acadian ancestors who came to Louisiana.  That post will be about The Ones That Didn’t Make It.  Some of our ancestors died during the Exile, while others ended up settling somewhere else.  For these ancestors, it was their children that made it to Louisiana.

One example of that is in my Landry line.  The person in question is my 5x great grandfather Pierre Landry.   I’ve talked about him once before in regards to him living long enough to get to know his grandchildren in my line.  That post was four years ago in a post about my great grandfather Alcide.

What I mentioned was that in my line, I descend from the later children in the family.  This leads to grandchildren being born after the passing of their Landry grandfather.  I was born in 1960, which is three years after my Pee Paw (Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.) died.  My dad was born in 1929, which was ten years after Alcide the Great died.  Pee Paw was born in 1893 and his grandfather Narcisse had died in 1876.  Alcide was born in 1845 and his grandfather Joseph Ignatius had died in 1806.  Narcisse was born in 1796 (first generation born in Louisiana) and his grandfather Augustin had died in 1781.

Now here is where there is a difference.  Joseph Ignatius was born around 1753 (the last generation in my Landry line to be born in Acadie) and his grandfather Pierre didn’t die until 1786 at the age of 94 years old.  So he and his grandson Joseph Ignatius were alive at the same time for 33 years.  Going back further, Augustin was born in 1719 and his grandfather Antoine had died in 1710.  Pierre was born in 1690 and his grandfather Rene died two years later.  Most people don’t have memories from before they were two years old.  And they didn’t have photos to show that help to build memories.  Antoine did not know his grandfather, because his father Rene had immigrated to Acadie before Antoine was born.  Nobody knows who the father of Rene was.

So it looks like the only one that would have memories of his Landry grandfather probably didn’t have any.  That’s right.  In the one instance where the grandfather lived long enough, the family was ripped apart by the Grand Derangement in 1755.  So Joseph Ignatius was only two years old when his part of the family was Exiled to Maryland.

I’m not really sure what happened to grandfather Pierre in 1755.  Some Acadians had made their way to Ile St. Jean after the English came back into possession of Acadie.  They didn’t trust the English with their insistence on signing an unconditional oath, so they went to a place still controlled by the French.  Pierre eventually made his way to Maskinonge, Quebec, which is where he died in 1786.  At least two of his sisters had made it to Quebec as well, though they both died about 20 years before he did.  Five of Pierre’s children died before he did as well, though we don’t know if he was aware of that fact.

As we saw in the information about the Dupuis line of the family, people did not get much information about their family members in other countries.  Marie Josephe Dupuis made her declaration at Belle-Ile-en-Mer, France, and she wasn’t aware of the deaths of several of her siblings from a few years previous.  So it’s doubtful that there was much exchange of information between Pierre and Joseph Ignatius over the years that they were both alive.  Probably not even a stinking Christmas Card!

Landry Family in 1996

Grandkids with Grammie in 1986.

So it wasn’t until my niblings’ generation that they were able to get to know their Landry grandfather in any significant way.  My dad’s first grandchild was born in 1981 and my dad passed away in 2017.  My dad had 35 years to enjoy being a grandfather.  And he got to enjoy them with a dozen grandkids when all was said and done.

Pappy (Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. or Bob) with his Landry grandchildren in 2007.

But more importantly, my nieces and nephews have lots of great memories of their Landry grandfather.  The same can not be said of any other known generation in my Landry line.  Oh, and by the way, we are definitely of the Landry line.  I had our YDNA tested and it matches other Landry testers.

Alex Landry with Pappy (Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.) and Grammie (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry)

And that Landry name is continuing.  Not with me.  I don’t have any children.  My older brother Al has children.  Al was born after Pee Paw died, so he didn’t know our Landry grandfather either.  But his children did know their Pappy Landry, as can be seen in these photos.