Month: February 2023

Grandma Celeste and the Kids

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Grandma Celeste and the kids circa 1930, likely in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Here is a photo I discovered recently.  I’ve had the photo for a few years now.  I got several photos from some of my Cazes cousins when I went to visit them in Brusly in 2017.  Now I don’t have any Cazes ancestors, but some of the Cazes family lines share a lot of common ancestors.  That’s why I’m never surprised to see a Cazes individual show up as a DNA match to me at any of the testing sites.  Some of my cousins may be familiar with this connection that comes through my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry.  He is one of my ancestors who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  There are a few books about him written by his descendants.

In the genealogy book written by Trasimond’s grandson Tommy Landry, he mentions that Llewellyn Cazes (another grandson of Trasimond) had one of the biggest collections of information about Trasimond.  The Cazes line descends from Trasimond and his first wife Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol through their son Moses Joseph “Uncle Mose” Landry.  Tommy descends from their son Thomas Belisaire or Tommy Landry, and I descend from their oldest child Marie Therese.  We’ll talk about another line of their offspring later.  

Claire Landry, Rosey Hebert Landry, Henry, Myrtle (daughter of Mose & Claire), and Mose Landry circa 1930s in Brusly, Louisiana

Uncle Mose brings in a little bit of confusion, because he married another Landry.  It wasn’t a close Landry cousin like some of the other family members connected with, but it was still a Landry marrying a Landry.  He married Claire Landry from Brusly.  She was the daughter of Justin Landry and Rosey Hebert Landry.  They are somewhat distant Landry cousins, but some of their daughters married into closer Landry lines.  The Cazes family had stories about Rosey, but they weren’t too pleasant.  It was said that she wasn’t a particularly nice person.

I know that isn’t true for all of the members of this family line, because my dear friend and coworker Marisa descends from Rosey through her daughter Justine.  Justine married John Peter Landry.  Both of John Peter’s parents were Landrys as well.  I like to tease Marisa about that.  I always say that even though my ancestors married their cousins, at least they didn’t have the same last name!  Like that makes any difference at all!  Rosey doesn’t look all that mean in the photo that she’s in.  My great grandmother Addie has some sour looks in her photos, but she was a sweet lady.  Never judge a book by its cover!  Or by their ancestors!  We’ll talk about another one of Rosey’s daughters later.

We have to talk about another Landry family because I still haven’t gotten to the main topic.  The other important Landry family is the family of Trasimond’s brother Alcide.  Of course I think it’s important since I descend from him as well.  Alcide was married to Marie Celeste Leveque, who we all know as Grandma Celeste.  I descend from them through their youngest child Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry.  Rob married Erie Patureau, the daughter of Trasimond and Belite’s daughter Marie Therese.  Rob may have married his first cousin’s daughter, but their last names were different.  One of his older brothers – Joseph Alcide or “Uncle Joe” – married a Landry.  Her name was Azema and she was a daughter of Rosey.  She was known as Aunt Zim.

So I got the photo of Grandma Celeste and the kids from descendants of Uncle Mose.  But that wasn’t how the photo was labeled.  It was labeled as “Louis, Roberta, and Unknowns.”  I don’t know for sure who Louis and Roberta are, but when I saw the photo the other day, I knew it was Grandma Celeste right away.  It looks just like her.  When I got the photo all those years ago from the Cazes family, I got a huge number of photos.  I thought I had skimmed through all of the folders on my computer.  Either I didn’t look through them all, or I didn’t recognize her the first time I saw it.

And who are Louis and Roberta?  Uncle Mose and his first wife had a son named Louis in 1904.  He later had a wife name Roberta, but I doubt that they knew each other as children.  I don’t think they’re related.  Imagine that!  I also think the photo was taken around 1930.  For some reason the photo puts me in mind of another Landry-Landry connection.  Trasimond and Belite’s youngest child Marie Manette married Alcide and Celeste’s son Sebastien.  Marie Manette and Uncle Seb had one child together, and Marie Manette died shortly after that.  Their daughter – also name Manette- was raised by Uncle Seb and Grandma Celeste.  Grandma Celeste was like her mother.  When Manette grew up and had children of her own, Grandma Celeste was very close to them.  

Manette and Bibb Bouquet had a set of twins in 1926 named Roberta and Robert.  When I showed it to some Bouquet cousins on Facebook, one of them verified that it was Roberta and Robert on the right in this photo.  She suggested checking into Uncle Louis.  Louis was another brother of Rob, Joe, and Sebastian.  He was married to Clemence Babin, a daughter of Belite by her second marriage after Trasimond died.  They had a son named Thornwell, who later had a set of twins of his own in 1928.  The twin sons were named Thornwell, Jr. and Louis.  That would fit perfectly with the ages of the two children to the left of Grandma Celeste in the first photo.  So I think this is a photo of my great grandmother Celeste Leveque Landry with two sets of twin great grandchildren.  Interestingly, her father had a twin brother.

I’m glad the Cazes family kept this old photo of an unknown woman with some kids.  Come to find out, it was their Aunt Celeste.  Or maybe it was their cousin Celeste?  Or cousin-in-law?  With these three Landry families connecting in so many ways, it’s difficult to determine all of the relationships between any two people.  It doesn’t really matter; I’ve got another photo of my great grandmother thanks to some generous cousins who were willing to share.  With the help of other cousins, I was able to figure out all of the identities of the children in the photo.  I like that.

Addie and Her Dog

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Addie and her dog circa 1950 in Hathaway, Louisiana

Here is a photo of my mom’s paternal grandmother Addie Hine Bucklin with one of the dogs she had during her life.  I’ve posted a story about Addie and her dog Sammy.  In that post, I shared an old voice recording of Addie talking about how her dog Sammy got run over by a truck.  But don’t worry, he commenced to getting better shortly after the incident took place.  When I wrote that story, I was mainly talking about how wonderful it was to have a recording of her voice from around 1942.  Since she died shortly after I was born, I wasn’t familiar with her voice.

When I first heard the recording, I didn’t know who was telling the story.  I had to get my mom and my aunt to identify the speakers in it.  Since I was used to seeing photos of Addie with a scowl on her face, I assumed her voice was the more shrill one.  I was so glad that I was wrong.  Addie is the one telling the sweet, warm story about her little dog that made it through a scary incident.  I have listened to it many times over the past seven years because it helps me to ‘see’ her as the caring person that she must have been.  She obviously liked children, because she gave birth to a dozen of them!

One of her children was Fred Bucklin.  My cousins and I knew him as Grandpa.  He and Grandma (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin) were the parents of five children, including my mom, Betty Lou.  My grandparents had considered naming my mom after her grandparents.  Addie was married to Louis Bucklin, so the proposed name for my mom was Addie Lou.  When Addie heard that, she nixed the idea.  She thought Addie was a too old-fashioned name.  So instead, my mom was named Betty Lou.  The name fit her.  I think my mom looked up to her Grandma Addie.  When she was young, she wanted to grow up and have a dozen children herself.  Actually, she wanted to have thirteen.  My mom was a little competitive, so she thought she could outdo her grandmother by having one more than she had.  In the end, though, she “only” had half as many as Addie had.  Lax, lax, lax.

The other thing I realized about Grandma Addie was that she was fond of animals.  After I wrote the post about her and Sammy, cousin Joseph shared a photo of Addie with a dog.  I also noticed that one of the early photos of the Hine family in 1892 shows a dog with the family.  Then I found the photo I’m posting today.  Again she is posing with a little dog.  It’s possible that this little dog or the one in the other photo could be Sammy.  Even though she took photos with her pets, nobody ever bothered to give the name of the pets.  And it wasn’t just dogs she was fond of, there are a few photos of her with a cat.  I also have a picture of her with some cows, but I don’t know if she considered them pets.  Even though the cows were a business venture, some people do get attached to those animals.

My mom did not share that affection for animals that her grandmother had.  We had pets when we were growing up, but Mama was not too fond of them.  If we ever found a stray animal, she would insist on cleaning it with Lysol before she let it hang around for any length of time.  I remember her doing this with dogs, cats, and a turtle.  I don’t know how she got away with doing that to a cat.  Most cats fight their selves away from any kind of smelly water.  I would think Lysol water would be particularly unappealing to cats.  Maybe my mom wanted them to run away!  After we had cleaned them, she would let us keep them.  But she mostly just tolerated them as long as they stayed outside.  It was only our little black dog Mitsy that was allowed inside.  She must have been fond of him.

Bob & Betty at Kerosene Flats in 1953

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Newlyweds Bob and Betty Landry in their first home in California

Last year I wrote about the events that led up to the marriage of my parents in 1952.  I like to commemorate important anniversaries, and 70 years is notable.  I thought I would continue that a bit more with a couple of photos from their first year together as a married couple.  The photos come from a photo album that was always in our house when we were growing up.  I always thought of the photo album being something that my mom put together.  But when I look at it now, I notice that the writing is definitely my dad’s.

Thinking back to how I thought when I was a kid, that photo album was the be all end all of our family history.  Any curiosity about my family’s past was found in that album.  I mean really, it went back a whole fifteen years when I was an eight-year-old.  World War II ended just over seven years before my parents’ wedding, and I remember thinking that that was ancient history.  Our perception of time definitely changes as we get older.

This first photo was on the first page of that old photo album.  It is a photo of my parents in front of their first home in January 1953.  How do I know that?  Because it’s written on the page of the album below the photo.  I had to include that in the photo.  I also included their names – Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  My dad was in the Air Force at the time and he was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, California.  It is on the edge of the Mojave Desert and near Joshua Tree National Park.  The housing for married service members was called Wherry Housing, but it was also known as Kerosene Flats.

My mom would talk about her days in the desert.  She was not familiar with the dry climate.  She said that the clothes dried on the line so much quicker than in Louisiana.  She said that by the time she finished hanging all of the clothes, the first things she had hung up were already dry.  One time in the wintertime she hung them up, but instead of drying the clothes quickly, they froze.  She didn’t realize how cold it was.  

Betty and Bob Landry in California at their first home. Note Betty’s newest painting on the table behind them.

But her favorite thing to talk about was the fact that the stoves at Kerosene Flats actually used kerosene to cook.  This was fine for young newlywed Betty Lou, because she had grown up using kerosene.  But all of the other wives in Wherry Housing were not familiar with it.  So my mom helped them all out and taught them the basics of cooking with kerosene.  There were some benefits to growing up in the small Louisiana hamlet of Hathaway.

This second photo of my parents was taken a few months later.  It was taken in the spring of 1953.  It’s a great photo of the two of them.  They even had an enlargement of it made back then.  It’s hanging on the wall behind me right now.  My mom had just finished the painting that you see in the background. 

They sure do look happy!

The Pierre Patureau Collection – Ferdinand and Emma’s Children

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Beginning of the list of the children of Ferdinand Patureau and Emma Landry.

Sometimes, after I have decided on a topic for some of my posts, I’m tempted to apologize for not having something glamorous or exciting to post.  But then I tell myself that if they don’t want to read it, they don’t have to.  There is information that I come across that I find important, so I want to share it.  When I find myself referring back to different documents or pages of information often, I figure other people may find it beneficial as well.  And who knows, they may notice something in it that I skim right over.  

That thing this week is a list of the children of Ferdinand and Emma Patureau in the back of an old work ledger.  The pages come from the Pierre Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas.  The collection reference number is AC-824. I visited it over a year ago and took hundreds of photos of the pages, letters, and photos.  The photos are my favorite things from the collection.  How could they not be?  I’ve shared a few of those amazing old photos of various family members from over 100 years ago.

But I’ve scoured this list for as many details as I can figure out.  It’s a bit tricky for me, because it is in French.  The list includes my great great grandparents Ferdinand Patureau and Marie Emma Landry Patureau and all of their children.  And they had a lot of children!  I thought all of them had been born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, except for my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian “Max” Patureau.  I’ve always known that Grampa Max was born in Mexico.  He was born there during the Civil War when the Patureau family went there to get away from the fighting in Louisiana.  Well, the list showed that a few of their other children were born other places as well.  Nothing as exotic as Mexico, mind you, but they were not all born in Plaquemine.

If you look at the very first line on the page, you’ll see what I’m talking about.  “Zulma Patureau est nee le 5 mai 1848 a 3 1/2 heure du matais. A Brule Landing W. B. Rouge, Louisiane.”  See?  She was born in West Baton Rouge Parish, not Iberville.  So she was born in Brusly on May 5, 1848, at 3:30 in the morning.  So when Ferdinand and Emma first got married, they lived in Emma’s hometown.  She was born in St. Gabriel, but the family moved to West Baton Rouge Parish shortly after.  The next two children of Ferdinand and Emma – Aline and Leobon – were also born in Brusly.

Leobon was born on August 20, 1851, and the family moved to Plaquemine before the birth of their next child Marie Valentine in July of 1853.  There is an entry for her death as well and it was just over a year later.  Elizabeth Palmyre is listed next.  She was born in 1855 and died in 1870.  This entry makes me think this list was written over the years of when the children were born (and died).  I say this because the ink color is different, and it looks like they went back to it 15 years later when she died.  Marie Valentine was born and had died before the next one came along.  It all looks like one entry.  It’s not the same for Elizabeth Palmyre.  It must have been either Ferdinand or Emma writing this information.

The list continues with the entries of Marie Zelica in 1857 and Ferdinand Pierre Jr. in 1858.  F.P. Jr. has a footnote that shows his death on June 25, 1862.  Yes, it says 1862, while the tombstone in Plaquemine shows 1860.  If you want to know which one is correct, look at what one of his parents wrote.  It is written as 1862.  And not only that, the year is underlined to emphasize that year.  I just changed it on my family tree.  

At the bottom of the page is the entry for Anne Emma born in 1860.  I’ve seen her name written as Anna Emma as well.  She died in 1874 after a jump-roping incident.  I don’t see that listed.  There is something about Chalet and July 23 written below her entry, but I don’t know what it is about.  In the left margin, reading from bottom to top, there is an entry for Ferdinand Pierre Patureau who was born in LaRoche-Chalais in France in 1826.  Above that is listed the birth date for Emma Landry in Iberville Parish (St. Gabriel) in 1829.  Between their entries is a smaller entry for Emma’s mother Zerbine Dupuy in W. Baton Rouge Parish in 1807.

Second page of the list of the children of Ferdinand Patureau and Emma Landry.

On the second page of the list, the children continue.  Surely you didn’t think eight children would be enough!  We haven’t even gotten to Grampa Max yet.  Ignore the first few lines on the page.  That’s just a reference to an uncle of our Pierre Patureau (1800-1860).  Uncle Pierre Patureau (1774-1827) fought under Napoleon in the late 1790s and received a Legion of Honor Award in 1814.  The list continues with more children born in Plaquemine.  Joseph Onesime was born in January of 1862 and died six months later.  According to this list, Ferdinand Pierre, Jr. and Joseph Onesime died only eight days apart.  It must have been a sad time for the household of Ferdinand and Emma.  I wonder if there was some disease going around at that time?

The last of the pre-Mexico Plaquemine births was next.  Rose Elisa was born in 1863.  She lived to be almost 77 years old.  Only her older sister Aline lived longer.  She made it a month past her 77th birthday.  I don’t know the exact details of why or when the family moved to Mexico.  Some family researchers said it was to get away from the fighting of the Civil War.  Others say it was to pursue a business venture connected to the French ruling in Mexico at the time.  Ferdinand’s sister Victorine Patureau Laulom is said to have moved to a border town in Texas at the time.  Victorine’s daughter Eliza Laulom married Vicente Crixell (rhymes with Michelle) in Texas in 1864.  She gave birth to a son in 1865 in the same area of Mexico where Grampa Max was born that same year.  I do know that the family moved back to Plaquemine later that year.  

And still the children kept appearing.  Pierre Oscar was born in 1866.  Joseph Alcide was born in 1868.  Omer Abel was born in 1870.  The last child was born in 1873.  Her name was Marie Victorine and she was the one that started collecting all of the family information that ended up in the Pierre Patureau Collection.  Ferdinand and Emma were pretty prolific.  Many of their children were as well.  There were over 70 grandchildren of Ferdinand and Emma.  Large families seem to have been a family tradition.  There are over 1000 descendants of Ferdinand and Emma at this point.

And it all started from this little list of children.