Month: January 2024

My Parents Were Bob and Betty

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This week marked the seventh anniversary of the end of an era.  The era of Bob and Betty Landry started in the early 1950s and continued until the third week of January in 2017.  It was a long run.  It was a good run.  My siblings and I were pretty sure that when one of them died, the other would be following along not long after.  Yet, we were taken off guard when they both died in the same week.  Having both of your parents die at the same time and having a joint funeral made for a difficult time.  But it was appropriate that their close-knit relationship would end at the same time.  They were happily married for 64 years.

Betty Bucklin Landry and Bob Landry on April 8, 1966. Easter in Lafayette, Louisiana.

So, when I was thinking about them all week, I knew I’d be writing about them tonight.  But I didn’t know exactly what I’d say or what photo I would use.  I surely couldn’t use a photo I used before!  (I hope I haven’t used this one before!)  That’s no problem, because I have lots of photos of my parents through the years.

I considered using the photo from their second wedding anniversary, but then thought I’d use it later this year around their wedding date.  I also thought about using a photo that they posed for while singing together at some function.  I do like photos of them showing them doing what they loved to do.  We had a very musical family.

When I went looking for a photo, this one caught my attention right away.  I had already edited it previously, so it just took a little more tweaking for it to be ready for publishing.  It’s also another one of those photos that is very calming to me.  They just look so content with each other.  This is what my parents looked like when we were kids.

This picture was taken at the Bucklin family Easter get together for 1966.  It was held by my mom’s older sister Sylvia Bucklin Pilcher and her husband Ronald Pilcher.  The Pilcher family lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Leonpacher Rd.  One of my most memorable events from one of those times we got together was when my mom’s younger brother Austin’s family moved back to Louisiana after being in Australia.  He had gotten married and had three children at that point, and they were introduced to the family.  So when someone told my cousin John that all of the other kids were his cousins, he pointed at me and said, “I don’t want that one!” in a cute little Australian accent.  That story has always made me laugh.

Back to the photo.  My dad’s name was Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. and my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Most people knew them as Bob and Betty.  My dad’s family may have said Bobbie and Betty, while my mom’s side would say Betty Lou and Bob.  They were in their 30s when this photo was taken.  I remember thinking that they were old back then.  I would look at old photos of them and was so surprised that they still looked similar.  What was I thinking?  They had only been together for 15 years.  

Look how cute they were.  And they were not pretentious in the least.  They were just happy to be together raising their kids in Southern Louisiana.  What could be better than that?

Cajuns By the Dozens

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Jeanne Zerbine Dupuis Landry Comeaux circa 1864 in Southern Louisiana.

Last week I wrote about my maternal great grandmother Addie May who gave birth to a dozen children.  When I think about that, I remember enjoying the story “Cheaper by the Dozen” when I was young. That’s what inspired the title for today’s blog. But what inspired the post itself was a notice I got in an email.   Over the weekend I got a notice about a Marguerite Babin.  That would be a name from my dad’s side of the family.  His heritage is Cajun and French, and Babin is one of the surnames that came from Acadie.

The link led to Marguerite Babin (born 1690), who was married to Antoine Dupuis (born 1688).  When I looked at information on Marguerite, I saw that she was one of a dozen children born to Charles Babin and Madeleine Elizabeth Richard.  I descend from Charles and Madeleine, who were from families of a dozen children as well.  So she must have had a lot of cousins.  I’m not going to count them.  That’s too much trouble.  Once I get an AI assistant, I may have that information at my fingertips.

When I look at Antoine Dupuis’ family, I see that he was from a family of thirteen children.  His parents were Martin Dupuis and Marie Landry.  They were both from families with more than a dozen children.  Big families were very common in Acadie back then.  And what is surprising is that the survival rate was pretty high.  Most of the time.  (As you read that last sentence, imagine somber music beginning to play.)

1712 marriage record for Antoine Dupuis & Marguerite Babin

Marguerite Babin and Antoine Dupuis were married on July 4, 1712, in Grand Pre, Acadie.  As you can see from this 1895 transcript of a rare document from that time, it names Antoine and Marguerite and both sets of parents that I talked about earlier.  So Marguerite and Antoine were married in 1712 and started their married life.  But unlike the two generations before them, no children came.  One year, then two years.  People must have started to wonder.  Most couples back then had a child almost every year for the first few years.

Maybe they wanted to have children, but things went wrong.  They were together for seven years, and there is no record of any birth.  Then around 1718 or so, Marguerite died.  Perhaps she was finally able to carry a child to term, yet they both died during childbirth.  No records are available.  We just know that Antoine remarried around 1719 to Marie Josephe Dugas.  She, too, was from a family of a dozen children.  Cajuns by the Dozen!  Antoine and Marie Josephe had their first (of a dozen) child in 1720.

So I didn’t descend from that Marguerite Babin who was born in 1690.  But I did descend from her aunt that she was named for.  Her father Charles had a younger sister named Marguerite who was born in 1670.  I descend from her and her husband Antoine Breau.  Guess how many children they had!  If you guessed a dozen, you’re wrong.  They only had eleven.  How shameful!

The photo I’m sharing is of the most recent Dupuis ancestor that I have – Jeanne Zerbine Dupuis.  Let me tell you how she connects to Antoine Dupuis and Marie Josephe Dugas.  They had a son named Joseph whose life was greatly affected by the Grand Derangement.  After a dozen years of struggle with family members dying around him, he made his way to Louisiana.  He ended up serving in the militia out of St. Gabriel with Bernardo de Galvez.  This was an effort that aided the newly independent United States during the Revolutionary War.  We descend from a Revolutionary War hero!  Joseph married Anne Marie Hebert.  They had a son named Magloire Dupuy, who was married to Henriette Serrette.  Magloire and Henriette had Zerbine in 1807.  

Zerbine was married to Elie Onesime Landry and their daughter Emma Landry married Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, a French immigrant.  They had more than a dozen children and many of those families continued that tradition.  So, to suffice it to say, I have hundreds of dozens of cousins.  That’s a lot.

Here is the path from me to Joseph Dupuis.  Also, Pierre Breaux (shown fifth from the top on the far right) was the son of Antoine Breau (1666) and Marguerite Babin (1670).

Addie and Her Youngest

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Addie Hine Bucklin with her youngest children Ruth and Roy circa 1925 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Here is a photo of my great grandmother with the youngest of her 12 children.  That’s right!  She had a dozen children over a 17-year period at the beginning of the 1900s.  The photo is from almost a hundred years ago, but I’ve only known about it for 4 years or so.  I got it from my mom’s cousin who reminds me so much of her.  Their fathers were identical twins from that same group of 12 children.  DNA has proven that the older set of twins were identical.  It was not needed in the case of the youngest two.  Their DNA was obviously not identical because one was a boy, and the other was a girl.

Let me give you some details.  My name is Van Landry and I am the fifth child of Betty Lou Bucklin.  Betty Lou was the second child of Fred D. Bucklin.  Fred was born on October 2, 1907, in Roanoke, Louisiana.  Also born on that day was his twin Clarence Johnathan “CJ” Bucklin. I never knew him, so I don’t know if he preferred to be called Uncle Clarence or Uncle CJ.  They were the 7th and 8th children born to Addie May and her husband Louis Charles Bucklin.  I know that he preferred to be called Lou or Louie, because I’ve seen letters he wrote or received showing as much.  When the twins were born, there were only five older siblings alive – Leo, Mary, Ralph, Carl, and Herbert.  An older brother Paul was born in 1903 and died in 1904.  

Between the two sets of twins were born two more children – Edna and Robert.  The youngest set of twins were named Ruth and Roy and they were born in 1915.  I don’t know the birth order for either set of twins in relation to each other.  Somebody else in the family may know that morsel of information, but not me.  I do know that all of the children were born in Louisiana, most likely in Jefferson Davis Parish.  They were the first generation to be born in the South. 

Louis Bucklin came to Louisiana with his Bucklin family in 1884.  Lou was 11 years old at the time and he had lived those first years of his life in the state of Iowa.  His father James Bucklin’s family had been in Massachusetts for six generations.  His mother Mary Ann McGrath had immigrated from Ireland when she was a young woman.  She met and married James in 1854.  She came down to Louisiana with her family in 1884 and ended up dying in Jennings, Louisiana, in 1900.  She lived long enough to meet the first of Lou and Addie’s children.

George Henry Hine circa 1900

Addie Hine came to Louisiana with her Hine family in 1894.  She was a young adult at the time and the first part of her life was spent in Indiana.  Her parents George Henry Hine and Susan Stanbrough were both born in Indiana as well.  I am greeted by Grampa George every morning.  I recently had a canvas print made of a photo of him that I edited nicely.  His face is so angular, and his eyes follow you as you walk by him.  George and Sue lived long enough to know all of their Bucklin grandchildren.

 

 

The Landry Kids and Aint Zita

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Last week I had a hard time deciding on a photo to talk about, while this week this photo just reached out and grabbed me unawares!  It’s not a photo that I’m real familiar with.  I got it from Cousin Sis a few years ago when we got together to share photos and information.  And for some reason, today it looks particularly charming.  It reminds me of other photos I’ve posted.  In 2016 I posted a photo of Aunt Marie and Uncle A. J. in a washtub like you see in the photo.  It was from around 1925.  In 2019 I posted a photo that included Aunt Zita (more often pronounced as Aint by my dad and his cousins) when she visited the Landry family in 1939.

Marie, Germaine, A. J. and Bobbie Landry with their aunt Zita Patureau circa 1929 at their Jackson Street home in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

This is a photo of Aunt Zita with my dad and some of his siblings in 1929.  My dad’s name was Bob Landry.  His parents were Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie Patureau.  Back then they were known as Mama and Papa.  On January 31, 1929, Erie Patureau Landry gave birth to their fifth child who they called Bobbie.  And that’s what the family called him for the rest of his life.

Marie (Marie Therese) was my dad’s oldest sister.  She was the firstborn child, and she was born in 1923.  She is the child standing up in the middle of the photo.  She had cousins on both sides of her family, but on the Landry side they were much older.  Rob Landry was the youngest of ten children.  Marie did have cousins closer to her age on the Patureau side.  Therese Wynhoven was two years older than her, and Mona Mell was just a few months older.

Marie was an only child for just 14 months, then along came Alcide Joseph.  He was always known as A. J. to the family, though some people did refer to him as Al.  He is the little boy standing in the middle of the photo.  He had some cute little curls on his head.  The next sibling to come along was Hubert, who was born in 1925.  For some reason he is not in the photo.  Too bad.  After Hubert came Germaine, who was born in 1927.  Germaine is the little girl sitting in the tin washtub.  She isn’t really paying attention to anybody else around her.  My dad seems to be paying attention to her.  He’s the baby being held by the woman in the photo.  And he seems to be fascinated by his older sister in the washtub.

By now you must realize that the woman in the photo is Aunt Zita.  If you don’t know the connection, it is through my grandmother Erie Patureau Landry.  Zita was Erie’s younger sister.  There is two years difference in their ages, but still enough room for another sister – Lorena – to be born between them.  My grandmother didn’t waste time having those kids, and neither did her mother.  Zita was 32 years old at the time of the photo and she wasn’t married.  She didn’t get married for another ten years.  Then after their sister Marie Therese or “Bee” died, Zita married Bee’s husband and helped to raise Bee and Clarence’s two young girls.  

I’m not really sure where this photo is taken.  I don’t recognize it as being the house that my grandparents had when my dad was growing up in Lake Charles.  Of course, I’m probably not familiar with all of the views of the house.  In 1929 Zita lived on Lee Avenue in Lafayette, Louisiana, with her father Max Patureau (Grampa Max) and other siblings.  I am not familiar with that house at all.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen photos of it.  Maybe this is one.

It’s not that important, though.  The main focus to me are those little Landry children.  Particularly the young one being held by his aunt.  He is why I’m here.