Month: March 2024

My First Easter

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The Landry boys – Al, Rob, and little Van – on Easter 1961 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I thought I’d share a few photos from my first Easter tonight.  I don’t remember anything from that far back, but I do have some photos.  Easter fell on April the 2nd in 1961, so that’s the date I’m going with.  I was only five months old at the time, so I probably wasn’t aware of what was going on.

Rob and Al were aware of what was going on.  Al was a few months shy of his second birthday and he’s got his Easter basket all decked out with greenery.   Rob was almost six, so he knew to show off his prized egg as well as his basket.  Maybe he found all of the hidden eggs before Al had a chance to find any.  I know I wasn’t in the running at all.  I was just sitting there watching all of these strange new behaviors that were going on.  Easter?  What’s that?!

I do remember a few things from back then.  I remember those red shoes for sure.  Not that I remember wearing them.  I think my mom must have saved them for a long time and told me about them being mine.  I do like the bright red color.  Very festive!  I remember playing with my dad and brothers in that back yard over the next year or so that we lived in Lake Charles.  Mainly it was playing with a toy gun that shot little propellers that would fly.  It made an impact on my developing brain.  The toy looked similar to the photo that you see.  At least from what I can remember from all those years ago.

The Landry girls – Karen and Jodie – on Easter in 1961 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

This next photo is of my older sisters.  I was the fifth child.  I had two older brothers and two older sisters.  Sometimes I think of myself as the tiebreaker.  That didn’t last long.  My younger sister Jamie came along a year later and tied it up again.  But on April 2, 1961, there were just the two brothers, the two sisters, and my mom and dad.  My parents weren’t in any of the Easter photos that I have for that year.  I might have shared a different photo if they had been. 

I like this photo of Karen and Jodie.  They have their new Easter dresses on, and they’ve got their Easter baskets ready for collecting.  Jodie must have had high expectations.  That’s a big basket that she has!  I think it’s bigger than all of the other three combined!  I don’t know where she thought she’d find enough eggs to fill it up. 

I have no idea where we went that year.  In the years after this, when we lived in Jennings, we would go to my mom’s family in Hathaway for Easters.  There was always an Easter egg hunt.  I once called it the Great Bucklin Egg Hunt.  I would think that it had started by 1961.  Grandma and Grandpa Bucklin (Myrtle Phenice and Fred Bucklin) had thirteen grandchildren who would be eager to go traipsing around their property to find colored eggs and other goodies.

But since we were still living in Lake Charles, maybe we stayed in town for the Landry family gathering.  We had even more cousins there.  Mee Maw (Germaine Erie Patureau Landry) was a widow (for some reason that’s a term I never associate with her!) whose husband Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. – our Pee Paw – had died a few years earlier.  She had over twenty grandchildren at the time.  I’m sure they were just as eager to go a-hunting. 

So there you have it.  The Landry children dressed up for Easter, with their eggs and baskets ready for something.  A Great Bucklin Egg Hunt?  A Landry Pocking Contest?  Showing off their cute little new brother with his bright red booties?  Whatever happened, it must have been something good.  Otherwise, I would have heard stories about it when we looked back at these old photos.  But all I remember hearing about was how much they liked that dress, how much they liked that hair cut, and how much fun I was when I was that age. 

Ok, maybe that last thing wasn’t said.  But I’m sure it was thought.  Right?!  Just look at those booties.  What’s not to like?

Have a happy Easter.

Mee Maw and the Fig Tree

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Germaine Erie Patureau circa 1950 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Here is a photo of my paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau.  I’ve always known her as Mee Maw.  I saw the first version of the photo in 2019.  It was in the Tin Can Collection that originally belonged to my Aunt Wana.  It has since been taken over by her children Tricia and perhaps Tim.  Both of them have shared photos from the Collection, but it’s usually Tricia.  She’s the one who showed me the image in 2019 when a few of the cousins got together.  Wow.  It’s almost five years now.  I took a photo of the photo because I liked it.

It wasn’t until tonight that I realized that I had two versions of this photo.  I discovered this improved version in 2021, when I looked closer at some of the things that I took from my parents’ home when we moved them to Assisted Living.  As I looked through the old photos and such, I found an old packet of negatives.  Some of them were really old.  Those were from the 1930s when my dad was a kid.  Then there were others like this one that look like they came from the 1950s.

So I scanned those old negatives, and this was one of them.  I didn’t recognize it from two years earlier, but I did like it.  I like discovering new photos of my grandmother who hasn’t been around for over fifty years.  I had to guess the approximate year the photo was taken.  I compared it to known photos of her through the years and decided it looked like some time in the early 1950s.  Does that sound about right?  She was born in 1895, so that would put her in her mid to late fifties.  Hmmm.  Maybe it was taken earlier.

And I’m not even sure where the photo was taken.  I had thought about calling it “Mee Maw In the Back Yard,” but I wasn’t sure I was correct about that assessment.  I don’t remember the house that she lived in back then.  I recognize the back of the house because there are several photos of the family taken there.  But this area does look like a back yard with fig trees and other plantings.  I can tell that it was probably winter, based on the bare branches of the fig tree.  The bare arms of my grandmother say that it wasn’t a particularly cold winter day.  If I knew the color of her dress, I would have used that in the title of this post.  But I’m not familiar with the dress and don’t remember seeing it.

I don’t know much about the photo, it would seem.  Yet I am still drawn to it.  I like her determined pose and the way she’s standing firm.  Most of the photos of her from this time period are group photos.  She’s either with her husband and her eight children, or she’s with a gaggle of grandkids.  There were new ones appearing every year.  So to have a nice, sharp photo of her all by herself is a gift. 

I share it with you.

More Irish in the Foster Line

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Cathrine Jane “Kate” Foster Phenice was from Mercer, Pennsylvania – or was she?

I wonder if my great great grandmother Kate Foster was ever aware of her Irish ancestry.  She was born Cathrine Jane Foster on September 16, 1848, in Cherrytree, Pennsylvania.  Her parents were Morris Foster and Anne Magdaleen Milliron.  Her father Morris died in 1852 at the age of 35.  I’m sure it was a tough time for the family.  Anne Magdaleen was left with four children under the age of 8 years old.  She took herself and her children back to Mercer, Pennsylvania, which is where she was born and where most of her family lived.  

Anne married George Richael in 1853 and quickly started increasing the size of the family.  With all of these younger siblings about, it’s very likely that Kate never heard much about her father’s family.  In fact, it was always reported that she was born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, but that isn’t true.  The family lived in Cherrytree when she was born.  The confusion around that was probably one of the reasons her descendants had difficulty tracking her ancestry.

But Morris Foster did in fact have Irish ancestry.  I’m not sure of his mother’s ancestry.  Her name was Catherine Moore and I don’t have much information on her.  His father’s name was James Foster and there are more details about his ancestry.  Last year I wrote a post about his father Hugh Foster who was born in Derry, which is in Northern Ireland.  I don’t know when he immigrated to the United States, but he ended up in Liberty, Pennsylvania.  Liberty and Mercer are both in Mercer County.

1778 will of James McCullough

Hugh Foster wasn’t the only one with Irish heritage.  He was married to Mary Elizabeth McCullough.  Like I said last year, that sounds like an Irish name for sure!  I said that I would look into her history, but I didn’t actually do that until this evening when I was looking for something to write about.  I read last year’s post and realized I had been remiss.  Lax, lax, lax!  So I started looking into her family, and it didn’t take long to find some interesting things.  I like it when that happens.

Mary Elizabeth McCullough was the daughter of James McCullough & Martha Hance.  One of the first things I found was James’ will, which was written in 1778.  He lived from 1720 to 1781.  He wills to his beloved wife Martha her bed and bed furniture, her choice of bay mares and her saddle, and her choice of two cows and six sheep.  She also has the use of the back bedroom of their house during her natural life.  She is also allowed to use the pasture to keep the animals that he left her.  The “plantation” was left to his sons John and Hance. 

From book about several counties in Pennsylvania that was compile in 1846

He instructs his sons to pay his two daughters – Jean McClellan and Mary Foster (my ancestor) – the sums of eighty pounds each.  It’s interesting to see the things that are listed in an ancestor’s will.  He mentions a wagon, a windmill, and a Bible.  He mentions other books, which shows that he was literate.  I’m not sure if the will is written in his own hand or not.  The spelling of the last name varies in the document.  They may have been ancestors of my grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, but they didn’t have the spelling superpower that she passed down to me.  He also leaves some items to other people.  I’m not sure if they are family or not.  I’ll have to explore his extended family.  Maybe I’ll do that next year!

I already know a little bit about his extended family from this blurb in an old book about Pennsylvania.  It reports that James came from Ireland with his two brothers and an unmarried sister (Anna).  It says that he is the founder of the American McCulloughs.  But more importantly, it tells us when he came to America!  Finally, I know the date of immigration for one of my Irish lines.  James first settled in Delaware in 1743.  A decade later he moved the family to Franklin County, Pennsylvania.  At that time the family consisted of himself, his wife Martha, and their son John.  If you read the clip, you can see that it was a difficult time in American history.

So this year I’ll be thinking of James McCullough for St. Patrick’s Day.  He and Martha and their daughter Mary.  Erin go bragh!

 

A View From 1974

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Karen, Al, and Van Landry in March 1974. We took this ‘before’ picture with glasses to commemorate the time that we got our first pair of contact lenses. I promised them back then that I’d post the photo on my blog for the 50th anniversary. This photo is such bad quality, but it is the only one from this important life event.

I have planned on writing about this 50-year anniversary for a few years now.  I’ve been waiting anxiously to be able to write about this topic.  You would think that I would have thought about some really interesting things to say about it, perhaps in relation to family history.  That is the main topic of my blogs, if you haven’t noticed.  But I’m sticking with this story that I’ve planned on.  My main problem is usually that I haven’t thought of or planned on a topic for the week.  So I have to follow through with my years-long planning.

Here is the important announcement: Today completes 50 years of wearing contact lenses.  My first pair of contact lenses were first worn on March 8, 1974, and I have been wearing them ever since.  Not the same pair, of course.  I’ve had about seven or eight pairs.  I’ve gone without them for a few days here and there, but I’m a consistent contacts-wearer. 

Of course I was 13 years old at the time, so I didn’t just go drive and pick them up myself.  It was a family event.  See, it is family related!  In early 1974 there were three Landry family members who wore glasses – Karen, Al, and me.  Karen and Al had been wearing them longer than I had.  I had only worn glasses for two years.

Van and Karen on the left, and Al on the far right. This photo was taken at Astroworld on July 24, 1974, which was Al’s 15th birthday.  Note that the glasses are no longer in use.  The best ‘after’ picture I could find.

My parents didn’t have a lot of extra money back at that point.  This was before we made the big bucks (not!) at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor as the Landry Family Band.  But there was a Texas State Optical store in Orange, Texas, and that business had a good deal on contact lenses.  My parents decided that all three of us would get contact lenses.  Early one Saturday morning, the family got in the car and headed west to Orange.  This is terrible, but I can’t remember exactly who went with the three of us.  Was it Mama or Daddy?  Did Jamie come along with us?  I just can’t remember.  Sorry, Jamie, if you were there and I forgot.

What I remember is the sun coming into the car and coming over our shoulders as we heard the song “Sunshine on My Shoulders” by John Denver.  We made a big deal of that.  Then we stopped at some gas station store and bought popcorn that was “Popped Fresh!”  We joked about it being “popped fresh” five days ago.  We thought we were so clever.  When we were at TSO, we joked about how the doctor there told us how to rinse the contacts.  He pronounced the word rinse like the word wrench.  We’ve laughed about that for years.

I remember reminiscing about that day through the years, but it was usually with Karen.  But Karen is not with us any longer to reminisce with.  This made me think of her a bit more this week.  She passed away on April 8, 2020, from Multiple Systems Atrophy at the age of 63 years, 4 months, and 6 days.  (Not 5 months as I erroneously wrote last year!)  When I was planning on writing this post, I realized that the 50th Anniversary of the Contacts (no I did not make a cake or have a party!) was falling at the same time as when I reach the age that Karen was when she died.  So now I have outlived both of my ‘older’ sisters.  I’ve actually lived longer than all three of my sisters.  But with Jamie, it’s just that I was born before her.  I hope she outlives me.  

The other thing I remember about that long ago day in March was that I could see so much more clearly.  The pink azaleas were in bloom at the time, and they were so pretty in front of all the houses along North Cutting in my hometown of Jennings, Louisiana.  They are not quite in full bloom yet this year.  But it won’t be long.  You’ll see.  I will, too… with the help of my contacts!