Month: June 2024

My Dad’s Mom Was a Patureau

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1997 Patureau family reunion in southern Louisiana.  I see my dad’s white curly hair.  He is standing to the left in a blue shirt.

Recently a Patureau cousin sent me some old family photos.  (Thanks, again Craig!)  Most of the photos were of second or third cousins from the various Patureau family lines.  I talk about the Patureau family frequently on these blog posts.  That’s because there’s so much information available about them.  Maybe it’s because there are so many of us around.  They have traditionally had large families and there have been one or two serious family researchers in every generation of the family.  Maybe not in every family line, but there have been a few.  

1996 Patureau Family Reunion – my dad is sitting at the table to the right talking to a cousin.

The Patureau family came from Riberac, France, in 1840.  It consisted of the 40-year- old Pierre Ferdinand Patureau (born in LaRoche-Chalais), his 39-year-old wife Anne Rose Machet (born in Mareuil), their 16-year-old daughter Victorine, their 14- year-old son Ferdinand, their 13-year-old son Abel, and 12-year-old Elisa. 

It was only the two oldest that had any children.  Victorine ended up settling in east Texas, while Ferdinand had his family in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  Through eight of their fifteen or so children, he and his wife Emma Landry had at least 75 grandchildren.  And many of those grandchildren had large families as well.  There are well over a thousand descendants of Ferdinand and Emma.

Patureau cousins – Therese Mouton, Merlyn Patureau Pays, and Maureen “Totsy” Patureau Conaway in New Orleans, Louisiana.

So it makes sense that they’d want to have a Patureau reunion every once in a while.  I know that I went to one in the 1970s in Duson, Louisiana.  I don’t know if it was for all of Ferdinand and Emma’s descendants or if it was just through their son Vincent Maximilian.  I descend from him and he was known as Grampa Max, though he is my great grandfather.  My dad was Bob Landry and he was the son of Max’s daughter Erie Patureau Landry. 

Max’s daughter Emma had a daughter named Therese Mouton, and she was the one that had the get together in Duson.  I’d like to see photos of that reunion.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen any.  I’m glad that one of the new photos I recently acquired was a photo of Therese – our family called her Tez – with some of her Patureau cousins.  She was good about visiting cousins all across southern Louisiana.  She made quite an impression and the stories about those visits are still being told today.

1997 Patureau Family Reunion possibly at Oakdale, Louisiana. My dad is to the far right. Across from him is Linda Cansler, another Patureau family researcher. I’m sure there was a lot of family history facts being thrown around.

I also went to a Patureau reunion in 1993 at the home of Pat and Lora Patureau in Baton Rouge.  Tez was at that reunion, too.  I didn’t hang around her too much, because it seemed like I was cramping her style.  She treated me like I was the strange one!  There had been a 1992 reunion, but I don’t think any of the Max Patureau line was there.  I don’t think I went to any other Patureau reunion in the 1990s.  I don’t even remember hearing about them.  There were several more that I heard about that happened in Bayou L’Ourse.  I heard about them from Craig and Byron and Dana, some cousins I keep in touch with.  

So when I got that big batch of photos a few weeks ago, I went through them looking for anyone familiar.  Fortunately, many of them were labeled with people’s names.   Very nice.  I recognized many of the names, though I didn’t know them personally.  When I saw some photos of Patureau reunions in the 1990s, I looked at those closely. 

I didn’t know if my dad had gone to any of them, but he was very interested in family history.  It makes sense that he would have gone to them.  And sure enough, I found him in three different photos at two of the Patureau reunions.  Besides liking to visit with family and have a good time with them, he also enjoyed all of the history of the Patureau family.  I can see his family history book in his lap that he brought to any family get together.  I’m sure he enjoyed talking with Linda Cansler who was another Patureau researcher.  Why wouldn’t he?  He was a Patureau!

The Keys of Trekking

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Watercolor painting by Arlene Keys Ware

Interesting title, right?  I would have had the perfect photo for it if I hadn’t made a bad choice a few years ago.  How could I have been so shortsighted? 

The topic came about as a result of the family reunion I went to last weekend.  It was for the Keys family in southern Louisiana.  My great grandmother was Daisy Keys, and she came to the United States from England in 1887 when she was just eleven years old.  The reunion was for the descendants of her and her four siblings.  It was a nice event.  I was able to see some family members that I was hoping to see.  I received some positive (and negative) feedback from the writing and photo editing that I do for these blog posts.  But I also heard some sad news.  Two of my mom’s first cousins had passed away earlier this year.

I try to keep up with the goings on of my closest relatives, but I do not always succeed.  I’m kind of surprised that I hadn’t heard about not just one, but two of her cousins.  Especially since they lived in Lake Charles and I have lots of family in Lake Charles.  But then again, most of those relatives are on my dad’s side of the family.  The two family members who passed away were Arlene Keys Ware and her brother Melvin Keys.

Some of you might be wondering how my mom could have a first cousin with the last name of Keys, when her grandmother was a Keys.  Wouldn’t her first cousins more likely have the Bucklin or Phenice last name like her parents?  That would usually be correct.  But Arlene and Mel were not first cousins to my mom through the Keys side of the family.  Their mother was Edna Bucklin, who was the sister of her father Fred.  We saw a picture of them just last week on my blog post!  I didn’t realize the connection until just now.  So Fred married Myrtle Phenice and Edna married Myrtle’s first cousin Frank Keys.  Arlene and Mel were not just first cousins, they were second cousins as well.

Arlene was the younger of the two.  She’s one of the few of my mom’s first cousins that I remember from far back.  That’s probably because when she was in high school, she went to LaGrange High School when my dad was the band director.  She was in band, so she knew him pretty well.  Plus, she was the drum major for the band.  I have some old photos from back then that I had intended on going through to see if she might want any.  I never got around to doing it.

I always enjoyed talking with Arlene at family get togethers and such.  I was also a fan of her artwork over the past few years.  She was a wonderful water colorist.  I wish I had some of her work.  I have some digital copies of several of them, so that’s sufficient.  I had been hoping to see her at the reunion.  I didn’t realize she had passed away.

I was also hoping to see her brother Mel there.  I was wanting to possibly remedy the mistake I had made a few years ago.  It was at the 2017 Keys Family Reunion.  That was the first time that I was aware of Mel Keys being at a family reunion.  He probably had been to some in the past and I didn’t really pay attention to him.  I didn’t know anything about him.  But a short while before this reunion I had been given some interesting information about him.  Let me give you the back story first.

I am a huge Star Trek fan.  I’ve been a fan since that first Starship Enterprise was flying across our tiny black and white screen in Jennings, Louisiana.  I don’t remember watching entire episodes of the show when it first aired.  I seem to remember catching glimpses of it when I was acting as the channel changer.  My dad would tell me to change the channel, and I would follow through.  But when I saw that spaceship or Mr. Spock on the screen, I would linger as long as I could.  The first episode I remember watching was the one with the Gorn in it.  Remember, the big alligator guy that was fighting with Captain Kirk on a deserted planet?!  It is epic.  Like I said, I’m a Trekkie.

I really started watching the show when it went into syndication shortly after it was cancelled in the early 1970s.  I would look forward to watching it after I got home from school.  When I got a paper route around 1972, it messed up my Trek viewing.  I remember seeing the opening credits about “to boldly go where no man has gone before” and I had to boldly jump on my bicycle and bring the news to my neighbors.  No matter how quickly I delivered those papers, I at most caught a few minutes of the ending of the show.  

That didn’t stop me from being a fan.  I seem to remember dressing up as Mr. Spock for Halloween or something.  I carefully wrapped tape around my ears to make them look pointed.  I seem to recall my mom saying that I even shaved the ends of my eyebrows to make me look like I had pointed eyebrows.  Again, I have no photo to document that as well.  Just vague memories here and there.  I also remember when we got our first color TV.  The first show we saw on it?  You got it, it was Star Trek.  It was the episode where the space hippies were looking for love and paradise.  It was so groovy and colorful.

One of the things that people made fun of was the way that when an unknown crewmember (usually wearing a red shirt) beamed down to the planet with someone like Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock, you always knew that that person was going to die!  It seemed to happen frequently.  I remember thinking that they should let one of the main characters die.  They could bring them back the following week!  It’s fiction!  That way we wouldn’t know who was going to die when that red-shirted guy beamed down to the planet.  So you can’t imagine how happy I was ***  SPOILER ALERT*** when they killed off Spock in the second Star Trek movie.  Then they brought him back in the third movie.  It was just what I always wanted.  Those were the best movies ever!!!

July 1965- the day of completion of the Star Trek model in Burbank, California. From the left Vern Sion, Mel Keys, and Volmer Jensen.

Now I’m telling you all of this because of what I found out years later.  You have to see it in relation to my history with Star Trek and how that had started when I was a small child.  When I was watching the show all through the years, I wasn’t aware of the family connection I had with the show.  It wasn’t until around 2015 or so that I found out the amazing information.  Cousin Joseph was sharing old family photos with me, and he sent me a photo of some people on the street standing next to what looked like the Starship Enterprise.  I asked him what it was.  He told me that our moms’ first cousin Mel Keys had built the model of the Starship Enterprise.  The Starship Enterprise that had zoomed across my old black and white TV all those years ago had been built by my mom’s first cousin!!!

My mind was blown.  I don’t say that very often.  Actually, I don’t recall saying that about anything else in my life.  My mom must not have known this fact.  I would have remembered if she had said something like, “Oh, yeah, my cousin built that cool spaceship.”  Definitely I would have remembered that little juicy morsel of information.  But now that I know this information, I tell it to people all the time.  Especially if they are somewhat interested in science fiction.  Sometimes even if they’re not!  It’s just too amazing.

So when I went to that 2017 Keys Reunion, I saw Mel Keys.  I talked to him and let him know I was a fan of the show.  It was a pleasant little chat.  Later, though, people were taking photos of groups for the reunion.  My sister Karen and some cousins decided to get a picture taken with Mel Keys.  Not a group photo, they were each taking a photo with him.  I declined.  Can you believe it?  What was I thinking?  I didn’t want to bother him by getting a picture with him because of a model he made fifty years earlier.  What was I thinking?  Of course I did!  It was the Starship Enterprise that was used in the filming of that show!  I didn’t take the chance.

But I was hoping to remedy that this year and go where I had not gone before.  Alas, it was not to be.  I was sorry that my mom’s first cousin had died.  I would have liked to have (boldly) gone to the funeral to be with the family.  In good Star Trek fashion, he lived long and prospered. 

Peace and long life.

Bucklin Twins in 1925

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Bucklin siblings with friends in 1925 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I know, I know. There are more than two people in this photo, but my focus is on my grandfather and his identical twin.  I always thought it was fascinating that my grandfather had an identical twin.  Wouldn’t that be fun?  I always thought it would be.  I suppose I had the next best thing with having several siblings and we weren’t really that far apart in age.  My younger sister and I would tell people that we were twins, and they believed it.  We were just playing around though.

My grandfather, though, had the real thing.  His name was Fred D Bucklin – the D did not stand for anything.  His identical twin’s name was Clarence Johnathan Bucklin.  Clarence had a middle name and a nickname – “CJ.”  They were born on October 2, 1907, in Roanoke, Louisiana.  The photo was taken around 1925, so they would be teenagers at the time it was taken.  

It looks like they were dressed alike, too.  That makes it even harder to tell them apart.  But I don’t think they wanted to help people tell them apart at the time.  They liked playing tricks on people about their identity.  At least that’s what my mom told me when I’d ask her about it.  She said that the teachers had a hard time telling them apart at school, so they’d give each twin a different color ribbon or arm band to wear.  That wasn’t very successful, because the twins would switch colors on the teachers and do what they wanted.  I think they were a bit of jokesters.  You can see that in this photo, where one of them is sliding his hat onto his sister Edna’s head.  She was two years younger than the twins.

My mom also said that they would pull a switch with her when she was younger, but she said it didn’t take her long to realize that it was her uncle rather than her father.  He probably had an impish smile on his face since he had pulled a fast one on her. Twins look very much alike, but there are details that you notice when you know them that helps you to tell them apart.   I would think that growing up in a household with one of them would make it easy to distinguish between the two of them.  I wasn’t there back then, so I can’t tell who is who in these old photos.  I’m not sure if there is a way to tell at this point.  I just know that the one with Grandma in the photos is my grandfather!

The interesting thing about identical twins is that their DNA is exactly the same.  If they did a DNA test, the results would show as ‘self.’  But they didn’t live long enough to participate in DNA testing.  But their daughters did.  My mom and her first cousin Carla both did a test.  When a person tests, 50% of their DNA comes from each parent.  Half comes from their dad and half from their mom.  Regular siblings have 50% from both parents, but it’s not the same pieces. Full siblings usually share around 50% with each other.  About 25% of what they have in common is from their mother, the other 25% is from their father.  If you only shared a father, half siblings would only have about 25% in common.  

First cousins share about 12.5% of their DNA.  Unless, of course, their parents are identical.  If they are truly identical, it would show up as though they were half siblings, which would be around 25%.  Well, the results of my mom and her cousin prove that Fred and Clarence were indeed identical.  Mama and Carla share 30%, which is on the high end of the scale for half siblings.  The only way that could have happened was because of the identical DNA in the brothers. 

Of course, if you just look at the photos of the two brothers you would know.  But it’s fun to see that a test can show that they were.  

SPEBSQSA Singers in Jennings Circa 1949

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1949 Newspaper article about my dad singing in Jennings in 1949.

I found this article online last year and it surprised me a bit.  It is from 1949 and it is about a music group from Lake Charles visiting Jennings and performing for them.  I don’t know how the event came about, but it must have been sufficiently interesting enough to make it into the newspaper.  And I’m glad it did.

When I was growing up in Jennings, Louisiana, we did a lot of singing.  My parents sang, my brothers sang, and my sisters sang.  We all sang together.  We sang at home.  We sang at church.  We sang at school.  We even went to school during the summers so we could sing some more!

The main reason was because my dad was a band and choral director and my mom had majored in music at college as well.  When I saw this article, I was brought back to summer vacations when we’d all pile in the old Country Squire station wagon and head to Texas or the Gulf Coast.  That old car had a sticker on the back window, and it was for this group – SPEBSQSA.  We were so proud that we could quote and say it really fast.

My dad’s belt buckle for many years.

I always figured that my dad brought his singing and barbershopping to Jennings for the first time in 1963 when we moved there.  But this article shows me how I wrong I was to assume that.  My dad had been to Jennings in 1949 with the barbershop group from Lake Charles!  From what I know, he started with that group in 1948 when he was just 19 years old.  He wouldn’t meet my mom – Betty Lou Bucklin from Hathaway – for another year.  She was still in high school at the Hathaway school.

It looks like my dad was part of a barbershop quartet as well as the choral group.  I know he would do that a few years later when he was in the Air Force.  Then when we lived in Jennings for those many years, he would always have a quartet.  He stayed involved with SPEBSQSA for the rest of his life, even after they changed their name.  He was a fixture at those barbershop conventions through the years.  They’d sing and sing and sing til all hours of the night in to the morning.

After many hours singing and woodshedding, he’d climb into bed to sleep.  As his head hit the pillow, he probably could still hear the sounds of “When it’s darkness on the Delta” or “When it’s sleepy time down South” in his mind.  The harmonies would quickly lull him to sleep.

Jennings barbershop chorus in 1968.