Month: August 2024

Marie Celeste Circa 1880

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Marie Celeste Leveque Landry circa 1880 in Brusly, Louisiana.

This is a photo of my great grandmother Marie Celeste Leveque Landry.  Her husband was Simon Alcide Landry.  She was the mother of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  She was the grandmother of my dad Bob Landry, and she was called Grandma Celeste by him and his siblings.  Even though she lived to be 86 years old, she died when my dad was only five years old.  That’s because Daddy was the fifth child and Pee Paw was 36 when he was born.  Pee Paw was Grandma Celeste’s last child, and she had him at the age of 45.  

Yet even though she died when my dad and his siblings were quite young, they always talked fondly of her.  Their Bouquet cousins talk fondly of her, too.  They descend from Pee Paw’s older brother Sebastien.  He was married to his first cousin Marie Manette Landry (daughter of Trasimond Landry – brother of Alcide).  They had a daughter named Marie Manette Landry.  The older Marie Manette died shortly after the younger was born, and Sebastien went to live with his parents.  So Marie Celeste was like a mother to granddaughter Marie Manette.  Manette grew up and married Bibb Bouquet and they had a large family that was very close to my dad’s family.

This photo came from cousin Jeanne Landry, who descended from another of Pee Paw’s older brothers – Louis.  That was the Landry family that lived in Lafayette.  The photo was identified as Marie Celeste, but it didn’t have a date.  I originally estimated a date of 1905, but last week when I thought of posting this photo, I realized that it was not quite right.  That dress looked older to me.  How much older, I didn’t know.

But a friend was coming over to visit on Friday and he is more knowledgeable about the fashion trends from that time period.  So I put off posting this photo until after I talked to him.  I also thought that the dress looked rather fancy to me.  I was told that the dress was definitely earlier than the 1905 date.  It is more likely from around 1880.  In addition, the dress is not as valuable as I thought.  That would make sense, because she was a young mother with six young children to care for.  In the 1880 Census the family was living in Brusly, Louisiana.  Celeste is identified as a 33-year-old wife and Alcide was a 35-year-old store clerk.

It was soon after this that the family would move west to Westlake, Louisiana.  I think the motivation was work availability with the railroads in that area.  I guess it would be more lucrative than working in someone else’s store.  But I suppose they made enough to have a photo portrait made of Celeste.  I wonder why they didn’t do a family portrait. Whatever the reason, it is a nice photo of her.  I like having this image of Grandma Celeste.  It’s a keeper.

 

The Landry Family in July 1969

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Last night we watched the movie “First Man.”  It is about the events leading up to the first moon landing in the summer of 1969.  Since I was living way back then, I had memories of those long-ago events.  I also have photos to remind me of some of the things that we did back then.  And somehow, I have another reminder of some of those events.

The Landry family – Jamie, Jodie, Al, Rob, Van, mom (Betty Lou Bucklin), and Karen in Houston, Texas, a few days after the first moon landing in July of 1969.

Five years ago I posted a photo from the same event.  That was in honor of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.  Just recently we passed the 55th anniversary of that time.  I had planned on posting this photo soon after that other one.  Mainly because it is a better photo of all of us, though this one is with our mom.  The other one was with our dad while we were standing in front of the Lunar Landing Module.  (or a replica of one).

This photo has us standing in front of the splashdown capsule from one of the space missions.  It wasn’t from Apollo 11, because that one had just splashed down with Armstrong and crew a day earlier.  Yes, the Landry family was at NASA on July 25, the day after the first visitors to the moon landed back on Earth.  We even saw some commotion with some official-looking cars and such.  We just knew that it was either the astronauts being brought into quarantine or some of the moon rocks being brought in for examination.  What an exciting visit!

I always find it surprising that the first “Star Trek” series was before the first moon landing and it actually ended the month before.  You would think that all of this excitement of traveling in space would have created an audience for the show so that it wouldn’t have been cancelled.  I was definitely a big fan.  Sure, my mom’s first cousin Mel Keys built the model of the U. S. S. Enterprise that they used to film those shows, but I didn’t know that back then.  I just loved the stories about space.  So I was definitely excited to go to NASA that summer.

Notecards written by Karen in July 1969

But that wasn’t all that was happening in July of 1969.  I’ve been planning on writing about a few events from the beginning of that month for a while.  That’s because somehow, I have notecards that Karen wrote on about some of those events.  I’m glad I do, because they give a glimpse into how things were back then.  

The day was July 6, 1969.  We left Jennings and went to Lake Charles to drop Jodie off at band camp.  Karen seemed excited that she got to go in and help Jodie get situated.  Jodie was 15 at the time and Karen was 12.  Band Camp was held at McNeese and it lasted a week during the summer.  After leaving Jodie there, the family went looking to visit family.   

My dad was from Lake Charles, and he had six siblings that still lived there at the time.  The last of all of those eight siblings just recently passed away.  So it looks like we went to his sister Wana’s house first.  It was closest to McNeese.  But, as Karen said, “Nobody was there.”  We headed to the other side of McNeese to see what was going on at Uncle Johnny’s.  Cousin Mona was sick, so we didn’t stay there for more than a bit of a chat.  Then we went to his sister Frances’s house, and everyone was there playing cards.  It’s what they did.  I’m sure we joined in on the games.

We then went to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor for dinner.  We had pizza and balloons.  I’m thinking that we maybe got balloons because Jamie’s birthday was the day before.  It would be another seven years before our family became the entertainment at that Shakey’s location.  I can’t imagine the pizzas costing that much money back then.  Karen didn’t say how much it cost.  But she did talk about the price of dessert.  When we got back to Jennings, we stopped at the Bulldog Inn.  For some reason Al decided to treat everyone to ice cream.  He was rich back then!  Even with seven of us (Jodie was at B. C. in L.C.), the total price would come in under 40 cents.

Those were the days.

Phenice Cousins, Part 2

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Phenice cousins in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1939 or 1940

This is a continuation of a previous post from eight and a half years ago.  In January of 2016, I posted a photo from 1939 with three Phenice cousins.  When I say Phenice cousins, I mean cousins with a common Phenice ancestor.  It doesn’t mean that everyone has the same Phenice last name.  I do the same with my first cousins from my mom’s side of the family.  Since my mom’s maiden name was Bucklin, I call them all my Bucklin cousins even though most of them didn’t have Bucklin as a last name.  

My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin, and her parents were Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice.  So when I say Phenice cousins, I mean my mom, her siblings, and their maternal first cousins.  And in her case, most of those cousins did have the Phenice last name.  When I posted that early Phenice Cousins post, I didn’t write nearly as much about the photos as I do now.  It’s up to you to determine if that’s a good or a bad thing!  I didn’t explain what I meant by Phenice cousins, but maybe you already knew what I meant, and I’ve just wasted two whole paragraphs explaining it.  Good thing vs bad thing.  You decide!

While that first photo had three cousins in it, this one has twice as many cousins with more than twice as many words.  And it costs the same amount!  Inflation hasn’t affected my posts.  I had hoped to get a better-quality version of this photo, so I waited on using it on a post.  But with the death of my mom’s first cousin Kathleen Phenice this week, I thought I’d post it now.  It’s a cute photo that she’s included in.  The children in the photo are from two Phenice families.  Four of them are daughters of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, and the other two are daughters of her brother Orville Phenice.  Both families ended up with four daughters and one son.

Let me tell you who everyone is.  On the left, sitting on her sister’s lap, is Loris Bucklin.  She is the youngest of the four Bucklin sisters.  She lives in Houston, Texas, now.  The lap belonged to none other than my mother Betty Lou Bucklin.  She was born on May 20, 1933, and she died on January 19, 2017.  Most of her life was spent with Bob Landry (my dad) in Jennings, Louisiana.  You can barely see her face peeking around Loris’s little head.  The next little cutie is Alma Bucklin.  She was the third Bucklin daughter, born two and a half years after my mom.  I think they all were blond or tow-headed when they were young.  I think that comes from their dad’s Hine family line.  She passed away in 2014.  Sitting in the middle of the photo is the oldest Bucklin daughter Sylvia.  She was born in March of 1931 and died in 2002 in Phoenix, Arizona.  When we were growing up, Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Ronald (Pilcher) lived in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The next little girl is Kathleen Phenice.  She was born on May 8, 1937, and passed away two days ago (on August 13, 2024) in Denton, Texas.  I remember her as my mom’s cousin who would sing with us at family reunions and such.  I liked hearing her and her sisters sing, because their voices reminded me of Grandma.  The family was very musical.  They also did a bit of research on the Phenice family, which I have referred to from time to time. Kathleen was the second daughter of Orville and his wife Elta Whitman Phenice.  Their oldest daughter is Marilyn Phenice, the young girl on the right in the photo.  She still lives in Louisiana.

I’m posting this photo as is.  It’s not the best quality copy.  If anyone has a good copy of it, I would love to have an improved digital version of it.  And if anyone has a more exact date, I love to be corrected.  Actually, any comment is appreciated.

Let the comments commence!

Patureau Home in Lafayette

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Max Patureau home in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I’ve wondered about the Patureau Home in Lafayette for a while.  I know that my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau relocated to Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1912.  He was born in March of 1865 in Mexico when the family relocated there during the Civil War.  Later that year, the family returned to Louisiana and settled in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  He grew up in Plaquemine and spent most of his early life there.  But in 1911 he decided to set up his veterinary practice in Lafayette.

He had a variety of jobs once he became an adult.  He set up a business of delivering groceries to people in their homes when he was a young man.  He was also helping out the family sawmill business that his father Ferdinand Patureau had set up and run until his death in 1877.  His mother Emma Landry Patureau continued that business and Max helped out with that.  Max also set up a family store in 1904 or so with other family members.  I think that he must have started his veterinary business when this store was still in operation.

I don’t know if he started practicing veterinary services before or after the death of his wife Marie Therese Landry Patureau in 1909.  When she died, this left 44-year-old Max Patureau a single father with nine children between the ages of six and twenty.  This was a huge change for Max, and he decided to move his family to Lafayette just two years later.  The newspaper article about Marie Therese’s death tells us that her mother and two of her sisters were already living in Lafayette by 1909.  Her mother was Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin, sometimes just referred to as “Mrs. Pierre Magloire Babin.”  Magloire or Mack Babin had helped to set up the family store in Plaquemine.  There are many photos of family get togethers that include Max and Belite, and they seem to be pretty close.

So moving the family to Lafayette brought them close to other family members.  Family members who might help in caring for all of those children.  But another draw for Lafayette was SLI.  Southwest Louisiana Institute was a reputable school in its time, and Max Patureau was known to value education for his children.  I know that some of them, including my grandmother Erie, graduated from SLI.  My grandmother and some of her sisters also became schoolteachers and taught in Lafayette.

I know that other family members not living in Lafayette were invited to stay at the Patureau home if they wanted to attend SLI.  Max wanted to make sure he could help make it possible for them to get the education that he knew would make a change for their lives.  One of those was Tommy Landry (son of Marie Therese Landry Patureau’s brother Thomas Belisaire), who wrote a book about their grandfather Trasimond Landry (first husband of Belite and father of Marie Therese and Thomas Belisaire).  He spoke highly of his Uncle Max, and also said that he was the one who taught him how to drive.  I think Max helped some other family members, but I don’t know specifically who they were.

So I was interested in seeing that home that was in Lafayette and was close to where SLI was located.  It was on Lee Avenue.  I got the photo from my cousins recently. (Yes, another piece from the Box 301 Collection.)  The photo looks like it could be of two of the Patureau daughters back then.  It even looks like one of them might be holding some schoolbooks. I think the photo was taken around 1918 or so.  It’s a nice view of the home of my predecessors. 

Max Patureau at the home of Father Wynehoven in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I thought I would add this other photo that shows Grampa Max from around the same time period.  I think it was taken around 1925 in Lafayette.  That’s Max Patureau on the left.  He’s the one not wearing priest clothes!  I think the one on the left is a priest who was a family friend.  The name suggested for him was Father Wynehoven.  He was a priest that was well-loved by the family. 

One of Max’s granddaughters was named after him.  That would be my dad’s cousin that we called Tez.  Her given name was Therese Wynehoven Mouton.  The nickname Tez was derivative of her first name.  She was also known by Wynie (sounds like whiney) by some family.  There were other nicknames that she was known by, but I’ll not talk about them at this time.  

Bucklin Family Photos Circa 1950

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I thought I would share two of the photos that I’ve recently acquired from my aunt.  I had never seen these photos before and thought there was a lot of charm about them.  They are from around 1950 and just show scenes of my mom and her younger siblings out in the Hathaway countryside.  Of course they are in black and white.  That’s what most of the photos were back then.  It was a few years before color seeped into the world.   It was a simpler world back then.  There were no clashing colors!

Betty Lou and Austin Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1950.

The first picture is a picture of my mom with her baby brother.  That would be Betty Lou and Austin Bucklin, the second and fifth children of Fred D. and Myrtle Phenice of Hathaway, Louisiana.  At least that’s the name that my mom used for where she grew up and went to school.  Occasionally she would refer to China, Louisiana, when talking about her family.  That one always caught my attention.  Her family lived in China?  She does have ancestors who are buried at the China Cemetery out there.

My grandparents lived “out in the country” on Bucklin Road.  North of there was the China Cemetery, though not as far as Elton.  South of their home was Raymond, Louisiana.  They attended church at Raymond Methodist Church.  Some of the family are buried at the Raymond Cemetery.  It is mostly members of the Bucklin family.  A mile or two east of the Raymond Methodist church is Hathaway High School.

So why did my mom call it Hathaway when Raymond and China were closer than Hathaway?  Maybe she just identified with it more because she went to school at Hathaway High School all twelve years of her schooling.  So I’ll always think of her family as being from Hathaway and it might be somewhat incorrect.  Why do they have so many names for places around there?

And when did they move there?  I know the Bucklin family originally came down from Iowa in 1884.  That was my mom’s Bucklin grandfather who came with his parents and siblings.  He died before she was born, but the family still owns that land out there.  Aunt Loris said that the family moved to the house that we knew on Bucklin Road in 1943 or so.  (If I’m remembering correctly.  I should make more notes!)  I’m not sure where the house was that they lived in before that.

I just remember the place that you see in the photo.  My mom always talked about how they used a scrub board to wash clothes and would hang them out to dry.  No fancy electrified contraptions were out there!  My grandfather had a nursery, so there were lots of places with growing plants around the property.  I’m not sure why Austin is looking at Betty Lou like he is in this photo.  It looks like a candid photo, which I like.  He seems perplexed by her behavior.

Austin, Loris, and Alma Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1950

The second photo also has Austin in it.  He’s in the driver’s seat of the truck for the Fred Bucklin Nursery of Elton, LA.  At least that’s what the door signage looks like to me.  See?  He doesn’t use Hathaway, Raymond, or China on his truck.  He uses Elton, which is the closest “town” in that area.  It is also where he went to school when he was younger.  I’m pretty sure he grew up on the same Bucklin property that includes the Bucklin family homes in that area.

I don’t think that Austin was actually driving the truck.  I think he was just pretending for the photo.  In the back seat you can see two of his sisters.  You can see Loris pretty well.  She’s right in the middle of the photo and appears to be waving.  Or maybe she’s just resting her hand on the side of the truck.  Next to her is Alma.  You can’t really see her because the post is in the way.

Why would someone take the photo when she was behind the post?  Maybe Austin was really driving?!  The person might not have known that she was behind the post when they clicked the photo because the truck was moving.  Could that be right?  And maybe Loris was resting her arm against the truck so she wouldn’t fall over in the bumpy truck ride?  Or maybe they were all pretending to sell the idea of them riding in the countryside?  My sister and I would pretend all kinds of things when riding on the wide-open countryside to my grandparents’ house.

I guess we’ll never know.  Unless of course, Aunt Loris remembers some of those details and chooses to share them with us.  Until then, we can enjoy seeing some charming scenes from over seventy years ago in the countryside around Hathaway, Louisiana.  Or was it in China?