Month: October 2024

My Father and Godfather in 1936

Leave a comment

Bobbie, Johnny, Wana, and their mother Erie Patureau Landry in 1936 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

It was pretty easy to pick out a photo for this week’s post.  I wanted one of my dad when he was a young boy.  When I saw this one of him with his younger brother Johnny when he was just a baby, I knew it was the one.  But then coming up with a name for the post was trickier.  While the main focus of the photo are the two boys, there is also a sister and their mother in the photo as well.  I don’t want to slight them!  I stuck with the focus of the photo.  Plus it is somewhat of a continuation of the post I did a few months ago when Uncle Johnny died.  

Actually it is a prequel to all of the photos that I’ve posted that include Uncle Johnny.  This is a photo of when he was a fresh little infant.  Isn’t that the sweetest little photo?  I kept the border on it, because it has a charm about it, and it points to the period of time when it was popular.   His full name was John Alfred Xavier Landry and he was born August 2, 1936.  I estimated that the photo was taken shortly after that.  He was the last of eight children.

On the left is my dad.  He was born on January 31, 1929, and was given the name Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  He was named after his dad, obviously!  He was called Bobbie back then.  That name carried on, but he acquired more through the years.  Standing in the background, you can easily see their sister Wana.  She was four years old.  It’s surprising to see her with her hand covering her mouth.  That wasn’t typical in her later years.  She was a talker!  There is another sister standing in the background.  I’m not sure if that was Germaine or Marie.  I can’t really make out her face.  Too bad.

On the right edge of the photo, you can make out part of the profile of my dear sweet Mee Maw.  She was the mother of the children in the photo.  Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau Landry, but at the time she was just known as Erie or Mama.  She had been a teacher in Lafayette, Louisiana, in her early 20s, but gave that all up to get married and raise a family in Lake Charles.  I think she made the right choice.  She looks so content looking down at her youngest son.  She loved her children and later on, she loved all of her grandchildren.

Mon Pere et Mon Parrain en 1936.  I only have one negative thing to say about my grandmother.  But it’s not really something negative about her.  It’s about the situation that led her to make a decision.  There was a movement back then that led some educators in different parts of the state to punish children who grew up speaking French in the home.  The children would mainly speak French and that was frowned upon in some parts.  I’m pretty sure MeeMaw grew up speaking both French and English.  All of her ancestors spoke French.  She might have seen as a teacher the difficulty the French-speaking children had at school. 

She decided to only teach her children how to speak English.  I think she spoke French with Pee Paw or her sisters when she wanted to say something in private, but she didn’t speak it enough for her children to learn how to speak it.  So just like that, the family went from French-speaking and bilingual to English-speaking.  I am of two minds on the subject.  Part of it is the inevitable assimilation into a culture whose primary language is English.  Resistance is futile!  On the other side is the maintaining of different cultures within the large group. 

Her decision to teach her children only English led to another change:  they also married outside of the cultural (Cajun or French) group. (Or outside the family as I sometimes say!)  So I never wanted to speak French when I was growing up.  Actually, when we heard it on the local radio, it sounded funny to us.  We would just listen to the Cajun songs and laugh.  It wasn’t until I looked into our family history and saw so much French documentation that I started to regret the loss of something. 

If only we could have maintained both English and French.  There is a movement in southern Louisiana to preserve some of that Cajun and French heritage.  I, for my part, am learning French. Veut-tu faire quelque chose?

The Bucklin Children in 1949

Leave a comment

The Fred D. and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin family in 1949 in Hathaway, Louisiana

This is a photo of my mom and her siblings in 1949.  I’ve posted a photo of the same group from 1948.  Then there is one from 1950 that I’ve shared, and it has both of their parents in the photo as well.  These photos don’t exactly seem like formal portraits, because they look to be taken in my grandparents’ home at the time.  Plus, in this one it looks like my mom was just wearing a t-shirt and she added a scarf around her neck to dress up her appearance a bit.

From that bit of information, you can tell that my mom is the girl on the right in this photo.  Her name was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was the second child of Fred D. Bucklin and Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  She was born on May 20, 1933, in Hathaway, Louisiana.  Her older sister Sylvia was born in March of 1931.  You can see her sitting in the front on the left with the black dress. 

Alma was the next one born, though she looks like she is shorter than her younger sister Loris.  That didn’t stop her from being a really good basketball player.  The family was big into basketball.   Grandpa and Grandma both played when they were younger.  Mama always talked about working on Alma’s game by guarding her really hard when they practiced.  With height comes long arms and mom knew how to use them for blocking basketball shots.  So Alma learned to deal with this and one of the things she perfected was a hook shot that mom said was the best around.  She was proud to help her younger sister develop that.

Betty Lou Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, in 1949.

Loris was the youngest of the sisters, and we can thank her for sharing the group photo with me.  I had never seen it before she sent it to me in June.  Mom didn’t have a copy of it, but she did have this individual photo of herself taken the same day.  I’m kinda surprised that I’ve never shared this photo before.  I thought about waiting to share it as a post on its own, but the story calls for it to be shown now.

This was probably one of my mom’s favorite photos of herself.  She had an enlargement of it in her photo album.  Even though she’s smiling better in the group photo, this pose is better.  I didn’t realize she was just wearing a t-shirt until I saw the group photo.  The scarf fooled me into thinking she was all dressed up!  She looks older than 16 years old.  She kept this look for most of her life.  Most people find her easy to recognize in photos whether it was taken when she was three or when she was an elderly woman.

I can’t finish this post without identifying my mom’s brother Austin in that first photo.  He was the only boy with four older sisters.  He was five years younger than Loris, so there was an age gap that seems larger when you’re a kid growing up.  Fortunately for him, there were several male cousins who lived nearby.

 

Unnatural Patureau Deaths

Leave a comment

Pierre Oscar Patureau Jr. circa 1908 in New Orleans, Louisiana

I thought I would continue with the theme from last week.  Like last week, it is about the unnatural deaths of family members.  But this time, the deaths are from my Patureau family line.  My maternal grandmother was the Phenice, while my paternal grandmother was the Patureau.  All of the stories are about young people whose lives were cut short by tragic events.  For the three I’m talking about this week, their ages were 17, 19, and 21.  Way too young.  This is another post that I’ve thought about doing for quite a while.

A little over seven years ago I first saw this photo of Pierre Oscar Patureau, Jr. sitting in a chair.  I got it from a member of one of his siblings’ family.  I don’t think I knew the details of his death when I first saw it, but it wasn’t long afterward that I found the tragic story of his death.  I’m pretty sure he went by the name Oscar, and he was a first cousin to my grandmother Erie Patureau Landry.  He was six years older than she was, so she probably looked up to him. 

Their fathers – Pierre Oscar and Max Patureau – were brothers and they seemed to be pretty close.  They were close to the same age and they were both doctors – Max was a veterinarian in Plaquemine, Louisiana, and Pierre Oscar was a dentist in New Orleans.  Even though Pierre Oscar wasn’t participating in the Largest Patureau Family Contest – like his siblings Max (15 children), Leobon (12), Zelica (8), Abel Omer “Pat” (10), or Victorine (12) – he probably still valued family.  It’s a Patureau thing.

From May 21, 1909, New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper, pg. 12 col. 5

What I’m getting at is that this death would have had an impact on my grandmother when it happened in 1909.  The two families lived not too far away from each other, and they probably saw each other at family get togethers somewhat regularly.  I’m sure it wasn’t as tragic to young Erie as the death of her own mother later that year, but it was still a loss of a family member.

I wonder how she found out about the death of her cousin.  Grampa Max probably found out about it soon after it happened.   Either he or my great grandmother Marie Therese Landry Patureau would have been the one to break it to their children.  From what the newspaper explains, Oscar checked into room 802 at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans on May 17, 1909.  He was enamored with a young lady from Mobile, so he might have been hoping that she would join him there.  He was there for a few days and did not call any attention to himself.

Death notice for Oscar Patureau, Jr. in 1909

That changed drastically.  On May 20st he made the fatal choice to shoot himself.  That got the attention of the staff at the hotel.  When the house detective arrived on scene, he could tell that it had been self-inflicted.  Oscar was still alive at that point, and he didn’t deny that he had done it.  He stated that he had done it because of a love affair.  Another article stated that it was because of unrequited love.  He was asked who the young lady was, but he would not answer.  The newspaper article said that a photo of a young woman was found in his suitcase.

Of course, the newspaper wasn’t correct about everything.  They say that he was 22 years old, but he was not even 20 years old yet.  As you can see by his death notice, he was 19 years, 10 months, and 25 days.  But wait, from my calculations that is incorrect also!  Using digital calculations (counting with my fingers!) I say that he was actually 19 years, 9 months, and 25 days.  If you want to check to see if I’m correct, I have to tell you that he was born on July 26, 1899.    Either way, a life cut too short.

I didn’t want to talk about lives cut short in the Patureau family without mentioning one of the closest relations to me that died unnaturally.  As you know, my grandmother was a Patureau.  She had a younger sister named Sylvie.  Sylvie has a grandson who is very close to the same age as I am.  Unlike me, he has children.  In 2003, he was hit with the tragedy of his 17-year-old son Joshua’s death.  He was found in a car with a shotgun.  I don’t know many details, but according to investigators it was declared that there was no foul play.  I don’t have a newspaper article or photo for this, but it reminds me of another Patureau death that I do have an article for.

John Gerald Patureau death in 1933 in Plaquemine.

This event happened in 1933.  John Gerald Patureau was born in 1911 and he was the grandson of Leobon Patureau.  Leobon was the older brother of Max and Pierre Oscar.  In 1933 Gerald was living with his aunt Edna Landry in Plaquemine.  It sounds like he was an outdoorsman, because he was hunting alligators on that July 21.  From what I can tell, he went out hunting in the morning off of Plaquemine-Addis highway in West Baton Rouge Parish just past the Iberville Parish line.

It doesn’t say whether he was successful in getting an alligator.  Around noon he came back to his car, and according to reports he was putting his gun back in his car when it went off.  The gun was pointing right at his stomach when it went off and it resulted in his death.  There was an investigation into his death, and it was ruled to be “accidental.”  What’s with the quotes there?  That makes it sound somewhat questionable.  Was there a possibility of someone else involved or were there suggestions of it being self-inflicted?  Unresolved questions have got to be unsettling in situations like this.

But really, the main thing is that deaths like this are always tragic.  I think they’re important to remember, but they are somewhat depressing to write about.  So next week I’ll try to find something a little more cheerful.  That shouldn’t be too difficult.

 

Oct. 19, 2024 Addition

Pierre Oscar Patureau, Jr. circa 1900

I meant to include this earlier photo of Pierre Oscar Patureau, Jr. in this post.  It is a photo that came from the Tyrrell Historical Library’s Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection (AC-824) in Beaumont, Texas.  The death notice for young Oscar was also in that collection.  His aunt Victorine Patureau Cropper must have been fond of her nephew and saved these mementos of his life.  I’m glad she did.

This photo was taken around 1900 when Oscar was about 11 or 12 years old in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I think the family moved there in the mid 1890s.  This would have been a photo from his Solemn First Communion.  The Patureau was a Roman Catholic family in southern Louisiana.  At that time, the first communion would have happened a few years earlier when they were in first grade or so.  Then later they would have their Solemn First Communion and there were photos like this to commemorate the occasion.

Unnatural Phenicie Deaths

Leave a comment

I’m finally getting around to writing a post about a story I found almost eight years ago.  A week before Christmas in 2016 I must have been doing some research on Phenice relatives, because that’s when I found this information.  I said at the time that it was a story that needed to be told.  I didn’t tell it then because I had found another story that was very tragic, and it was about a family that had some striking similarities to my own family when I was growing up.

That other story was about my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and her third cousin Dolores Henke Yule and their respective families.  They were related through the Stanbrough family name.  They were around the same age, they got married around the same time, and then they moved to California after they were married.  Their first two children were born within days of each other, and each of their third children was a girl with the last name of Jean.  Then in 1961, both families got into separate accidents.  My family lived to tell about it.  Theirs didn’t.

The story that I’m talking about today is concerning relatives from the Phenice line.  In the case of these cousins, they spelled their last name Phenicie.  It has some similarities to the Yule tragedy.  Their car accident happened on Sept. 17, 1961.  The accident that happened to the Phenicie cousin was on Sept. 17, 1948.  In the 1961 accident Dolores Yule died.  In the tragedy of the Phenicie family, Dolores Davies Phenicie passed away.

I had thought about writing this post last week but decided to put it off because it was an anniversary for my great great grandmother’s birthday.  So this was to be the week that I would talk about the tragedy.  The weird thing is that I heard about two deaths at different chemical plants that happened this week.  And the two projects that I’ve been working on this week were for those plants.  The first death I’m talking about happened at a chemical plant, but that was back in 1948.

Here is what happened.  On September 17 there was an explosion in Lewiston, Pennsylvania, at the American Viscose Corporation.  A blast in the vulcanizing tank turned the door of the tank into a missile that struck Wayne Rhodes Phenicie in the side.  He died shortly afterwards.  Two other people only suffered minor injuries.  It was such a tragic event.  Wayne and Dolores hadn’t been married for very long and they had a son named Jeff who had been born at the beginning of the year.

But that’s not the end of this sad story.  Dolores was not able to cope with losing the love of her life.  The second newspaper article states that the couple had been deeply in love and that she was suffering from depression.  She went to stay with family members who were willing to help out in hopes of an improvement.  But sadly, the young widow shot herself on December 22, 1948.  In just over a two-month period, little Jeff Phenicie lost both parents before he had reached the age of one.

One of the reasons I didn’t write the story in 2016 was because Jeff Phenicie was still alive.  I thought I might contact him and see if he had anything to say about the situation.  But really, what can you say about a tragedy that happened when you were so young.  And how would I even bring that up to someone?  So I put it aside for a while.  Time passed and I forgot the names of the people involved.  I’ve got thousands of people in my online tree, and I don’t make notes about people like I probably should.  I looked half-heartedly a few times but wasn’t too concerned about it.

Then a few weeks ago I had a DNA match with the last name of Phenicie.  (Yes, they still spell it differently.  They even pronounce it differently.  They rhyme their name with Tennessee.  We rhyme Phenice with Venus.)  When I looked at the match’s tree, I saw the name Wayne Phenicie and a death date of 1948.  It seemed familiar.  Sure enough, the DNA match is a great grandchild of Wayne and Dolores.  I also saw that Jeff Phenicie had died in 2017.  In the Yule case Dolores Henke Yule was a third cousin to my mom.  With Wayne Phenicie, he was a third cousin to my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  And what that means is that Wayne Phenicie, my third cousin twice removed, had common DNA with me.  Otherwise his great grandchild would not be a DNA match to me, my brother Rob, and my cousin Charla.

I’ve mapped my mom’s and some of her siblings’ DNA sources.  Even though the match happened at Ancestry, I can still tell how we are related.  We have some common matches that tested at other sites that have chromosome browsers.  One match named Bradley matches this new Phenicie match and me, Rob, and Charla.  Bradley also matches Aunt Loris.  Mama matched Bradley with two large segments, but Aunt Loris matches him only on one.  So since the new Phenicie match doesn’t match Aunt Loris, the connection must be through the other segment that the others of us have.  So I know that along Chromosome 10, there is a section within each of my cells that is identical to a section of Chromosome 10 that was in Wayne Phenicie on the day he died.  Evidence of a family connection.

 

 

Double View of Grandma Sue

Leave a comment

October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana. The George Henry and Susan Stanbrough Hine family at Grandma Sue’s 75 birthday celebration.

I’ve shared several pictures from this event back in 1926.  The photos are just so good because they have so many of my family members in them.  Though it says that it is a double view of Grandma Sue in the title, it’s not a double exposure from the event.  I shared that one two years ago.  That was the last time that I shared a photo from that event, so I thought it was time to look at that event again.  I was looking very thoroughly through those photos a few weeks ago to look for something specific, but I can’t remember what it was.  I didn’t have any new revelations about the photos either, but I still want to share these photos from 98 years ago.  

And it was exactly 98 years ago today.  My great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough was born on October 3, 1851, in Westfield, Indiana.  That was 173 years ago.  She married George Henry Hine in 1873.  Their first child was my great grandmother Addie Mae Hine and she was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana.  They went on to have five more children – all of them boys.  In 1894 the family moved south to Louisiana and settled in Hathway, Louisiana, in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Addie got married in 1898 to Louis Charles Bucklin, who had moved down to Louisiana from Iowa with his family in 1884.  Their seventh and eighth children were Fred and Clarence Bucklin, who were born on October 2, 1907.  Fred is my grandfather, because he was the father of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

View no 2 – same family, same place, same time

Let’s go back to the year before my grandfather was born.  In 1906 Grandma Sue and her friend Jennie Welton Havenar decided to have a joint birthday celebration.  You see, Jennie also had a birthday on October 3, though she was a few years younger than Sue.  According to the newspaper, the first birthday celebration must have happened around the beginning of December in 1906.  It was reported to be a great turnout with over seventy of their friends and family in attendance.  The reporter wrote about “hearty wishes given to the two ladies for many more such happy occasions in their lives.” 

Sue and Jennie must have taken that to heart, because that’s exactly what they did.  They had a joint celebration for their birthday for the next twenty years at least.   And it seems that the number of family and guests grew along the way.  We know that the following year at least two new family members appeared – Fred and Clarence.  And their birthday is just a day before Sue and Jennie’s.  I wonder if that was a good thing for the boys.  For at least the first twenty years of their lives, there was a big birthday celebration that everyone showed up for – and it was for their grandmother and her friend!  I’m sure that at least a time or two it actually fell on their birthday.  Hopefully people remembered to wish them a happy birthday as well.

The photos I’m sharing today were from the 20th Anniversary of the Double Birthday Celebration.  The two photos look like they were taken at almost the exact same time by two different photographers.  Very interesting.  According to the newspaper it was held on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the home of Mrs. W. E. Havenar – that would be our Jennie.  They both had one daughter and four sons alive at the time, as well as many more grandchildren and extended families.  These photos were taken of Grandma Sue’s family.  Uncle Rowe died in 1916, and Grandpa George died in 1919, so they were not there.  Addie is standing just behind Grandma Sue, a habit she had in family photos taken through the years.  Fred Bucklin (Addie’s son – my grandfather) is the nice looking 19-year-old young man on the back row toward the middle of the photo.  He seems to be happy to be celebrating his grandmother’s birthday.  Maybe they had a birthday cake for him, too!

The 1926 newspaper article called this event the climax of these double birthday celebrations.  Did he know something that he didn’t mention?  Maybe Sue and Jennie had decided that this would be their last one and they decided to have a big send-off for the event.  If not, at most they could only have had three more joint celebrations, because Jennie passed away in March of 1930.  She was only 63 years old, younger than I am now.  Three years later Grandma Sue died at the age of 81.  

Here’s to Sue and Jennie.  Let’s celebrate their births all those years ago.  Hear, hear!