Erie Patureau Circa 1910

Germaine Erie Patureau circa 1910 in Plaquemine, Louisiana.

Here is a photo of my paternal grandmother when she was around 14 or 15 years old.  You remember her, right?  Her grandchildren all knew her as Mee Maw and they all think that they’re her favorite.  I found something my dad wrote years ago, and it said that she tried to make sure that we all felt that way.  It must have worked.

Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau and she was born on August 6, 1895, in Crescent, Louisiana.  That is a small community just west of Plaquemine, Louisiana, along the Bayou Road.  She was the second generation of the French Patureau family that was born in the United States.  Her grandfather Ferdinand Patureau was born in France, but he died in 1877 after a tragic accident in his sawmill.

Her father was Max Patureau who was born in Mexico in 1865 when the family moved there temporarily during the American Civil War.  The family came back to Plaquemine later in 1865 and that’s where Max grew up.  It was a large family, and they spoke both English and French.  Max’s mother was Marie Emma Landry.  When he got married in 1888, he married Marie Therese Landry.  Marie Therese’s father was Trasimond Landry, who was a first cousin of Max’s mother Emma.

Max and Therese had a large family as well, and Erie was the fourth child.  After her birth, Therese gave birth to ten more children over the next fourteen years.  Her mom didn’t have much of a break during that time.  On top of that, not all of those children survived.  A set of twins born in 1900 only lived for a few days.  In 1904 Therese’s sister Manette died after giving birth to a daughter with the same name.  Therese and Max’s last three children were born in 1906, 1907, and 1909.  Then they died in 1908, 1908, and 1909, respectively.  Sadly, Therese died in 1909 as well.  She gave birth to a daughter on September 28th, she died on October 4th, and the newborn daughter died on October 9th.

This must have been a really tough time for our Erie.  This photo was taken some time around then.  She was a young high school girl growing up in a Cajun/French household in southern Louisiana and she just lost her mother.  If you think of that when you look at this photo, you might see some sadness in her eyes.  Or that could just be the characteristic shape of her eyes that has been passed down to many of her grandchildren. (I’ve always thought of them as droopy eyes.)

My line of the family didn’t stay in Plaquemine much longer.  Erie would finish high school in 1912.  At around the same time, Max decided to move the family to Lafayette to build a larger veterinarian practice.  Erie would enter higher education at Southwest Louisiana Institute (SLI) to study to become a teacher.  She taught first grade in Lafayette a few years but then decided to marry a Landry of her own.  She married Rob Landry on November 12, 1921, at St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette.  They then made their home in Lake Charles and lived happily ever after.