Month: March 2025

The Mother of US Patureaus

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As you all know, I take a lot of time to work out the best title for my posts.  Maybe you don’t know that, and maybe I don’t really spend all that much time doing it.  But I do put some thought into it.  I’m not exactly pleased with this title, but it does have the message that I wanted to say.  Marie Emma Landry Patureau is the matriarch of the Patureau family in the United States.  I usually make sure to not word it this way so I can avoid the use of the plural form for Patureau.  But I wanted a short title, and technically Patureaus is correct.  I thought of using the French manner of pluralizing words ending in -eau.  They add an -x to the word, so we would end up with Patureaux.  But like I said, we’re talking about the American Patureau family.  

Marie Emma Landry Patureau circa 1880.

More important than the title is the fact that I’m posting another photo of Marie Emma Landry Patureau.  I think I’ll just refer to her as Maman Emma.  That’s what I called her when I shared that first photo of her back in 2021.  That photo was a crop of her from a family photo from 1864.  She was younger in that photo, which means that she had given birth to fewer children and had experienced fewer deaths of her children.  Those things can definitely change a person.

I’ve estimated that the photo was taken around 1880, which would mean that she was a widow.  Her husband Ferdinand Pierre Patureau died in 1877 after having an accident in the family sawmill business.  I’m pretty sure she was a witness to this accident, though I can’t find that bit of information presently.  What I did find in my search was a news report that a storm blew through Plaquemine in August of 1879 – The Great Storm of 1879 – and the Patureau sawmill was leveled.  That Maman Emma went through a lot.  I won’t talk about the attempted burglary of her home – that happened a few years after this photo was taken.

Framed print of Emma Patureau (unedited)

In 1880 she was 50 years old, and she had ten living children.   She had given birth to six more children who had died at various ages.   She also had the first three of her many grandchildren.  I descend from her second oldest surviving son Vincent Maximilian Patureau.  We call him Grampa Max.  His daughter Germaine Erie Patureau Landry was the mother of my father Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.

I got this photo in November of 2021.  That’s the same time that I got the other photo of Maman Emma.  It’s from the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Papers at the Tyrrell Historic Library in Beaumont, Texas.  I had seen the other one before, but this one was new to me.  I was very excited for both of the photos.  This one looks like an original photo, but it is in poor shape.  There is a lot of cracking all over the photo.  I worked on it a bit when I first got the photo but wasn’t too pleased with it.  I finally got around to doing a bit more tonight.   

It’s not perfect, but it’s better.  I’m posting the unedited version of it so you can see what it looked like.  I also like the matt they used for the photo.  Another great thing about it is that someone labeled the photo, so we know with absolute certainty that it is Maman Emma.  Since the Collection in Beaumont was started by Emma’s daughter Victorine and continued by Victorine’s daughter Katherine Winnie “Kitty” Cropper, I would think that Kitty was the one that we can thank for that.

So her name was Emma Landry Patureau.  Her husband Ferdinand Patureau was a French immigrant that came to America with his family.  He had one brother who came here also, but Abel had no children.  Ferdinand was the only one to carry on the Patureau name here in the United States.  And he did that with his Landry wife.  As I once said, “I Am a Patureau,” since my grandmother was a Patureau.  In the same manner, any Patureau in the US can say, “I Am a Landry.”  Isn’t that something that everyone wished they could say?  Well, maybe they don’t.  But a Patureau descendant can.  I’d like all of you to say it at least once, in honor of Maman Emma.

Here, I’ll get you started.  I am a Landry!

Bob and Betty Began The Band

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Bob and Betty Landry playing for an event circa 1975.

Of course I’m talking about the Landry Family Band.  The band consisted of my parents, Bob and Betty Landry, and all of their kids – Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van (me), and Jamie.  But it didn’t really begin that way.  The germ of it started in 1950, when young Betty Lou Bucklin went to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for Solo and Ensemble Festival.  She was a junior in high school, and she was a baritone player.  She was from the small town of Hathaway, Louisiana, and was unfamiliar with her new surroundings. She decided to ask someone for directions, and that someone was Bob Landry from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

My dad was in college at LSU at the time.  He was four years older than my mom.  When Betty Lou graduated from high school the following year, she went to McNeese in Lake Charles.  It just so happened that Bob had decided to return to McNeese because it had become a four-year university.  So they met again and went out on a date almost immediately.  They both played baritone in the band, so they started playing music together then.  They were married in 1952 and children followed.

My dad was a band director and chorus instructor.  He taught at LaGrange in Lake Charles, at Elton High School, and at Northside Junior High in Jennings.  We grew up with music all around us.  We all learned how to play the ukulele at a very young age and then transitioned over to the guitar when we were older.  My mom was a piano player, and we always had a piano in the house.  One of the songs that she’d play for us when we were small is “Boop Boop Did’m Dad’m Waddam Choo!”  She went to town singing about those three little fishies swimming over that dam!  It is a crying shame that there is not a recording of her singing that song.  She played it for all of her grandchildren, as well.  Surely they must have fond memories of that.  What say you, niblings?

In the early to mid 1970s Mama and Daddy started playing together at events.  I suppose part of the reason was to make some extra money, but for some reason I always thought that they were mainly doing it because they liked to sing and entertain people.  Our family would sometimes sing together at mass at the big Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Jennings.  But we kids didn’t sing with them when they had those first gigs.  Jodie went off to college in 1971 and got married in 1973.  She and her husband lived in Lake Charles at the married student housing.  Rob was off to Louisiana Tech in 1973, and Karen was graduating from Jennings High School in 1975.  The rest of us were in high school and junior high.

That’s about the time that this photo was taken.  I don’t know where it was taken or who took it.  I don’t think any of us kids were there.  I don’t know how people knew about my parents being available to hire for events.  It’s not like they were able to post this photo online anywhere.  That wouldn’t come around for several years.  It must have been by word of mouth.  Then somehow my dad connected with Bill Spreafico, who was the manager for the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles.  That led to the family becoming the entertainment there beginning in June of 1976.  At first we played Wednesday through Saturday nights every week.  After about a year, it was changed to just Friday and Saturday nights.  We had a lot of pizzas that first year!  They were pepperoni and mushroom for me.  We also had the Super Spuds pretty often, too.

But we didn’t all sing along at first.  We started out a bit shy.  My mom coaxed me into singing “I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle, Jangle, Jingle” by offering me a one-dollar bill.  That was in addition to the five dollars they would give us for playing along and helping to set things up.  It wasn’t too long before we all had our own repertoire of songs that we’d sing.  We all got along really well, so there was no fighting over who gets to sing when.  We would take our turns when we could.  It was all for fun anyway!  At least that’s the way I remember it.

I can’t go without commenting about the additional creatures in this photo.  Are those real squirrels that I see climbing in that tree to the left?  And what are they doing?  It looks like they’re trying to carry away the cords for the microphone that Daddy is singing in.  I don’t even think he noticed them.  Or maybe they are just decorations in the tree?  I’ve never heard of such a thing.  

There was another thing I wanted to say about this photo.  It was taken in 1975.  It’s amazing that that was fifty years ago!  When I think about that, I always tell myself that I’m living in the future.  Am I right?

 

Grampa Max Was Born 160 Years Ago

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Vincent Maximilien Patureau circa 1887 in New Orleans, Louisiana

That’s right.  Vincent Maximilien Patureau was born 160 years ago today.  On March 13, 1865, Marie Emma Landry Patureau gave birth to her 12th child.  I’m sure she was hoping that he would survive longer than her last three male offspring had.  None of them had reached their 4th birthday.  When Max was a child, he had one surviving older brother and six surviving older sisters.  Max fulfilled those maternal hopes and outlived his mother for many years.

He was the son of Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, who was an immigrant from France.  The Patureau family had come from Riberac (near LaRoche-Chalais) in 1840 and settled in Louisiana.  Ferdinand’s mother Anne Rose Machet and his younger sister Elisa did not live long once arriving in North America.   Ferdinand and Marie Emma were married in 1847 and started their family shortly thereafter.  They settled in Plaquemine, Louisiana, in 1853 and Ferdinand’s father Pierre Ferdinand Patureau went to live with them.   Pierre died in 1860.

In 1864 Ferdinand and Emma brought their family to Bagdad, Matamoros, Mexico.  It was during the time of the Civil War, and Southern Louisiana wasn’t a particularly safe place to be.  I’m not sure if that’s the reason they moved there or not.  There are suggestions of the family moving there because of business opportunities in Mexico during the time of French control of the area.  And besides, Ferdinand’s sister Victorine Patureau Laulom had a daughter named Eliza Laulom Crixell who lived in Matamoros.  Eliza had a son named Emilio in 1865 as well.  Even though Max and Emilio were born the same year, Max was a first cousin to Emilio’s mother.  Max and Emilio might have been close like brothers if the Patureau family stayed in Mexico.  But that was not to be.  The family moved back to Plaquemine with their new baby boy at the end of 1865.

So Max spent his childhood in Plaquemine and became an enterprising young man.  He worked at his father’s sawmill.  He may have been there that day in 1877 when Ferdinand had his terrible accident.  The doctor amputated his leg in his attempt to save him, but Ferdinand died as a result of the accident.  The family had the sawmill for a few years more, but that must not have been Max’s interest.  He had odd jobs of installing lightning rods and delivering groceries.  He was described as a go getter.  

The photo I posted is from around 1887 when he was about 22 years old.  The back of the photo shows that it was taken in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I got this copy last year from Box 301.  That’s the collection that was in my Aunt Wana’s attic for many years unbeknownst to the rest of the world.  It was discovered and shared by my Duffy cousins in 2024.  I already had a version of this photo, but it wasn’t as good as this one.  This one is an original photo and sharper than what I had.  I also edited it a bit to improve it.  I think it is a really nice photo of him.  He looks slightly younger than he does in his 1888 wedding photos.  He would marry Marie Therese Landry, and they had a daughter named Erie.  Erie was my dad’s mom – my dear sweet Mee Maw.

I know that Max kept in touch with his relatives in Texas and Mexico.  I’ve posted a newspaper article from 1904 that talks about a visit that he made to that area.  There may have been more, but we just don’t have the wonderful evidence that the news article provided.  There is another hint of that from an article about his death in 1935.

This article was from the May 5, 1935, edition of the Brownsville Herald Sun.  Brownsville, Texas, is just across the border from Matamoros, Mexico.  The article refers to Grampa Max as a Matamoros native.  It also says that he had resided in Louisiana for a “number of years.”  That sounds a little off, since he only lived there a few months and then spent the rest of his life in Louisiana.  But’s it’s sweet that they wanted to claim him as one of their own.  Very sweet.

The article was obviously provided by Mrs. Henry Krausse.  They refer to him as her uncle.  That’s not exactly true either.  Henry Krausse was the husband of Otila Crixell.  Oh, no!  You don’t know who Otila Crixell is!  I thought for sure I might have posted a photo of her before.  But it doesn’t look like I did.  It’s a great old photo of her when she and two other Crixell cousins were children.  Otila was the daughter of Joseph Crixell.  I’ve mentioned him before.  He was murdered by a former Texas Ranger in 1912.  Joseph was the brother of Emilio Crixell that I mentioned earlier.  Emilio was born in the same place and the same year as Grampa Max.  That would make Otila the first cousin twice removed of Max.  But if she thought of him like a brother to her father, she might have referred to him as Uncle Max.

Crixell cousins in 1908 in south Texas.

Even though I think this photo will get all of the attention when I post this, I’m going to post it anyway.  It’s my way of thanking cousin Otila for getting that news report put into the paper in honor of Grampa Max.  Otila is the girl representing the daisy on the left.  She was the daughter of Joseph Crixell.  On top is Isabel Crixell, who portrayed a fairy.  She was the daughter of Teofilo Crixell.  Elvira Crixell is the girl on the right and she represented the lily.  She was the daughter of Louis Crixell.  Eliza Laulom Crixell must have been very proud of her young granddaughters during this 1908 presentation.  After this floral presentation, the girls performed a piece on the piano called “A Gallop of Six Hands.”  Very proud indeed.

An S. C. Phenice Incident

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Samuel Charles Phenice circa 1935

Getting a little late start today.  I knew that would happen, so I planned a little bit ahead.  At least I know what I’m writing about.  This post is about an incident that showed up in the local newspaper in Almena, Kansas.  That is in northern Kansas, just south of Nebraska.  That’s near the area that my Phenice ancestors lived around the turn of the century when the 1900s began.

Samuel Charles Phenice was born in Pennsylvania and that’s where he spent his boyhood.  When he became an adult, he went off to war in the Civil War.  He only fought in one battle that I know of – the Battle of the Wilderness in Spotsylvania, Virginia.  He was injured during that battle, and he became part of the Invalid Corps.  It was during the time with that group that he ended up being assigned to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, during that pivotal point in American History.  He was a witness to the Lincoln Assassination.  I know that he talked about it to anyone who would listen, and several newspaper articles were written about it.

After the war he married Cathrine Foster in their home state of Pennsylvania.  They started their family in Pennsylvania, had their second child in Tennessee, then moved back to Pennsylvania for the births of their next three children.  The family then moved to Nebraska in 1880 or so and had their last three children in that state.  They started off in Milford, moved on to Hitchcock, but ended up in Beaver City in Furnas County.

If you were familiar with the area, you would know that Beaver City, Nebraska is just a short trip from Almena, Kansas.  I only know this because I’ve studied the area that my ancestors lived in and I’ve been there once.  Beaver City (and Precept) is in the southernmost part of Nebraska, just north of Almena.  I don’t think there are any major roads that go directly from one to the other.  The most direct route are some old farm roads.  Along that road is the graveyard that Samuel and Cathrine are buried in.

Almena, Kansas, article about Samuel Phenice from Oct. 1, 1931

But this story happened between the deaths of Cathrine and Samuel.  Cathrine had her accident at the end of 1920, and then she died at the beginning of 1921.  Samuel was a widower for almost 20 years.  He probably lived by himself for the first years, but when he got older, he went to stay with his daughter Lola Mrytle who lived in Almena.  One day they decided to go to town and do a little shopping.  They were going from one shop to another and then all of the sudden – BLAM – Samuel walked into a plate glass window and it shattered everywhere.  

Old Samuel was 87 years old at the time, but he sounds like he was pretty sturdy.  He ran into the plate glass window thinking it was the entrance.  His head hit the window and broke it.  Samuel fell back against the other side of the entrance, but he reported that he was fine.  He did have some cuts on his hands.  This is the second article about Samuel that talks about an incident that happened, and the results were injuries to his hands.  When Cathrine’s clothes caught fire, he tried to help her out and he burned his hands as a result of his actions.

But this article reports less serious events than previous incidents.  He was shot during the Battle of the Wilderness, Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre, and his wife died as a result of her clothes catching fire.  This was just a little tumble in a small Kansas downtown and all he had were a few cuts on his hands.  But somehow it still made the news.  Otherwise, we would not know about that particular outing back on September 26, 1931, in Almena, Kansas.

I’m glad to know that he was all right and that people cared about his welfare.  He lived a long, interesting life.