Month: June 2025

The Keys of Chipping Ongar

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The most recent immigrant in my family tree is my maternal grandmother’s mother Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice.  She came to America with her family in July of 1887 from London, England.  They settled in southern Louisiana, and she and her siblings went on to marry and have children, grandchildren, and so on.  They are all over the place now.  I’m not going to explore all of those places now.  I’m going to look back further in time to see the family of Daisy’s father Henry Keys.  He died before the family moved from England.  It was his brave wife who brought their five children across an ocean to start a new life.  I’ve written more about her since she was the one that made it to Louisiana.  I’ve even taken a selfie with her grave.

Henry Keys circa 1880.

I thought I’d start the story with Henry’s parents.  They’re the ones that had all of those Keys children in Chipping Ongar.  Chipping Ongar is a market town in the Epping Forest district, which is in the county of Essex in England.  It’s where George Keys from Wethersfield and Elizabeth Crouchman from Moreton (both places are in Essex County) set up a home and started a family.  They were married in Chipping Ongar on October 21, 1807, at the St. Martin of Tours Church of England.

There are no photos of George and Elizabeth that I know of.  I have said that about other great, great, great grandparents of mine and have later found them.  George and Elizabeth lived until the 1860s, so it is a possibility that there are photos of them.  We can only hope.  But I do have a few details about the way they looked.  George is said to have tan hair, blue eyes, and very fair skin.  I’ve never heard anyone use the color tan to describe hair, but I would assume it would be light brown.  I’m sure my sister Karen would have agreed with me when I say that ‘tan’ is a better description of light brown hair than ‘mousy brown.’

Elizabeth, on the other hand, had black hair, blue eyes, and very fair skin.  They were English, so I’m sure they did have fair skin.  At least it wasn’t described as pale or pasty.  From the photo/painting of their son Henry, it looks like he also has fair skin.  His hair looks very dark, so he probably got that from his mother.  No mousy brown hair for him!  If both of his parents had blue eyes, it’s likely that he had blue or light eyes as well.  That’s always difficult to tell from old photos unless they are distinctly light in the photo.

George and Elizabeth’s first child was born in 1809.  Eliza Keys would later marry John Reading, and they stayed in England.  George James Keys was born in 1812.  He married Elizabeth Jane Rose, and they immigrated to Ontario, Canada.  I’m glad they moved away, because this George and Elizabeth (Rose) Keys would easily be confused with his parents if they stayed in the same area.  Elizabeth Keys was born in 1814.  She married George Little, and they immigrated to Victoria, Australia.  Amelia Keys was born in 1816.  Nothing more is known about her.  Jane Keys was born in 1818.  She married George Bedford, and they stayed in England.

The next two children born to George and Elizabeth were James and Henry Keys.  They were born in 1822, and they were identical twins.  We all know that Henry married Martha Ann Cook and their children came to America.  James was never married and had no children.  The last child of George and Elizabeth was William Keys, who was born in 1824.  I’ve written about him before because he was married to Martha Cook’s younger sister Henrietta.  They stayed in England.  A few of their children immigrated to the U. S.  

My main impetus for choosing the topic of this post was a new DNA match that showed up this week.  The matching DNA was attributed to our common ancestors.  Ancestry showed that we had common ancestors of George Keys and Elizabeth Crouchman.  But they were wrong.  I definitely have ancestors by the name of George Keys and Elizabeth Crouchman, and so does the DNA match.  But it is not the same George Keys and Elizabeth Crouchman!  And they lived in the same area.

I had seen this before.  It was very confusing at first until I realized that there were two couples with the same name from the same area.  With the help of the records from my mom’s cousin Edith Keys Segraves, and with input from more distant cousins still in England, we were able to figure it out.  In case you didn’t know, the names George and Elizabeth were very common names in England at that time.  It had to do with royalty or something.  It seems like every generation of those English families repeated the names.  That’s how it ended up with cousins with the same names.

In this situation, our George Keys, who was born in 1780, had a nephew with the name of George Keys born in 1812.  Our Elizabeth Crouchman, who was born in 1781, had a first cousin by the name of John Griffith Crouchman.  His first daughter was born in 1810, and she was named Elizabeth.  And sure enough, George (1812) Keys married Elizabeth (1810) Crouchman.  And to make things even more confusing, let’s look at the names of their first few children.  As you’ve seen from our George and Elizabeth, their first three children were Eliza, George (who married an Elizabeth), and Elizabeth (who married a George).  Then George (1812) and Elizabeth (1810) had children by the names of George (married an Anne – had a son named Henry) and Elizabeth (who married a George).  Way too many common names!

So those of you who are related to me through this couple, remember that you come from the original George Keys and Elizabeth Crouchman, not from the copycats!

Outliving Pee Paw

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Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. circa 1950

Yesterday I was the age that my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. was on the day he died.  I’ve planned on writing this post today for a while.  When it got closer, I calculated the exact day that would match the age of Pee Paw when he died.  I knew that it was approaching, but I didn’t even think about it yesterday.  I only thought about it earlier today when I started to think about what I’d write today.  

I never knew my grandfather.  He died before I was born.  He was born on January 9, 1893, in Westlake, Louisiana.  He was the youngest child of Simon Alcide Landry and Marie Celeste Leveque.  He married Germaine Erie Patureau in 1921 in Lafayette, Louisiana, and they spent the rest of their lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I think the area they lived in was called Goosport.  It looks like it would be pronounced like Goose-port, but it actually sounds more like Goss-port.  My dad was Robert J. Jr and they called him Bobbie.  He was better known as Bob or Pluto.  He married Betty Lou Bucklin in 1952, and they had me in 1960.  I was the fifth child, too.

Being a later born child in a family kind of stretches the generations out in a family tree.  And when you have a string of them, it makes it more pronounced.  Pee Paw was the youngest of ten children.  Simon Alcide was the youngest of eight.  One of the common factors in my Landry line was the none of us knew our paternal grandfathers.  Now I don’t know about those that came before me, but it meant to me that my grandfather had been really old.  Pee Paw was 64 years 7 months and 19 days old when he died on August 28, 1957.  Even since I was a kid, I knew that was old – even without the months and days added on.

But it doesn’t seem so old anymore.  I guess on some days it does, but for the most part it doesn’t.  I’m not the only one that has outlived our grandfather.  I’ve got lots of older cousins and siblings who have paved the way.  My godmother did it first.  Of course, she did.  That’s why Shirley is called The First.  And slowly but surely, we’re passing that marker.  But not all of us.  My older sisters Jodie and Karen didn’t make it that far.  And neither did our cousins Marla and Mark.  I hope the rest of us make it as well.

About the photo.  This is a picture of Pee Paw showing off his catch of the day.  He was an avid fisherman.  It’s not the best of photos, but I like it because he had been doing what he loved.  He’s also dressed very casually for him.  It seems like most photos of him show him with a tie on.  I’m not exactly sure when the photo was taken.  There’s not a date on it.  All that I can really be sure of is that he was younger than I am when the photo was taken.

V. M. Patureau

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VMP with friend and family circa 1924 in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I thought I would keep it simple today.  I don’t have a lot to say.  Sure there have been some interesting things happening, particularly with the Patureau family.  I’m not ready to say more about some of it yet.  But there have been lots of cousins commenting on old Patureau posts the last few days.  So Patureau has been on my mind lately.

For some reason this old photo of my great grandfather with three other people has always caught my attention.  I had an old copy of it from my dad for a few years.  It was just these four people standing in a field.  I always thought it was a cropped photo.  I imagined that someone cropped the bottom part of the photo, and I always wanted to be able to see their lower legs and feet.

So when this photo showed up in Box 301 last year, I was a little surprised.  I was correct about it being cropped, but wrong about what part was cropped off.  Instead of their feet showing, lots more sky can be seen.  I kinda like it.  I was very pleased that it was labeled with everyone’s name.  That is always so helpful with photos from 100 years ago.

On the left in the suit is my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau.  He was born in Matamoras, Mexico, in 1865 to French and Acadian parents.  His father was from France and his mother was from Louisiana with Acadian ancestry (with a little bit of French thrown in there).  Standing next to him is Mrs. Broussard.  Not very helpful, but it is better than nothing.  There can’t be that many Mrs. Broussards in the Lafayette area, right?  To the right of her is my grand uncle Louis Landry.  My grandparents were Erie Patureau and Rob Landry.  Erie was the daughter of Grampa Max, and Rob was the younger brother of Uncle Louie.  On the right is Aunt Lorena, another daughter of Grampa Max.

The photo looked so empty with that huge amount of sky above their heads.  I thought maybe I would put the word Patureau up in the air in an interesting font.  But then I decided that a signature would be better.  Since the Box 301 Collection included a document with Grampa Max’s signature, it was an easy thing to add to the photo.  The signature was from 1905.  

There, that’s simple enough.

The Stanbrough Family of Westfield

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Susan G. Stanbrough Hine circa 1890.

In case you don’t know, Westfield is in Indiana.  My connection to the place is through my mom.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, on May 20, 1933.  She was born just 52 days after her great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough Hine died.  My mom’s dad was Fred D. Bucklin, the son of Susan G.’s daughter Addie May Hine Bucklin.  But Susan was better known as Sue.  Her siblings called her that, her niblings called her Aunt Sue, so I always refer to her as Grandma Sue.

Brother Joseph

Sue was born on October 3, 1851, to John Stanbrough and Lydia Mills Stanbrough in Westfield, Indiana.  She was the sixth of twelve children to be born to this couple.  She had an older half-brother by her father and his first wife.  Albert was born in 1839 to John and Lydia Hunt Stanbrough.  Lydia Hunt Stanbrough died in 1842 at just 21 years of age.  John’s father Evan James Stanbrough had died earlier that year, so that year started out rough.  In addition to those deaths, he also had two sisters and a brother that died in 1842.  The oldest sibling that died was only 28 years old.  I had never noted this fact before.  That was definitely a tough year for my ancestor.

Sister Etta

He remarried the next year to Lydia Mills, and children soon followed.  Nelson was born in 1844, Joseph in 1845, Julietta “Etta” in 1847, Mary Etta “Mollie” in 1848, James Evan “Jim” in 1850, and our Sue in 1851.  Those were followed by Anna Jane in 1853 and Lucius in 1854.  Lucius lived for less than three weeks.  He was the only one of these twelve children that had a short lifespan.  Following those, there was Sarah Eliza “Ida” in 1856, Elisha “Ell” in 1857, Nathan Oliver “Oll” in 1860, and Charles Romanzo “Man” in 1863.  All of the children were born in Westfield, though sometimes I’ve seen that the property was located in Eagletown.  Eagletown is now an unincorporated area around Westfield.

Sister Mollie

John himself was from a large family.  He was the fifth of thirteen children, and he had been born in Ohio in 1820.  The first nine children were born Ohio, and then the family moved to Indiana around 1830.  His family was Quaker with a pretty long history in the United States.  The Quakers kept lots of records, which is very helpful for genealogists and those interested in family history.

Sue and her older siblings had their parents and their remaining grandparents for a few years.  Her older half-brother Albert died in July of 1854 at the age of 15.  Just a few days later her mom’s mother Elizabeth Brown Mills died at the age of 61.  I was thinking she was so much older, but she was younger than I am now.  Those two deaths happened just a few months before the birth and death of little Lucius, so that must have been a difficult time period for the family as well.

They lost their paternal grandmother Elizabeth Frances Hester Stanbrough in 1861 and their maternal grandfather James Mills in 1869.  By this time Sue was practically an adult and ready to be out on her own.   Her mother died in March of 1873.  Lydia Mills Stanbrough was only 49 years old at the time of her death.  Her youngest child Man was only 9 years old at the time of her death.  I’m sure some of the older siblings helped their father care for the younger ones.  Others were getting married and starting families of their own.  Grandma Sue was one of the latter.

Sue Stanbrough married George Hine on October 12, 1873, probably in Westfield.  In 1876 my great grandmother Addie was born in Noblesville, Indiana.  That’s not too far from Westfield.  I’m sure she was in close contact with the rest of the family then and in 1877 when her father John died as a result of poisoning himself with morphine.  He had remarried a woman with six children of her own and they were having difficulties.  He was also having financial problems.  On top of that it looks like he was suffering terribly from painful symptoms of malaria.  It was another tragic time for the Stanbrough family.

Brothers Oll, Man, and Ell in Westfield in 1944.

Sue and George stayed in Indiana and added five sons to their family.  They then moved south to Louisiana in 1894.  According to a newspaper article in 1926, Grandma Sue never returned even to visit Indiana.  Several of her siblings lived out their lives there.  Others of them moved to different states.  Joseph ended up in New Mexico, Mollie in Michigan (with her daughter), Ida in West Virginia, and brother Jim lived in Louisiana with Sue’s family. 

Even though the family was spread out, it seems like they stayed close.  I have copies of letters and photos that they sent each other through the years. That’s how I learned some interesting details about their lives.  It’s also how I got these interesting photos of the Stanbrough family.  They represent cherished memories of Sue’s family back in Westfield.  That’s why they’ve lasted through the years.