Month: November 2025

Erie in the Nebula

Leave a comment

I decided on a photo for tonight’s post and decided to edit it before I used it.  I thought I’d delete the lines, scratches, and small spots that were all over the photo.  Light spots in the dark areas and dark spots in the light areas.  They were all over the place and it took way longer than what I wanted to spend.  As I was zoomed in on certain areas, the image reminded me of images seen from the James Webb space telescope.  It’s like I was extinguishing stars in a large nebula!  When I would zoom out, I could still see my grandmother Erie with her group of friends and/or family.  Hence the title.

Lafayette, Louisiana, circa 1920.

The photo is of a group of seventeen young adults from around 1920.  I’m thinking that the photo was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is where my grandmother was living back then.  My dad’s mother was Germaine Erie Patureau before she married Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry in 1921.  She was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, but the family moved to Lafayette around 1912.  

Erie went to SLI and got her teaching degree and then worked as a teacher for a few years in Lafayette.  I don’t think this is a picture of a group of teachers.  It looks more like couples.  Maybe not.  There are more than twice as many women.  I compared the men to the photo of her graduating class, but I couldn’t make any certain connections.

In the photo, Erie is fourth from the right.  She’s looking down and to the left and is wearing a dark coat.  She doesn’t really seem so happy, but I still like the photo.  They seem like a tight little group.  I really wish I knew who they all were.  I’m pretty sure that one of them is her youngest sister, Sylvie.  The one I’m talking about is the one that is fourth from the left.  She’s standing, wearing a dark coat, but she’s smiling and looks somewhat happy.

Maybe it’s because she is wearing moss around her neck.  She’s not the only one.  The two young women sitting in front of her are also wearing the moss.  I didn’t notice it until I was cleaning up the photo.  I was getting ready to get rid of it because I thought it was a bad scratch or something.  Then I realized it was moss and that a few of them were wearing it.  I don’t recognize the other two wearing moss around their necks.  They could be cousins, but they don’t look like Patureau sisters.  But the two young women between Erie and Sylvie (tentative ID) look like they could be. 

So, this might be a photo with at least four Patureau sisters in it.  It’s a bit nebulous.

 

Ten Years

Leave a comment

Can you believe it?  I’ve made a whole ten years of writing these family history blog posts without missing a week.  I’ve even wrote a few extra along the way, so I have more than 520 posts.  I had no goal when I first started posting old photos that I started to collect when looking into the history of my different family lines.

Those first posts were just sharing old photos and identifying who the people were.  I started adding the connections I had with the people.   Then I started telling stories about the information I was finding.  Most of the times I was talking about photos, but I also wrote about letters, musical instruments, death notices, artwork, a bed, or any other item that was associated with my family one way or the other. 

I’ve learned a lot about my family over the past ten years.  Lots of times I write the information I have found so I won’t forget it.  It’s also so other people in the family can learn about their history as well.  I have no idea how many people read it or whether they are saving copies of some of those old photos I’ve found.  I don’t really keep track of it.  Of course, I do like it when I get positive comments and people share information that they remember about certain family members and events.  

I thought I’d post some of my favorite photos that I’ve discovered while doing these posts.  When I’m running out of photos, it encourages me to seek out old photos from various sources.  I’ve even had people send me photos that they had found so I can use them for these posts.  I’ve gotten together with cousins who are so good about sharing their old photos. 

Patureau family in 1864

So my favorite photo is also one of the oldest photos that I have.  I had an old version of it for many years.  It was just an old Xerox copy of the Patureau family from 1864.  My dad must have gotten it from a cousin years ago.  His mother was a Patureau.  I tried editing it a few times, but it wasn’t really good.  I used it in a post in 2018, but I was always on the lookout for a better version.

In 2021 I found out about the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont.  One of the Patureau cousins had donated a huge collection of items associated with the family.  I went there to see it and one of the things I was looking for was that old 1864 photo.  You cannot imagine how thrilled I was to see that original photo in excellent condition.  I stood up from where I was sitting and wanted to hoop and holler!  I could barely contain my excitement.  I got a little choked up and maybe even shed a tear.  Definitely the strongest reaction I’ve ever had to a photo.

George Hine circa 1900

And now for second best.  At times like this when I realize how many wonderful old photos I have.  I’ll have to go with an image I cropped from an old family photo on my mom’s dad’s side of the family.  I love the original photo.  My mom had an old photo of the photo that I never really paid attention to.  

When I started researching, I got in touch with mom’s cousins and got lots of Bucklin photos.  I even got an original framed print of this photo of the Hine family.  My grandfather Fred Bucklin’s grandfather was George Hine.  I edited the photo from a scan that my cousin Joseph had done.  I spent a lot of time on that photo! 

But what struck me the most when I was doing that was the face of George.  There’s so much character in that face.  So I made a crop of the face and worked to get it looking just right.  I have a framed enlargement hanging in our bathroom.  

My grandfather Robert Joseph Landry is the Man in Black in the middle of this photo. January 1912

My third favorite photo that I’ve gotten during this time is a photo of my grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. in January of 1912.  I think it came from my dad’s collection that I got when my parents moved into Assisted Living.  I don’t remember seeing that photo before then.  He had several other great photos that I didn’t know of, including one my Mee Maw when she was a young girl known as Erie Patureau.  That one almost made the cut.

But the one of my grandfather with a group of friends/cousins is definitely a favorite.  And my favorite version of it is this colorized one.  I’m not usually a fan of colorized photos, but for some reason it works for this one.  I like it because some of the cousins in the photo are also related to some of my coworkers.  I have a copy of it hanging in my cubicle at work.

Harry Clifton Phenice in Cripple Creek Gold Mine circa 1906

I can’t talk about favorite family photos without mentioning my old gold mine photo.  My mom had it as long as I can remember, and now I have it.  It’s a photo of her grandfather Harry Clifton Phenice (man sitting front right with mustache) in a gold mine in Colorado around 1906.

I don’t know how they took such a great photo in a gold mine back then.  You can even see the candles they were using to be able to see down there.  I spent a bit of time on this one, too.  If you saw the original, you wouldn’t think that it would scan well.

Tez would travel with my Mee Maw (on the right), who was Tez’s aunt. circa 1970

Besides having favorite photos, I also have some favorite posts where the main focus wasn’t a photo.  I’d have to say my favorite was the one about the Bumply UG.  It is a story loosely based on my dad’s cousin Therese Wynhoven Mouton.  She was known by various nicknames such as Tez, Wynie (sounds like Whiney), and by some as Cousin Wart. 

So many of my cousins could relate to the story, because they had stories to tell about Therese as well.  I think I got more comments on that post than any of the others.  The story and the comments always make me laugh.  Tez was a character, and she liked to travel with my grandmother.

On a more serious note, one of my other favorite posts was about a much sadder situation.  In 2020 I decided to write about the experiences that my Acadian ancestors had been through during the Grand Derangement or Great Expulsion.  If you don’t know about that, it was back in 1755.  A group of French people settled the area of Acadie in North America in the 1600s. 

They were some of the earliest settlers in the New World.  But the area they lived in was disputed between English and French for many years.  In 1755 the English got fed up with the Acadians and decided to Exile them.  They burned their homes, destroyed their churches, slaughtered their livestock, and forced them onto ships to the English colonies.  I had read about this for a while and decided to try to find out the stories of my ancestors.

There are so many sad stories.  So many people lost family members.  Lots of times they lost touch with most of their families and didn’t know whether they lived or died.  While looking through all of those family tragedies, one of them stood out.  It was the experiences of Marie Magdeleine Granger.  So many personal tragedies.  I won’t go into all of the details again, but she really does personify perseverance. 

So there you have it.  My looking back at my looking back.  I hope you keep enjoying them.

Grandma Addie Circa 1937

Leave a comment

Addie May Hine Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1937.

Here is a photo of my mom’s grandmother back when my mom was just a kid.  It’s not the best photo, but it is kind of interesting.  She’s standing in front of the family home in Hathaway, Louisiana.  It looks kind of ghostly in the background.  Grandma Addie must have been standing in the shade while the house was in full sun.

Addie May Hine was born on September 23, 1876, in Noblesville, Indiana.  She was the youngest of my mom’s grandparents, though she was only a few months younger than mom’s other grandmother.  Mom’s oldest grandparent was Addie’s husband Louis Charles Bucklin, who was born in 1873.  There wasn’t much difference in all of her grandparents’ ages.  But my mom never met her paternal grandfather because Lou Bucklin died in 1927.

Addie was only the second generation born in Indiana.  Her father George Henry Hine had been born there, but his parents had been born in North Carolina.  His family names included Hine, Cox, Miller, and Vestal.  Her mother Susan G. Stanbrough was from Indiana as well, but her parents had been born in Ohio.  Her family names included Stanbrough, Mills, Hester, and Brown.  The further back along the tree brings your further east and eventually to Europe.

Addie grew up in Indiana with her five younger brothers.  The family then moved to southern Louisiana in 1894.  A few years later she married Lou Bucklin and they started their family together.  They had twelve children, though she only had ten pregnancies.  That’s because she had two sets of twins – one set of identical boys and a set of fraternal twins of different sexes.  My grandfather Fred D. Bucklin was one of the identical twin boys.  He grew up and married Myrtle Phenice.  Fred and Myrtle had five children, including my mom, Betty Lou Bucklin.  

Little Betty Lou was born in 1933, and I’m thinking that this photo was taken around 1937.  This is around the time my mom had her earliest memories.  I think it was a year earlier when she had her most hated haircut.  It was cut really short and little Betty Lou did not want to look like a little boy. But she always had fond memories associated with her Grandma Bucklin.  I’m assuming that this means that her Grandma Bucklin was not responsible for that life-scarring haircut!  

But who couldn’t like Grandma Addie?  She sounds like a sweet woman.  Sure, sometimes it looks like she’s scowling in some of those old photos.  But if you heard her tell the story of her little dog Sammy getting hit by a truck, you can hear the kindness in her voice.  And actually, this photo is kinda growing on me.  Like I said, she’s not scowling.  Plus she looks very pensive.  She surely must have known that the person with the camera was standing there, yet she shows no evidence of that.  It seems more candid and timeless in some way.  I think I’ll just sit and stare at it for a while.

Pee Paw Played for Gulf States

Leave a comment

My grandfather played baseball in Lake Charles when working for Gulf States Utilities.

It’s been a while since I posted a baseball photo of my Landry grandfather.  I posted one back in 2021, and before that one it had been five years since I posted one.  I was once concerned about overdoing it with his baseball photos, but I had no reason to be concerned.  Maybe I should have posted more!  After all, he was a semiprofessional baseball player back in the heyday of baseball’s infancy.

My grandfather was born in 1893 in Westlake, Louisiana.  He grew up with a family of four older brothers.  I’m sure there were lots of games played in that family during that time.  What else were they to do?  There was no television and certainly no internet, so they were left to their own devices.  If their children and grandchildren are any indication of their behaviors, games were being played.

And with games comes competition.  Having older brothers pushes you to be better earlier if you want to compete.  I’m thinking that must have been the case with young Robert Joseph Landry – better known as Rob at the time.  I really don’t know anything about his education.  I’ve never heard anyone talk about that.  He did marry a schoolteacher, and previous generations of the family were known to value education.  But I did hear about him being a semiprofessional baseball player.  There are photos to document that.  

Rob Landry was my grandfather.

Rob was involved with a baseball group out of Beaumont, Texas.  The year was 1915, and the group was the Texas League Beaumont Oilers.  The photo of that group is the earliest photo that I have of his baseball career.  It was taken during tryouts.  I don’t know much about Rob’s involvement with the group.  His career took a break in 1917 when he joined the military during World War I.  There’s a photo of him with a group of other guys playing baseball during that period.  He didn’t give up the sport completely during that year-long stint.

The war ended before he was ever deployed and after that he went to work for Gulf States Utilities.  His father had died in the beginning of 1917.  The rest of the family moved to Lake Charles shortly after that.  The caps of these baseball uniforms have an LC on them, which I’m pretty sure is for Lake Charles.  I think he was living with his mom, his widower brother Seb, and Seb’s young daughter Manette.  I think it was during this time that Rob was playing for the Sawdust Circuit in that same area.  I suppose he played for Gulf States because that’s where he worked.

I estimated that this photo was taken around 1920 or 1921.  A newspaper article said that he played until that time, even though his pitching arm was not quite what it used to be.  Rob Landry is standing in the back row of this photo.  He is the second from the right.  Or you can easily see him in the crop that I enhanced in the second image.  He was starting to be known as Pappy back during this time.  It wasn’t until much later when he became a grandfather that he would be called Pee Paw.