Month: June 2026

Technically, I am not a Patureau.  My last name is Landry.  But I’ve said previously that I am a Patureau.  My paternal grandmother’s name was Germaine Erie Patureau.  I could also say that I am a Bucklin and a Phenice.  I am a product of all of my family lines.  But it was definitely my Patureau part that got me to France.

Toward the end of last May, I got a message on LinkedIn from someone I had never heard of before.  He wrote, “Hi Van! I hope you’re well. I’m doing my genealogy research and I’m looking for the son of Robert Joseph Landry, descendant of Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, could it be you? Take care, Pierre.”  This was very intriguing to me, and also a bit suspicious.  What did this person want?  His profile said something about being an AI startup company.  Was it some phony company that had collected information on me to lure me in?

I wasn’t surprised that someone would link me to my dad and to Ferdinand Pierre Patureau.  I do a lot of research on the Patureau family, so my name would be connected to him in various places.  So why was the message sent to me on LinkedIn, where there wasn’t any connection to that?  People at work were also suspicious and warned me about people trying to steal someone’s liver!  

The other thing that made me suspicious was that I had been learning French online for three years.  I have been watching YouTube channels about people restoring French chateaus for two years.  I had also just gotten my passport.  You have to have a Real ID or a passport if you want to fly anywhere, so I decided on the passport.  I had no plans to go overseas, but the passport would be there if I wanted to do that.  Was someone watching all of this?  I decided to respond to the message carefully.  I wrote back, “Yes, that is me.  What are you interested in?”  He did, after all, say that he was doing genealogy research.

He wrote back talking about Ferdinand Pierre Patureau coming to Louisiana from Dordogne, France, where he lives.  He said that his sister was Uphrosine Patureau who married Pierre Louis Tambrun.  Their father was Liobon Patureau.  This response helped me to feel less leery.  Ferdinand Pierre did come to Louisiana with his father Pierre Ferdinand Patureau in 1840.  It was Pierre Ferdinand that had a sister that I knew of as Euphrosine Tambrun.  And I knew Pierre and Euphrosine’s father as Leobon Patureau.  Mixing up that father and son and spelling the names differently showed me that I was dealing with a real person, not some AI data gatherer.

That made the next part even more interesting.  Pierre said that he lives in the family mansion in LaRoche-Chalais, which is where our Patureau ancestors lived.  I wondered if this was the family “castle” that my grandmother’s brother Rome Patureau talked about visiting during World War I.  I wrote about that three years ago and was hoping to find out where he had gone.  Pierre said that if I wanted to discover France with my loved ones that we were more than welcome to come and stay!

He showed a photo of his place with a rose garden in front.  How could I resist all of that?  I started telling friends and family about it, and before I realized it, I had decided to go to France.  I’d be using that passport after all.  My sister Jamie decided that she’d like to go to France also, so we made plans to make it a long trip to Germany, Austria, and France with Jamie, her husband Allen, and myself.  We decided that May would work for all of us, and off we went.

The first part of the trip was in Germany and Austria around the Bavarian alps.  It was beautiful and charming.  The weather was cooler and we even had a light snowfall on our last morning there.  Then we made our way to France.  After a sketchy night in Bordeaux, we drove on to the Patureau homeland.  Pierre and his family were very welcoming.  The house was amazing.  It was built over a hundred years ago by his great great grandfather Charles Tambrun (I think), a second cousin to my great grandfather Max Patureau.  His grandfather was the leader for the French Resistance in the LaRoche-Chalais area.  The house had so many old books, documents, flags, and other memorabilia related to the family.

We went walking around the village to get a feel for the place.  We found an old graveyard and looked for any Patureau graves.  We didn’t find any.  We visited the Catholic church.  It is not the church that was in existence in the early 1800s, but the old church was in the same location.  That’s where Ferdinand was baptized in 1826, where Pierre Patureau married Rose Machet in 1820, and where Pierre was baptized in 1800.  Pierre’s parents Leobon Patureau and Jeanne Lanson were married in Bors in 1787, and a few years later they brought their family to LaRoche-Chalais.

As we walked around, we found a local boulangerie and supermarket.  We had to try out the croissants, cheeses, pate, and wine.  I got to meet the mayor of the village.  Pierre asked them about the Patureau family name, and they were going to look up some information for him.  We ended the day with a nice meal and visiting with cousins.

The next day we went driving around the countryside of rural France.  In talking to Pierre, we realized that when Pierre and Rose Machet Patureau brought their family to the US, they had been living in Riberac.  That was just a short distance from LaRoche-Chalais, so Jamie, Allen, and I decided to head that way for lunch.  On the way, we stopped and visited a nice chateau in Saint Aulaye.  All of the villages in the area are so charming.  We had lunch in Riberac, then we headed to Chalais for a tour of Chateau de Chalais.

Chateau de Chalais was a larger chateau than the one in Saint Aulaye.  It even had a drawbridge!  I don’t know of any connection to this chateau in the Patureau family, but I’m sure they must have been aware of it.  Many of these old chateaus and churches were originally built 800 to 900 years ago.  Some have original foundations and walls.  All of them have lots of history.  It’s fascinating.

We then hurried back to Pierre’s place, because there were other cousins wanting to meet the American branch of the family!  Pierre’s mother’s name is Florence, and she is my fifth cousin.  (Jamie’s too!)  The cousin we met was Florence’s first cousin Pascal and her husband Thierry.  We looked over some of the family history documents that I brought along.  It was mainly the marriage document for Leobon Patureau and Jeanne Lanson, our common ancestors.  I also had the birth registers for our Ferdinand Patureau and their Pierre Tambrun.  They were both born in LaRoche-Chalais.

Pierre speaks English really well, as does his partner Michelle.  Of course she does, she’s from Canada and she’s lived in the United States.  Pascal and Thierry spoke a little English, which gave me an opportunity to use a bit of my French.  It forces me to try more, which is good practice.  Jamie and Allen felt a little left out of some conversations, but most of the time English was being spoken.  Little Arthur isn’t speaking yet, but I’m sure he will be fluent in both when he starts talking.

The next day was the one I was looking forward to the most.  We were going to visit the Chateau des Plassons in Bors-de-Montmoreau.  Does this sound familiar?  Probably the reason it doesn’t is because I have never mentioned it before.  Not intentionally.  I thought I had mentioned it before on several occasions.  I talk about it all of the time.  But somehow, I overlooked it in the blogs that I wrote. 

I first found out about it in 2018 when I found the 1787 marriage record for Leobon Patureau and Jeanne Lanson in the church in Bors-de-Montmoreau.  In that document it states that Leobon Patureau was a schoolmaster living in the village of Juignac, which is just north of Bors.  He was from Palluaud, where his parents were still living. 

Jeanne Lanson was living in Bors with her parents Francois Lanson and Jeanne Ivain.  Here is the interesting part – Francois is identified as the master chef at Plassons.  The main thing in Bors that is identified as Plassons is the Chateau.  In their granddaughter’s baptismal record in 1790, their son Francois fils is identified as a chef at Chateau des Plassons.  The grandfather Francois is named as godfather.  Our 5X great grandfather Francois Lanson was the master chef at this chateau.  The chateau was built in the 1500s and is still around today.

One of the ways for a place to acquire the name of chateau is for it to have vineyards.  That is the case with Plassons.  It has had vineyards in the area for generations and it still does.  They produce cognac and a drink known as Pineau des Charentes.  It is a local drink that is a combination of grape juice and cognac.  There are different regions in France that give wines their specific names.  Plassons is in the Charentes area.  LaRoche-Chalais is in Dordogne, but we crossed the border when we went to Plassons.  So Pineau des Charentes can only be made in the Charentes region.  It is one of my favorite drinks, though it is somewhat difficult to get.

We went to Plassons for the tour and tasting.  The tasting took place in what I think might have been the old chateau kitchen.  In the back corner of the room was a bread oven.  Don’t ovens belong in a kitchen?  Either way, it was probably a place that old Francois was very familiar with.  I’m not sure when Francois died.  I wonder if he lived long enough to pass some of his culinary skills to his grandson Pierre Patureau.  Pierre’s profession was a baker.  If only that old bread oven could talk.

When we left Plassons, we took the road leading straight out from the front of the chateau.  That short road leads to the church called Notre Dame de Bors-de-Montmoreau.  It’s where Leobon Patureau married Jeanne Lanson.  Leobon had been a schoolteacher in a place called Juignac.  At the end of that short road at the church, you would turn left to go to Juignac.  It’s only about three miles away.  Maybe they met at the church when Leobon was teaching nearby.  There is also a bistro/bar across the street from the church, but I’m not sure how long that was there.  In any case, that was the area where they met each other and fell in love.

But we turned right after the bistro and headed for Palluaud, which is where Leobon was from.  His parents’ names were Antoine Patureau and Marie Sicaud.  Part of the road along the way to Palluaud is called Chez Sicaud.  That means the home of the Sicauds.  This was definitely the area that our Sicaud ancestors were from!  Marie Sicaud spent her whole life there.  It’s a small little village, where the population has been less than 300 for the past fifty years.  There is a church, the mayor’s office, and a bistro all in one little area.  

Pierre and I went into the bistro and asked if anyone knew about the name of Sicaud.  The bartender referred us to the mayor, who just happened to be there when we asked.  So we talked to the mayor of another little village that our ancestors lived.  Everyone was very friendly, but they didn’t know anything about the family Sicaud or Patureau.  I never saw a plaque or anything that mentioned the name of the church or any history about it.  It looked really old, so I’m sure it was the location that Antoine Patureau and Marie Sicaud were married in 1767.  Antoine was a surgeon back then.  In 1787 they listed him as a master surgeon.

It was difficult to keep track of the places that our Patureau ancestors lived and worked over 200 years ago.  They moved around a lot.  They were Go Go Patureaus even back then!  I realized after the fact that I had passed through a few places where our ancestors had lived.  It’s so nice that cell phones identify the location of where photos are taken.  I did take a photo of a sign for Bazac, which is where Rose Machet’s mother lived her life.  Her name was Louise Roux, and she lived there from 1761 to 1804.  She died pretty young, so Rose was two months short of three years old when her mother died.  I never realized that before.  A better photo was of the village of Montboyer, which is where Louise Roux’s mother Marie Bonain was born in 1728.  That’s the photo I show here.

There were also a few places nearby that I knew about but didn’t visit.  Beside Juignac, there was Mareuil.  It is 15 or 20 miles northeast of Bors and it was the birthplace of Rose Machet.  Her parents Louis Machet – the chapelier – and Louise Roux were married there in 1793.  We were short on time, so we headed back toward LaRoche-Chalais and visited the villages of St. Emilion and Aubeterre-sur-Dronne.  They are really charming places in the area with a bit more population.  They have great shopping with local artists and crafts people, churches, old roads and buildings, an underground church, and a monastery.  It was all very charming.

Pierre and Michelle invited us to go to a party at a local chateau on the weekend, but we had plans to go to Paris on Saturday morning.  His parents were waiting for us with our place to stay for the next few days.  It was time to say our good-byes to our newfound family.  I’m so glad that Pierre contacted me because of our Patureau connection.  I had always been curious about the areas that the Patureau family came from, but I never had the motivation to go visit.  His invitation was the motivation I needed.  The place that he lived in may not have been the “castle” that my ancestors lived in, but it was a home built by a Patureau cousin.  

I do think that that home was the place that Rome Patureau visited during World War I.  The Patureau family was associated with LaRoche-Chalais and the family he would have visited would have been the Tambrun family.  There are no other chateaus in the area associated with the Patureau family.  In all of the old books in that house, there may be some with mention of the Patureau name written in it.  It’s going to take a while for someone to go through all of that.

Paris was next.  After such a wonderful time in southern France, I didn’t think I would like the big city.  But I was wrong.  It’s not like any other big city I’ve been in.  It is so captivating and has so many old buildings.  And on top of all of that, there was more family there!  Pierre’s parents Florence and Regis greeted us when we arrived in Paris.  They also were very warm and welcoming.  I guess we passed the test with Pierre!

Regis was really funny.  He and Florence speak English well, but not as good as Pierre.  This gave me more chance to use my French speaking.  Regis was quick to correct me and my pronunciation.  We’d be saying “ah” and “ah” back and forth to each other until I would finally get an acceptable version.  I loved it.  We didn’t have much time that first evening, because we had a dinner cruise planned.  They left to go upstairs so we could get ready for the evening.  The cruise was nice with delicious food.  The odd thing was that we were sitting next to two tables with people from Louisiana.  The guy next to me was from New Orleans and his son works for the same company that I do.  It’s a small world sometimes.  We met the cruise at the base of the Eiffel Tower, so we got to see it during the daylight and at night.  It looks much better with the sparkling lights on it.

We explored Paris over the next few days, then we had a dinner at Florence and Regis’s on Tuesday night.  Not that I knew it was Tuesday.  I lost all sense of time when I was there.  Jamie did all of the planning, for which I am very grateful.  We finally got to meet their daughter Diane, who had let us use her apartment while we were in Paris.  She was very sweet, and she welcomed us warmly as the rest of the family had.

Regis continued his guidance of all things associated with French words.  He said that he had looked up the etymology of the name Patureau.  In some cases, it is spelled Pastureau, which points to it being associated with fields or pastures.  The name could have derived from shepherds or dairy farmers.  Florence provided a very nice meal of several courses.  I may have made a faux pas or two.  I may have kissed her on the wrong side first.  I still can’t remember which side comes first.  Is it my left, or their left?  I also may have used one of the plates too early and I ended up short for the evening.  So many new customs to learn.  Thankfully, she seemed to take it all in stride.

Before we left Paris, we were able to get together with Diane for dinner for our last evening.  She met us after we visited Sacre Coeur.  It’s an amazing old basilica in the Montmartre part of Paris.  Diane met us at a restaurant not far from there.  We had a great meal.  She also helped me with some of my French language instruction.  She tried to help me with the rolling guttural French R.  I have never been able to roll my tongue, even though I have tried throughout my whole life.  It’s my kryptonite!  She would start like her father, with gentle repeats for me to mimic.  But then she’d say, “Ok,” in a dismissive way.  She knew I wouldn’t get it, and I did, too.  I thought it was hilarious and I couldn’t stop laughing.  I would try and it was always forced and pressured and wrong.  It would just roll off the back of her tongue so easily.  Oh, well.

After dinner, we went outside and looked down the street.  I noticed some lights and asked what they were.  Diane said that we had to go to see.  It was Moulin Rouge.  I definitely wanted to go see that.  Besides The Sound of Music, it’s one of the musicals I like.  As we walked down the street, we saw some more risqué parts of the city.  I didn’t notice any of those places during the day.  I thought I might be misremembering that, but I wasn’t.  It’s just down the way from Sacre Coeur.  We took a few photos in front of Moulin Rouge, then took the metro home.  We worked on pronouncing the names of the stops as we went along.  As long as the R was not involved, I did fine.  I even got a “perfect” from Diane.  I was very proud.  (I can’t say that in French because it has Rs in it!)

The next day we said our goodbyes to Paris and headed to Germany.  I couldn’t have had a better time with the family we met in France.  None of us knew what to expect.  After all, we had never met each other before we headed across the world to see them.  But we allowed ourselves to trust that they were family and things would work out.  And they did.  I hope to see them again, either here in America or in France.  Or both!