A Patureau Wedding From 1933
As you can tell by now, I really like old photos. Especially those of my own family. I also like photos with large groups of people in them. Wedding photos are nice, too. So this old photo is particularly nice because it has all of those elements in it. Of course, it’s really not that old. It’s only from eighty-four years ago. It was taken a month after my mom was born. But it’s from my dad’s side of the family.
This photo is from the wedding of Marie Therese “Bee” Patureau and Clarence Schafer on June 19, 1933. It looks like a very nice affair. The wedding took place at St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette, Louisiana. Bee was the younger sister to my Mee Maw (Germaine Erie Patureau was the mother of Bob Landry, my father), who I can’t find in this photo. I know that she was there, because there is another photo of the event that supposedly shows her. (It doesn’t look like her to me.) Erie and Bee’s father was Grampa Max (Vincent Maximilian Patureau) who is standing proudly in the middle of his large family.
The wedding couple are seated in chairs with the bride surrounded by many bouquets of flowers. Sylvia (another Patureau sister) and her husband Son Marionneaux are directly behind the bride. On each side of Sylvia are two more Patureau sisters. (Neither of which is wearing a hat.) On the left is Lidwyn and on the right is Emma. Emma is the mother of Tez. Tez was just a 12-year-old girl at the time with no signs of bumps to be seen. She can be seen sitting on the ground directly in front of her mother. Her father is the tall man in the back at the center of the photo. His name was Toby Mouton. The other Patureau sibling in the photo is Mee Maw’s brother Rome (rhymes with homey) on the far right.
Sadly, the marriage was not very long lasting. The shortness of duration was not due to a lack of affection nor infidelity nor infelicity. The end of the marriage was due to the death of Bee only a short four years later. But not before the births of her two daughters Syl in 1934 and Sis in 1937.
We can thank Sis for sharing this photo with us. It really is a beautiful photo. Full of familiar and familial faces at a happy moment in their lives.
Invitation to the festive occasion.
July 5, 2019 – I found this newspaper article about the wedding. It ran in Lafayette’s “The Daily Advertiser” on the day of the wedding.
