Ferdinand Pierre Patureau Circa 1860

Ferdinand Patureau circa 1860

Here is a new photo of Ferdinand Patureau.  I guess I can’t really call it new when it was taken around 1860 or so.  I first saw it in the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas, on November 15, 2021.  I’ve never seen it anywhere else, either.  It’s nice to discover an old photo like that.  It was a bonus treat when I went searching for photos at that collection.  The collection was not disappointing, since it had great versions of photos that I had been aware of previously. 

So in case you don’t know, Ferdinand Patureau was my great great grandfather.  He emigrated from France in 1840 with his parents and siblings.  My father was Bob Landry, the famed band director of Jennings, Louisiana.  His mother was Erie Patureau Landry, my link to the Patureau family.  Erie was the daughter of Vincent Maximilian Patureau, one of the sons of Ferdinand Patureau.

Ferdinand was born on October 27, 1826, in LaRoche-Chalais, France.  His birth certificate called him Pierre Patureau, the son of Pierre Patureau, boulanger, aged 26 and Anne Machet.  Even though the father and the son were named Pierre in older documents, they are consistently known as Pierre Ferdinand Patureau and Ferdinand Pierre Patureau.  Instead of calling one a Sr. and the other a Jr., it was decided that the father would be Pierre Ferdinand and the son would be Ferdinand Pierre.  It worked for them.  It works for me.

Ferdinand spent his childhood in France.  Then, in 1840, when the family was living in Riberac, they to immigrate to the United States.  Ferdinand was only 14 years old when the family arrived in Louisiana and settled in Opelousas.  Ferdinand must not have been too happy with this move, because he took off on his own to go back to France.  For six to eight months the rest of the family didn’t know where he was.  According to the collection in Beaumont, Ferdinand spent some of that time working at a sugar plantation in Cuba to make money.  One report said that there was a document to support that claim, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Ferdinand didn’t stay in France for too long.  He came back to Louisiana after a year and a half or so.  I’m not sure of the motivation.  Perhaps he missed his family.  Sadly his mother Anne Machet and his younger sister Elisa both died in 1842 in Opelousas during a cholera epidemic.  Maybe that was motivation to move back, or he was already back before they died.  The details are not that clear.

A few years after returning to Louisiana he met Louisiana native Marie Emma Landry.  Three sets of her great grandparents were Exiles from Acadie (with names like Landry, Dupuy, Braud, Hebert, and LeBlanc), while the other set were French immigrants (Serrette and Sigur).  They were all French speakers.  When Ferdinand married Emma in 1847, he was 20 years old and she was only 17.

It didn’t take long for the family to start growing.  The first two years brought two daughters – Zulma and Aline.  I think they were born in Brusly, Louisiana.  In 1850 the family was living in Baton Rouge.  A few more years brought Louis Leobon and Marie Valentine.  After that the family was in Plaquemine with Pierre Patureau living with the family there.

So when this picture was taken, Ferdinand was a young father of several children.  I’m not exactly sure when the photo was taken, so it’s hard to know the exact number.  With births and deaths through those years, the number was changing often.  It was also in 1860 that Pierre died, leaving 33-year-old Ferdinand as the Patureau patriarch in Louisiana.  So it’s nice to have this “new” photo of Ferdinand from this particular part of his life.

Enjoy it.