V. M. Patureau

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.