Author: Van

Bucklin Family Circa 1975

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Bucklin Family circa 1975

This is not the best quality photo by any means.  I worked on it for a while to get rid of spots and scratches, but some of them were just too big to get rid of.  But the story behind the photo is what I wanted to talk about.  The picture includes my mom and her family.  My mom’s name was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  She was born and grew up in Hathaway, Louisiana.  Her parents were Fred D. Bucklin and Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  We were their grandkids, and we called them Grandma and Grandpa.

Mama wasn’t the only child of Grandma and Grandpa.  There were five children in total – four girls and their younger brother.  All of them show up in this photo, in addition to some spouses and children.  These are a lot of the Bucklin cousins that I grew up with.  Our family would go there once a month or so because we lived about 12 miles away.  They were in Hathaway, while we were in Jennings.  Jennings is much bigger, of course, and it is the parish seat of Jefferson Davis Parish.

Sometimes when we’d go, some of the other cousins would be there as well.  But for the big holidays of the year – Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas – all of the cousins would be there.  It was always a fun time going out to the country.  They lived on a large property that was actually within other family land that was used for farming.  When it was blackberry season, we’d walk down the side road (Bucklin Rd.) and pick fruit along the dirt road.  We’d usually make it down to the Myrie.  At least that’s what we’d call it.  It’s actually called the Grand Marais and it provides drainage for that area when it rains.  It’s really just a big ditch.  We never knew there was an official name for it but called it Myrie.  It would rhyme with fiery.

Once we got to the small wooden bridge over the Myrie, we’d stop and throw rocks in the water.  It was a great place to pop fireworks, too.  We wouldn’t usually go much further than that.  Why would we?  There wasn’t much of anything past that exciting little drainage ditch.  Ha!  So we’d head back to Grandma and Grandpa’s to play in the bamboo stand or eat some of the satsumas or kumquats.  We’d finally make it back to the house, but I don’t know if we ever had many blackberries to give them.  

In the evenings after dinner we’d find other things to do.  I forgot to say that when I was really young, the first thing that I’d do was go look for the sock monkey in the big toy chest in their house.  I’ve always been a big fan of sock monkeys, in case you don’t know that already.  You know, they really are quite charming.  Sometimes the grandkids would sneak outside and go out on the property and play with fire.  I always enjoyed playing with fire, but for some reason I always missed out on those excursions!  Maybe I was distracted by the charms of the sock monkey!  Not once did I join in the cousin fire fun.

But this picture is one of the last times that the cousins got together at Grandma and Grandpa’s out at Hathaway.  We were getting older and starting to venture off to do our own things.  But Grandma and Grandpa were even older.  They were moving into their 70s and were starting to have health issues.  They couldn’t take care of the big property, and they needed to be closer to medical help.  So they were moving into the city of Jennings.  I know that some of the family went to Hathaway to help them get things packed and moved.  I remember doing that, but I don’t know if that’s what this photo is from.

Let me identify everyone. Grandpa is the older man in the overalls in the middle of the photo.  To the right of him is Grandma.  Their oldest daughter Sylvia is the right of her.  The only other member of her family groups is Kevin Pilcher.  He is the second one from the left in the middle row in a blue shirt.  My mom is the next oldest daughter, and she is in the pink outfit to the right.  Five of her six Landry children are present. To the right of her is Al, and to the right of him is me.  In front of us is my sister Karen.  Rob is the second from the left on the back row in the diamond print shirt.  Jamie is sitting in the front row, and it looks like the sunlight is hitting her white shirt.  Alma is the next oldest daughter, and she is the one in the blue jumpsuit in the middle row.  Her daughters are sitting on either side of Jamie.  Charla Seal is the left with short hair and Rhonda Seal is to the right with longer hair.  Alma’s second husband Ernie (or Hoss) Waldorf is the first one on the left in the back row.  Aunt Loris is in the back row in the horizontal multi-colored striped top. Her son Keith is in front to the right of her in the Budweiser hat and yellow shirt.  Glen is directly behind Rhonda.  Directly behind Glen is Uncle Ernest Woolley, Aunt Loris’s husband.  And that leaves us with the Austin Bucklin family.  Uncle Austin is on the left in the middle row in a red shirt.  His three children (at the time.  Mary would be born later.) are in front of him.  From left to right is John, Dale, and Anita.  

So the picture shows the end of an era.  No more visits to the country to Grandma and Grandpa’s.  We had some of the Christmas get togethers at our house in Jennings at 758 Lucy Street.  Grandma and Grandpa had their 50th wedding celebration at our house, also.  Those were some great times, but they were not the same as the visits to the country.  I guess I’m a bit nostalgic about those visits to the country when I was young.

But if you had visits like that when you were young, you’d be nostalgic too!  

Marie Celeste Circa 1880

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Marie Celeste Leveque Landry circa 1880 in Brusly, Louisiana.

This is a photo of my great grandmother Marie Celeste Leveque Landry.  Her husband was Simon Alcide Landry.  She was the mother of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  She was the grandmother of my dad Bob Landry, and she was called Grandma Celeste by him and his siblings.  Even though she lived to be 86 years old, she died when my dad was only five years old.  That’s because Daddy was the fifth child and Pee Paw was 36 when he was born.  Pee Paw was Grandma Celeste’s last child, and she had him at the age of 45.  

Yet even though she died when my dad and his siblings were quite young, they always talked fondly of her.  Their Bouquet cousins talk fondly of her, too.  They descend from Pee Paw’s older brother Sebastien.  He was married to his first cousin Marie Manette Landry (daughter of Trasimond Landry – brother of Alcide).  They had a daughter named Marie Manette Landry.  The older Marie Manette died shortly after the younger was born, and Sebastien went to live with his parents.  So Marie Celeste was like a mother to granddaughter Marie Manette.  Manette grew up and married Bibb Bouquet and they had a large family that was very close to my dad’s family.

This photo came from cousin Jeanne Landry, who descended from another of Pee Paw’s older brothers – Louis.  That was the Landry family that lived in Lafayette.  The photo was identified as Marie Celeste, but it didn’t have a date.  I originally estimated a date of 1905, but last week when I thought of posting this photo, I realized that it was not quite right.  That dress looked older to me.  How much older, I didn’t know.

But a friend was coming over to visit on Friday and he is more knowledgeable about the fashion trends from that time period.  So I put off posting this photo until after I talked to him.  I also thought that the dress looked rather fancy to me.  I was told that the dress was definitely earlier than the 1905 date.  It is more likely from around 1880.  In addition, the dress is not as valuable as I thought.  That would make sense, because she was a young mother with six young children to care for.  In the 1880 Census the family was living in Brusly, Louisiana.  Celeste is identified as a 33-year-old wife and Alcide was a 35-year-old store clerk.

It was soon after this that the family would move west to Westlake, Louisiana.  I think the motivation was work availability with the railroads in that area.  I guess it would be more lucrative than working in someone else’s store.  But I suppose they made enough to have a photo portrait made of Celeste.  I wonder why they didn’t do a family portrait. Whatever the reason, it is a nice photo of her.  I like having this image of Grandma Celeste.  It’s a keeper.

 

The Landry Family in July 1969

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Last night we watched the movie “First Man.”  It is about the events leading up to the first moon landing in the summer of 1969.  Since I was living way back then, I had memories of those long-ago events.  I also have photos to remind me of some of the things that we did back then.  And somehow, I have another reminder of some of those events.

The Landry family – Jamie, Jodie, Al, Rob, Van, mom (Betty Lou Bucklin), and Karen in Houston, Texas, a few days after the first moon landing in July of 1969.

Five years ago I posted a photo from the same event.  That was in honor of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.  Just recently we passed the 55th anniversary of that time.  I had planned on posting this photo soon after that other one.  Mainly because it is a better photo of all of us, though this one is with our mom.  The other one was with our dad while we were standing in front of the Lunar Landing Module.  (or a replica of one).

This photo has us standing in front of the splashdown capsule from one of the space missions.  It wasn’t from Apollo 11, because that one had just splashed down with Armstrong and crew a day earlier.  Yes, the Landry family was at NASA on July 25, the day after the first visitors to the moon landed back on Earth.  We even saw some commotion with some official-looking cars and such.  We just knew that it was either the astronauts being brought into quarantine or some of the moon rocks being brought in for examination.  What an exciting visit!

I always find it surprising that the first “Star Trek” series was before the first moon landing and it actually ended the month before.  You would think that all of this excitement of traveling in space would have created an audience for the show so that I wouldn’t have been cancelled.  I was definitely a big fan.  Sure, my mom’s first cousin Mel Keys built the model of the U. S. S. Enterprise that they used to film those shows, but I didn’t know that back then.  I just loved the stories about space.  So I was definitely excited to go to NASA that summer.

Notecards written by Karen in July 1969

But that wasn’t all that was happening in July of 1969.  I’ve been planning on writing about a few events from the beginning of that month for a while.  That’s because somehow, I have notecards that Karen wrote on about some of those events.  I’m glad I do, because they give a glimpse into how things were back then.  

The day was July 6, 1969.  We left Jennings and went to Lake Charles to drop Jodie off at band camp.  Karen seemed excited that she got to go in and help Jodie get situated.  Jodie was 15 at the time and Karen was 12.  Band Camp was held at McNeese and it lasted a week during the summer.  After leaving Jodie there, the family went looking to visit family.   

My dad was from Lake Charles, and he had six siblings that still lived there at the time.  The last of all of those eight siblings just recently passed away.  So it looks like we went to his sister Wana’s house first.  It was closest to McNeese.  But, as Karen said, “Nobody was there.”  We headed to the other side of McNeese to see what was going on at Uncle Johnny’s.  Cousin Mona was sick, so we didn’t stay there for more than a bit of a chat.  Then we went to his sister Frances’s house, and everyone was there playing cards.  It’s what they did.  I’m sure we joined in on the games.

We then went to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor for dinner.  We had pizza and balloons.  I’m thinking that we maybe got balloons because Jamie’s birthday was the day before.  It would be another seven years before our family became the entertainment at that Shakey’s location.  I can’t imagine the pizzas costing that much money back then.  Karen didn’t say how much it cost.  But she did talk about the price of dessert.  When we got back to Jennings, we stopped at the Bulldog Inn.  For some reason Al decided to treat everyone to ice cream.  He was rich back then!  Even with seven of us (Jodie was at B. C. in L.C.), the total price would come in under 40 cents.

Those were the days.

Phenice Cousins, Part 2

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Phenice cousins in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1939 or 1940

This is a continuation of a previous post from eight and a half years ago.  In January of 2016, I posted a photo from 1939 with three Phenice cousins.  When I say Phenice cousins, I mean cousins with a common Phenice ancestor.  It doesn’t mean that everyone has the same Phenice last name.  I do the same with my first cousins from my mom’s side of the family.  Since my mom’s maiden name was Bucklin, I call them all my Bucklin cousins even though most of them didn’t have Bucklin as a last name.  

My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin, and her parents were Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice.  So when I say Phenice cousins, I mean my mom, her siblings, and their maternal first cousins.  And in her case, most of those cousins did have the Phenice last name.  When I posted that early Phenice Cousins post, I didn’t write nearly as much about the photos as I do now.  It’s up to you to determine if that’s a good or a bad thing!  I didn’t explain what I meant by Phenice cousins, but maybe you already knew what I meant, and I’ve just wasted two whole paragraphs explaining it.  Good thing vs bad thing.  You decide!

While that first photo had three cousins in it, this one has twice as many cousins with more than twice as many words.  And it costs the same amount!  Inflation hasn’t affected my posts.  I had hoped to get a better-quality version of this photo, so I waited on using it on a post.  But with the death of my mom’s first cousin Kathleen Phenice this week, I thought I’d post it now.  It’s a cute photo that she’s included in.  The children in the photo are from two Phenice families.  Four of them are daughters of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, and the other two are daughters of her brother Orville Phenice.  Both families ended up with four daughters and one son.

Let me tell you who everyone is.  On the left, sitting on her sister’s lap, is Loris Bucklin.  She is the youngest of the four Bucklin sisters.  She lives in Houston, Texas, now.  The lap belonged to none other than my mother Betty Lou Bucklin.  She was born on May 20, 1933, and she died on January 19, 2017.  Most of her life was spent with Bob Landry (my dad) in Jennings, Louisiana.  You can barely see her face peeking around Loris’s little head.  The next little cutie is Alma Bucklin.  She was the third Bucklin daughter, born two and a half years after my mom.  I think they all were blond or tow-headed when they were young.  I think that comes from their dad’s Hine family line.  She passed away in 2014.  Sitting in the middle of the photo is the oldest Bucklin daughter Sylvia.  She was born in March of 1931 and died in 2002 in Phoenix, Arizona.  When we were growing up, Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Ronald (Pilcher) lived in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The next little girl is Kathleen Phenice.  She was born on May 8, 1937, and passed away two days ago (on August 13, 2024) in Denton, Texas.  I remember her as my mom’s cousin who would sing with us at family reunions and such.  I liked hearing her and her sisters sing, because their voices reminded me of Grandma.  The family was very musical.  They also did a bit of research on the Phenice family, which I have referred to from time to time. Kathleen was the second daughter of Orville and his wife Elta Whitman Phenice.  Their oldest daughter is Marilyn Phenice, the young girl on the right in the photo.  She still lives in Louisiana.

I’m posting this photo as is.  It’s not the best quality copy.  If anyone has a good copy of it, I would love to have an improved digital version of it.  And if anyone has a more exact date, I love to be corrected.  Actually, any comment is appreciated.

Let the comments commence!

Patureau Home in Lafayette

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Max Patureau home in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I’ve wondered about the Patureau Home in Lafayette for a while.  I know that my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau relocated to Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1912.  He was born in March of 1865 in Mexico when the family relocated there during the Civil War.  Later that year, the family returned to Louisiana and settled in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  He grew up in Plaquemine and spent most of his early life there.  But in 1911 he decided to set up his veterinary practice in Lafayette.

He had a variety of jobs once he became an adult.  He set up a business of delivering groceries to people in their homes when he was a young man.  He was also helping out the family sawmill business that his father Ferdinand Patureau had set up and run until his death in 1877.  His mother Emma Landry Patureau continued that business and Max helped out with that.  Max also set up a family store in 1904 or so with other family members.  I think that he must have started his veterinary business when this store was still in operation.

I don’t know if he started practicing veterinary services before or after the death of his wife Marie Therese Landry Patureau in 1909.  When she died, this left 44-year-old Max Patureau a single father with nine children between the ages of six and twenty.  This was a huge change for Max, and he decided to move his family to Lafayette just two years later.  The newspaper article about Marie Therese’s death tells us that her mother and two of her sisters were already living in Lafayette by 1909.  Her mother was Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin, sometimes just referred to as “Mrs. Pierre Magloire Babin.”  Magloire or Mack Babin had helped to set up the family store in Plaquemine.  There are many photos of family get togethers that include Max and Belite, and they seem to be pretty close.

So moving the family to Lafayette brought them close to other family members.  Family members who might help in caring for all of those children.  But another draw for Lafayette was SLI.  Southwest Louisiana Institute was a reputable school in its time, and Max Patureau was known to value education for his children.  I know that some of them, including my grandmother Erie, graduated from SLI.  My grandmother and some of her sisters also became schoolteachers and taught in Lafayette.

I know that other family members not living in Lafayette were invited to stay at the Patureau home if they wanted to attend SLI.  Max wanted to make sure he could help make it possible for them to get the education that he knew would make a change for their lives.  One of those was Tommy Landry (son of Marie Therese Landry Patureau’s brother Thomas Belisaire), who wrote a book about their grandfather Trasimond Landry (first husband of Belite and father of Marie Therese and Thomas Belisaire).  He spoke highly of his Uncle Max, and also said that he was the one who taught him how to drive.  I think Max helped some other family members, but I don’t know specifically who they were.

So I was interested in seeing that home that was in Lafayette and was close to where SLI was located.  It was on Lee Avenue.  I got the photo from my cousins recently. (Yes, another piece from the Box 301 Collection.)  The photo looks like it could be of two of the Patureau daughters back then.  It even looks like one of them might be holding some schoolbooks. I think the photo was taken around 1918 or so.  It’s a nice view of the home of my predecessors. 

Max Patureau at the home of Father Wynehoven in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I thought I would add this other photo that shows Grampa Max from around the same time period.  I think it was taken around 1925 in Lafayette.  That’s Max Patureau on the left.  He’s the one not wearing priest clothes!  I think the one on the left is a priest who was a family friend.  The name suggested for him was Father Wynehoven.  He was a priest that was well-loved by the family. 

One of Max’s granddaughters was named after him.  That would be my dad’s cousin that we called Tez.  Her given name was Therese Wynehoven Mouton.  The nickname Tez was derivative of her first name.  She was also known by Wynie (sounds like whiney) by some family.  There were other nicknames that she was known by, but I’ll not talk about them at this time.  

Bucklin Family Photos Circa 1950

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I thought I would share two of the photos that I’ve recently acquired from my aunt.  I had never seen these photos before and thought there was a lot of charm about them.  They are from around 1950 and just show scenes of my mom and her younger siblings out in the Hathaway countryside.  Of course they are in black and white.  That’s what most of the photos were back then.  It was a few years before color seeped into the world.   It was a simpler world back then.  There were no clashing colors!

Betty Lou and Austin Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1950.

The first picture is a picture of my mom with her baby brother.  That would be Betty Lou and Austin Bucklin, the second and fifth children of Fred D. and Myrtle Phenice of Hathaway, Louisiana.  At least that’s the name that my mom used for where she grew up and went to school.  Occasionally she would refer to China, Louisiana, when talking about her family.  That one always caught my attention.  Her family lived in China?  She does have ancestors who are buried at the China Cemetery out there.

My grandparents lived “out in the country” on Bucklin Road.  North of there was the China Cemetery, though not as far as Elton.  South of their home was Raymond, Louisiana.  They attended church at Raymond Methodist Church.  Some of the family are buried at the Raymond Cemetery.  It is mostly members of the Bucklin family.  A mile or two east of the Raymond Methodist church is Hathaway High School.

So why did my mom call it Hathaway when Raymond and China were closer than Hathaway?  Maybe she just identified with it more because she went to school at Hathaway High School all twelve years of her schooling.  So I’ll always think of her family as being from Hathaway and it might be somewhat incorrect.  Why do they have so many names for places around there?

And when did they move there?  I know the Bucklin family originally came down from Iowa in 1884.  That was my mom’s Bucklin grandfather who came with his parents and siblings.  He died before she was born, but the family still owns that land out there.  Aunt Loris said that the family moved to the house that we knew on Bucklin Road in 1943 or so.  (If I’m remembering correctly.  I should make more notes!)  I’m not sure where the house was that they lived in before that.

I just remember the place that you see in the photo.  My mom always talked about how they used a scrub board to wash clothes and would hang them out to dry.  No fancy electrified contraptions were out there!  My grandfather had a nursery, so there were lots of places with growing plants around the property.  I’m not sure why Austin is looking at Betty Lou like he is in this photo.  It looks like a candid photo, which I like.  He seems perplexed by her behavior.

Austin, Loris, and Alma Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1950

The second photo also has Austin in it.  He’s in the driver’s seat of the truck for the Fred Bucklin Nursery of Elton, LA.  At least that’s what the door signage looks like to me.  See?  He doesn’t use Hathaway, Raymond, or China on his truck.  He uses Elton, which is the closest “town” in that area.  It is also where he went to school when he was younger.  I’m pretty sure he grew up on the same Bucklin property that includes the Bucklin family homes in that area.

I don’t think that Austin was actually driving the truck.  I think he was just pretending for the photo.  In the back seat you can see two of his sisters.  You can see Loris pretty well.  She’s right in the middle of the photo and appears to be waving.  Or maybe she’s just resting her hand on the side of the truck.  Next to her is Alma.  You can’t really see her because the post is in the way.

Why would someone take the photo when she was behind the post?  Maybe Austin was really driving?!  The person might not have known that she was behind the post when they clicked the photo because the truck was moving.  Could that be right?  And maybe Loris was resting her arm against the truck so she wouldn’t fall over in the bumpy truck ride?  Or maybe they were all pretending to sell the idea of them riding in the countryside?  My sister and I would pretend all kinds of things when riding on the wide-open countryside to my grandparents’ house.

I guess we’ll never know.  Unless of course, Aunt Loris remembers some of those details and chooses to share them with us.  Until then, we can enjoy seeing some charming scenes from over seventy years ago in the countryside around Hathaway, Louisiana.  Or was it in China?

Mon Parrain Est Mort: The End of an Era

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My godfather has died.  It was pretty much expected, but it is always sad when family members die.  I’m talking about my Uncle Johnny, the last of my dad’s siblings to pass away.  There were eight children in all.  I recently got a new photo of the family from the new Box 301 Collection.  It’s only new in that I had never seen it before.  The photo itself was taken around 1939 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

The Rob & Erie Patureau Landry family circa 1939 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I usually start with the oldest first, but since this is a post about the youngest, I’ll start with him first.  You can see little Johnny standing in the front of this photo.  He’s only about three years old, so I estimate that it was taken around 1939.  John Alfred Xavier Landry was born August 2, 1936, and died July 28, 2024.  He was five days short of his 88th birthday.

The sibling closest in age to him was Frances Mae (1934-2020).  She’s standing in front to the right.  She was about two years younger than Wana Lidwin (1932-2014).  She’s the little girl standing behind Johnny. The next older sibling was Robert Joseph Jr., who is also standing in the front of the older ones.  That’s my dad, and he was known as Bobbie back then.  He lived from 1929 to 2017.  He was seven days short of his 88th birthday.  So he lived just two days less than his younger brother Johnny.

Less than two years older than Bobbie was his sister Germaine (1927-2020).  She is standing next to him in the dress with the white collar.  Her older siblings are the first three shown on the back row on the left.  Hubert was the third child and he lived from 1925 to 2006.   A. J. (Alcide Joseph) was second and he lived from 1924-2018.  He lived the longest at 94 years, 5 months, and 25 days.  Of the girls, Germaine lived the longest at 93 years, 3 months, and 9 days.  The oldest child was Aunt Marie.  Marie Therese lived from 1923 to 1998.  She had the shortest lifespan.  She died a month short of her 75th birthday.  All eight of the siblings were born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Rob (1893-1957) and Erie Patureau (1895-1973) Landry.  They can be seen on the right in this photo.

Bobbie and Johnny Landry in 1946 in Lake Charles, LA

This second photo is one I’ve had for a while.  I decided a few years ago that I would use it for when Uncle Johnny died.  It’s such a sweet photo of him with my dad.  My dad and all of his siblings were close to each other.  Most of them lived in Lake Charles, so there were lots of get togethers through the years.  Plus, they would get three or four of them together regularly to play cards till all hours of the night.  There was a lot of laughing involved.  There may have been some discussion of rules, but I wouldn’t really call it arguing.  It was mostly fun and games.

Daddy and Johnny were really close.  He was my dad’s handy man!  Johnny told me that my dad informed my mom quite early in their relationship that he was not a handy man.  He reminded me of that at our last visit with him a few weeks ago.  I’m glad I got a chance to visit with him then.  He also told me that my mom used to hitchhike when she was in college.  I don’t remember hearing that before.  Maybe she was just catching rides with friends and acquaintances. 

They also liked to hunt together.  I’ve written a post about that before.  Another thing he told me at our last visit was that he had never heard my dad curse, even when he brought the wrong ammunition for the gun he brought for hunting.  I think Johnny was not averse to using colorful language, because he remembered that event as a time when Daddy would have been justified in using a few choice words.

And now they’re both gone.  As are their parents and siblings.  It’s the end of an era.  A spectacular era.  

Pee Paw and Friends Circa 1918

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The photo I’m using this week is another one of the recent photos I acquired.  It’s from Box 301 that was in my Aunt Wana’s attic.  She passed away almost ten years ago, so that box was up there for many, many years.  A few of them were in bad shape, but considering the heat, the dirt, and years of no care, most of them were in good shape.  As I said two weeks ago, there were some real treasures in there from the Patureau side of the family.  But there were also some nice ones from the Landry side.  As usually is the case when there are lots of old photos, some of them are not identified.  I will definitely be trying to work on figuring out who some of them are.

Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. (in the back in the middle) was my grandfather. Photo was taken around 1918, probably in Westlake, Louisiana.  (photo was edited by Van Landry)

I chose this picture because it’s a fun picture of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. around the year 1918.  Everyone looks so happy in the photo.  My grandfather Rob is in the back row toward the middle.  This was before he was married to my grandmother Erie Patureau.  The only other person I can identify in the photo is the other guy on the back row.  The one on the left.  I have another photo of him with Pee Paw (that’s what us grandkids call him) from around the same time.  His name was Lloyd Lynch.

This is one of four photos from the box that were taken on the same day.  One of the girls is missing from this photo, so she must be the one taking it.  From looking at all four photos, it is obvious that the four guys are all good friends.  As you can see in this photo, they have their hands on the shoulders of the friends in front of them. 

I think they could all be friends from Rob’s baseball days.  He was a semi-professional baseball player back then.  He made his name as a pitcher in the Sawdust Baseball Circuit.  These four must have had some formal event to go to and they decided to go together with their dates.  The dates don’t really seem like serious girlfriends.  The guys show more affection toward their buddies than to any of the women.  There are no couple photos, but there is a photo of just the four guys together.

The girls must have just been friends, too.  At least for Rob.  If she had been serious, Erie would likely not have kept it all of those years.  Who wants a picture of their partner with a previous partner?  Sure, Mee Maw was a sweet grandmother who treated everyone wonderfully.  But she had been a young girl who was subject to jealousy or insecurity like most people. So, just friends.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Just a bunch of friends going out to a nice event and having a fun time.

H. C. and Daisy’s Family Circa 1941

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Harry Clifton and Daisy Keys Phenice with their family circa 1941 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Eight years ago I shared a photo with the same people on the same day.  It’s one that I’ve seen my whole life.  It belonged to my mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) and she wrote on the back of that one that the photo was taken with her first camera.  I’m assuming that this photo was taken by the same person with the same camera.  The people in the photo didn’t move much from one shot to the next.  Maybe they saw this one in their phone and suggested taking another one because my grandmother (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin) has her eyes almost closed.  She’s got pretty eyes and a pretty smile, so that would be understandable.

But it’s not accurate, because people didn’t have cameras on their phones back then.  If they did have a phone, it was locked to the wall and they had to get the operator to place a call for them.  Even when I was a kid, my grandmother’s telephone line was on a party line.  We could pick up the phone and listen in to other people talking!

So for whatever reason, they took at least two photos of this same pose on that faraway 1941 day in Hathaway, Louisiana.  I’m glad they did, because I like them both.  I got this one from Aunt Loris recently.  (Thanks again!)  It’s a little clearer than the other one.  Of course, this first version I’m posting has been edited and enhanced.  Some of the Phenice sons on the back row don’t look exactly correct because of the original blurriness.  But the ones in the front look sufficiently like the actual person, so it makes the photo more pleasing to my eyes.  Oh, yeah, it’s also cropped into a square and the subjects are centered better than in the original.  

Original version of the photo with just a little removal of dust and scratches.

In front on the left is my Grandma (Myrtle) who doesn’t look very happy in this photo.  In the other photo she looks much happier.  I don’t know why.  Next to her is the youngest daughter Marguerite.  She would be about 23 years old in this photo.  To the right of her is Grace, the oldest daughter.  She was 38 years old at the time and Mrytle was 35. Daisy Keys was born in England in 1876 and she married Harry Clifton Phenice in 1900 in Louisiana.  He was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, (made famous this week) in 1874 and moved to Louisiana as a 24-year-old.  All of their children were born in Louisiana.  On the back row we have Warren, 25; Henry, 32; Sylvan, 40; and Orville, 30.

On my post from eight years ago, I said that sometimes when I clean up photos it takes away some of the charm.  For some reason I don’t feel that way with the editing on this photo, even though it’s a more pronounced change and some of the people don’t look exactly like themselves.  So for you purists out there ( and I know you’re out there!), I’m posting the unenhanced version in all of its blurry, lopsided beauty.

Do you have a preference?

When Mee Maw Played With a Calf: Intro to Box 301

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I’ve been getting so many new photos lately.  They are not actually new photos, because some of them are very old.  But many of them are new to me, so they’re giving me all kinds of ideas for future posts for this family history blog.  A few weeks before I got these photos from three different sources, I was having some difficulty in thinking of topics on my Thursday nights.  First I got some old Patureau photos that included some photos of my dad as well as older photos of cousins from that line.  Then my mom’s sister sent me some photos of the family that I’d never seen before.  That’s always a plus.  The most recent photos came from cousins on my dad’s side of the family.  They included photos of my paternal grandmother and grandfather.  Some of these photos were obviously from the same date as other photos I have written about.  But more exciting to me were the new photos of Mee Maw’s dad’s family.  One of them was an old tin type that wasn’t labeled.  That didn’t stop me from figuring out who it was.

Zita and Erie Patureau with a calf. Behind them is Clifford Clements. Taken in Lafayette, Louisiana, in July of 1921.

As wonderful as those photos are, they will have to wait for another time.  Except for this one of Mee Maw with a calf.  It called to me too strongly to ignore, similar to a previous photo taken on the same day did to me in 2016.  It’s probably because it’s another sweet photo of my paternal grandmother around the time that she became engaged to be married.  Maybe she is just happier than usual.

I keep referring to her as Mee Maw, but back in 1921 she was known as Erie Patureau.  It would only be later that she would get married and my dad (Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr.) would be born.  Another photo from that day makes me think that the photos were taken in hopes of having an engagement photo.  That one was used for the post “Erie Alone” in 2018.  It was a somewhat serious photo, and her hand with her ring were on clear display.

But this photo is definitely not serious!  Erie’s sister Zita looks like she’s whispering in one of the calf’s ears, while Erie is holding the other one.  I suppose their friend Clifford Clements is helping to keep the calf posed for the photo.  Maybe Zita was humming to the calf to calm it.  As I’ve always heard, music soothes the savage beast.  Not that this calf looks savage in the least.  I’m sure she was very sweet.

At the time that this photo was taken, both Erie and Zita were schoolteachers in Lafayette.  Their dad Max had moved there with the family in 1912, where he set up a veterinary practice.  A few of the daughters went to college at SLI and became teachers.  There are a lot of teachers in the Patureau family.  In fact, Max Patureau’s great grandfather Leobon Patureau had been a schoolteacher in France in the 1780s.  He probably wasn’t the first, and I hear of more schoolteachers in the family from time to time.

I wonder if this calf was one of their dad’s patients.  I’m sure they must have treated it very well.  They wouldn’t want to mar their father’s reputation.  After all, I’m thinking they were Daddy’s girls.  Their mother (Marie Therese Landry) had died somewhat young (41 years old in 1909), so he was the one who was their primary caregiver.  And from all of the wonderful photos of Grampa Max that I’ve seen from Mee Maw’s collection of photos, I would think that Erie was a Daddy’s girl.

Box 301 was from my Aunt Wana’s attic.

PS.  The latest collection of photos is being called Box 301.  That’s because they were in a box, and the box had the number 301 written on it.  It sounds rather obvious, but I thought I’d explain it anyway.  It was found in the same attic that had the Tin Can Collection – my dad’s sister Wana must have gotten them from their mother.  Their sister Germaine passed her photos down to her daughter Daphne, and that group of photos is called the Secret Collection.  I won’t mention all of the collections here.

You will definitely be seeing more images from Box 301.

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