Author: Van

Ten Years

Leave a comment

Can you believe it?  I’ve made a whole ten years of writing these family history blog posts without missing a week.  I’ve even wrote a few extra along the way, so I have more than 520 posts.  I had no goal when I first started posting old photos that I started to collect when looking into the history of my different family lines.

Those first posts were just sharing old photos and identifying who the people were.  I started adding the connections I had with the people.   Then I started telling stories about the information I was finding.  Most of the times I was talking about photos, but I also wrote about letters, musical instruments, death notices, artwork, a bed, or any other item that was associated with my family one way or the other. 

I’ve learned a lot about my family over the past ten years.  Lots of times I write the information I have found so I won’t forget it.  It’s also so other people in the family can learn about their history as well.  I have no idea how many people read it or whether they are saving copies of some of those old photos I’ve found.  I don’t really keep track of it.  Of course, I do like it when I get positive comments and people share information that they remember about certain family members and events.  

I thought I’d post some of my favorite photos that I’ve discovered while doing these posts.  When I’m running out of photos, it encourages me to seek out old photos from various sources.  I’ve even had people send me photos that they had found so I can use them for these posts.  I’ve gotten together with cousins who are so good about sharing their old photos. 

Patureau family in 1864

So my favorite photo is also one of the oldest photos that I have.  I had an old version of it for many years.  It was just an old Xerox copy of the Patureau family from 1864.  My dad must have gotten it from a cousin years ago.  His mother was a Patureau.  I tried editing it a few times, but it wasn’t really good.  I used it in a post in 2018, but I was always on the lookout for a better version.

In 2021 I found out about the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont.  One of the Patureau cousins had donated a huge collection of items associated with the family.  I went there to see it and one of the things I was looking for was that old 1864 photo.  You cannot imagine how thrilled I was to see that original photo in excellent condition.  I stood up from where I was sitting and wanted to hoop and holler!  I could barely contain my excitement.  I got a little choked up and maybe even shed a tear.  Definitely the strongest reaction I’ve ever had to a photo.

George Hine circa 1900

And now for second best.  At times like this when I realize how many wonderful old photos I have.  I’ll have to go with an image I cropped from an old family photo on my mom’s dad’s side of the family.  I love the original photo.  My mom had an old photo of the photo that I never really paid attention to.  

When I started researching, I got in touch with mom’s cousins and got lots of Bucklin photos.  I even got an original framed print of this photo of the Hine family.  My grandfather Fred Bucklin’s grandfather was George Hine.  I edited the photo from a scan that my cousin Joseph had done.  I spent a lot of time on that photo! 

But what struck me the most when I was doing that was the face of George.  There’s so much character in that face.  So I made a crop of the face and worked to get it looking just right.  I have a framed enlargement hanging in our bathroom.  

My grandfather Robert Joseph Landry is the Man in Black in the middle of this photo. January 1912

My third favorite photo that I’ve gotten during this time is a photo of my grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. in January of 1912.  I think it came from my dad’s collection that I got when my parents moved into Assisted Living.  I don’t remember seeing that photo before then.  He had several other great photos that I didn’t know of, including one my Mee Maw when she was a young girl known as Erie Patureau.  That one almost made the cut.

But the one of my grandfather with a group of friends/cousins is definitely a favorite.  And my favorite version of it is this colorized one.  I’m not usually a fan of colorized photos, but for some reason it works for this one.  I like it because some of the cousins in the photo are also related to some of my coworkers.  I have a copy of it hanging in my cubicle at work.

Harry Clifton Phenice in Cripple Creek Gold Mine circa 1906

I can’t talk about favorite family photos without mentioning my old gold mine photo.  My mom had it as long as I can remember, and now I have it.  It’s a photo of her grandfather Harry Clifton Phenice (man sitting front right with mustache) in a gold mine in Colorado around 1906.

I don’t know how they took such a great photo in a gold mine back then.  You can even see the candles they were using to be able to see down there.  I spent a bit of time on this one, too.  If you saw the original, you wouldn’t think that it would scan well.

Tez would travel with my Mee Maw (on the right), who was Tez’s aunt. circa 1970

Besides having favorite photos, I also have some favorite posts where the main focus wasn’t a photo.  I’d have to say my favorite was the one about the Bumply UG.  It is a story loosely based on my dad’s cousin Therese Wynhoven Mouton.  She was known by various nicknames such as Tez, Wynie (sounds like Whiney), and by some as Cousin Wart. 

So many of my cousins could relate to the story, because they had stories to tell about Therese as well.  I think I got more comments on that post than any of the others.  The story and the comments always make me laugh.  Tez was a character, and she liked to travel with my grandmother.

On a more serious note, one of my other favorite posts was about a much sadder situation.  In 2020 I decided to write about the experiences that my Acadian ancestors had been through during the Grand Derangement or Great Expulsion.  If you don’t know about that, it was back in 1755.  A group of French people settled the area of Acadie in North America in the 1600s. 

They were some of the earliest settlers in the New World.  But the area they lived in was disputed between English and French for many years.  In 1755 the English got fed up with the Acadians and decided to Exile them.  They burned their homes, destroyed their churches, slaughtered their livestock, and forced them onto ships to the English colonies.  I had read about this for a while and decided to try to find out the stories of my ancestors.

There are so many sad stories.  So many people lost family members.  Lots of times they lost touch with most of their families and didn’t know whether they lived or died.  While looking through all of those family tragedies, one of them stood out.  It was the experiences of Marie Magdeleine Granger.  So many personal tragedies.  I won’t go into all of the details again, but she really does personify perseverance. 

So there you have it.  My looking back at my looking back.  I hope you keep enjoying them.

Grandma Addie Circa 1937

Leave a comment

Addie May Hine Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1937.

Here is a photo of my mom’s grandmother back when my mom was just a kid.  It’s not the best photo, but it is kind of interesting.  She’s standing in front of the family home in Hathaway, Louisiana.  It looks kind of ghostly in the background.  Grandma Addie must have been standing in the shade while the house was in full sun.

Addie May Hine was born on September 23, 1876, in Noblesville, Indiana.  She was the youngest of my mom’s grandparents, though she was only a few months younger than mom’s other grandmother.  Mom’s oldest grandparent was Addie’s husband Louis Charles Bucklin, who was born in 1873.  There wasn’t much difference in all of her grandparents’ ages.  But my mom never met her paternal grandfather because Lou Bucklin died in 1927.

Addie was only the second generation born in Indiana.  Her father George Henry Hine had been born there, but his parents had been born in North Carolina.  His family names included Hine, Cox, Miller, and Vestal.  Her mother Susan G. Stanbrough was from Indiana as well, but her parents had been born in Ohio.  Her family names included Stanbrough, Mills, Hester, and Brown.  The further back along the tree brings your further east and eventually to Europe.

Addie grew up in Indiana with her five younger brothers.  The family then moved to southern Louisiana in 1894.  A few years later she married Lou Bucklin and they started their family together.  They had twelve children, though she only had ten pregnancies.  That’s because she had two sets of twins – one set of identical boys and a set of fraternal twins of different sexes.  My grandfather Fred D. Bucklin was one of the identical twin boys.  He grew up and married Myrtle Phenice.  Fred and Myrtle had five children, including my mom, Betty Lou Bucklin.  

Little Betty Lou was born in 1933, and I’m thinking that this photo was taken around 1937.  This is around the time my mom had her earliest memories.  I think it was a year earlier when she had her most hated haircut.  It was cut really short and little Betty Lou did not want to look like a little boy. But she always had fond memories associated with her Grandma Bucklin.  I’m assuming that this means that her Grandma Bucklin was not responsible for that life-scarring haircut!  

But who couldn’t like Grandma Addie?  She sounds like a sweet woman.  Sure, sometimes it looks like she’s scowling in some of those old photos.  But if you heard her tell the story of her little dog Sammy getting hit by a truck, you can hear the kindness in her voice.  And actually, this photo is kinda growing on me.  Like I said, she’s not scowling.  Plus she looks very pensive.  She surely must have known that the person with the camera was standing there, yet she shows no evidence of that.  It seems more candid and timeless in some way.  I think I’ll just sit and stare at it for a while.

Pee Paw Played for Gulf States

Leave a comment

My grandfather played baseball in Lake Charles when working for Gulf States Utilities.

It’s been a while since I posted a baseball photo of my Landry grandfather.  I posted one back in 2021, and before that one it had been five years since I posted one.  I was once concerned about overdoing it with his baseball photos, but I had no reason to be concerned.  Maybe I should have posted more!  After all, he was a semiprofessional baseball player back in the heyday of baseball’s infancy.

My grandfather was born in 1893 in Westlake, Louisiana.  He grew up with a family of four older brothers.  I’m sure there were lots of games played in that family during that time.  What else were they to do?  There was no television and certainly no internet, so they were left to their own devices.  If their children and grandchildren are any indication of their behaviors, games were being played.

And with games comes competition.  Having older brothers pushes you to be better earlier if you want to compete.  I’m thinking that must have been the case with young Robert Joseph Landry – better known as Rob at the time.  I really don’t know anything about his education.  I’ve never heard anyone talk about that.  He did marry a schoolteacher, and previous generations of the family were known to value education.  But I did hear about him being a semiprofessional baseball player.  There are photos to document that.  

Rob Landry was my grandfather.

Rob was involved with a baseball group out of Beaumont, Texas.  The year was 1915, and the group was the Texas League Beaumont Oilers.  The photo of that group is the earliest photo that I have of his baseball career.  It was taken during tryouts.  I don’t know much about Rob’s involvement with the group.  His career took a break in 1917 when he joined the military during World War I.  There’s a photo of him with a group of other guys playing baseball during that period.  He didn’t give up the sport completely during that year-long stint.

The war ended before he was ever deployed and after that he went to work for Gulf States Utilities.  His father had died in the beginning of 1917.  The rest of the family moved to Lake Charles shortly after that.  The caps of these baseball uniforms have an LC on them, which I’m pretty sure is for Lake Charles.  I think he was living with his mom, his widower brother Seb, and Seb’s young daughter Manette.  I think it was during this time that Rob was playing for the Sawdust Circuit in that same area.  I suppose he played for Gulf States because that’s where he worked.

I estimated that this photo was taken around 1920 or 1921.  A newspaper article said that he played until that time, even though his pitching arm was not quite what it used to be.  Rob Landry is standing in the back row of this photo.  He is the second from the right.  Or you can easily see him in the crop that I enhanced in the second image.  He was starting to be known as Pappy back during this time.  It wasn’t until much later when he became a grandfather that he would be called Pee Paw.

Betty Lou in First Grade

Leave a comment

Betty Lou Bucklin circa 1939 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I wasn’t sure if I had posted this photo before or not.  I searched through my posts and couldn’t find it, so I think I’m good.  I think I may have shared an animated version of it on Facebook a few years ago.  But I didn’t do an official family history post.  It definitely deserves a post, because it is so painstankling cute.

This is Betty Lou Bucklin in the fall of 1939, which would have been the year she started first grade in Hathaway, Louisiana, long before she was my mother.  I cleaned the photo up and sharpened it a bit.  The original is in pretty bad shape.  It is splotchy and there is a big dark spot on her chin.  It looks stained in some way.  I didn’t do the coloring.  I think my mom used the photo as one of her practicing photos for hand tinting.

The color tinting may have been done when she was young, because it wasn’t a very good example of it.  So I smoothed out the colors to try to make it look a little more natural.  It looks like she added a bit of red color to her lips.  That seems appropriate because if she was ever gonna have any makeup on, it would be her red lipstick.  

Betty Lou was born in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression to Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  She was their second child.  By the time of 1939, there were two more sisters to join the family.  When she was born, three of her grandparents were alive.  Her paternal grandfather Louis Bucklin had died in 1929 at the age of 54.

Her paternal grandmother Addie Hine Bucklin lived nearby when she was young, so she knew her pretty well.  Addie had twelve children, so there were lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins around.  They would have big covered-dish dinners at Grandma Bucklin’s house, and Mama said that the food was always delicious.  Her mom’s parents were both alive and they lived nearby also.  Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys Phenice were her Phenice grandparents.  H. C. was known for his fiddle playing and Daisy would play along on the piano.  I think they were a big musical influence on her.

All four of my mom’s grandparents came from different areas.  Louis Bucklin had been born in Iowa to a father whose family was from Massachusetts and a mother whose family were Irish immigrants.  Addie was from Indiana.  Their family had come down to Louisiana in 1894.  Daisy was an immigrant from England.  Her family had moved to Louisiana in 1887.  H.C. had been born in Pennsylvania and lived most of his childhood in Nebraska where his father had homesteaded. 

Actually H.C.’s father was still alive the first few years of young Betty Lou’s life.  Samuel Charles Phenice could have told my mom the story of being a witness to the Lincoln Assassination when he was a young man.  But Samuel lived up in southern Nebraska/norther Kansas, and I don’t think they ever met.  She would have told us about it if she had.  She remembered her bad haircut when she was three.  She remembered taking photos with a real doll in 1938.  I think she would have remembered meeting her great grandfather. 

He died around the same time this photo was taken, but she talked about him the rest of her life.  She told me about him being a witness to the Lincoln Assassination when I was a kid.  In school we learned about the Lincoln Assassination in history class.  Of course, I had to tell the teacher that my ancestor had been a witness.  I don’t think the teacher believed me.  I can’t remember the exact details, but my mom made sure that the teacher was informed of our family’s history.  Either she talked to the teacher or she had me bring the newspaper article to school.  Similar to this one here.

Lincoln Sunday Journal, Oct. 1, 1939

 

Patureau and Parasol

Leave a comment

I always try to be creative and unique with the titles of my posts.  They are easier to find that way when I later go searching for them.  Maybe I should say that I try to make my posts easily searchable by their titles.  I’m not sure I succeed with either one of those descriptions.  But I do it.  I keep writing posts and I keep coming up with titles for them.  I’ve been doing that every week for almost ten years now.  Ten years!!  That’s 544 posts in that time.  And 544 titles.  I’ve been thinking about that the past few days.  It’s time for me to get serious about putting some of them together to make some books for the different family groups.  I’m not getting any younger.

Parasol girl and Erie Patureau Landry, my paternal grandmother in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Here is a photo of my paternal grandmother from around 1921.  Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau, but most of her friends just referred to her as Erie.  You know, like the lake.  She was born in Crescent, Louisiana, in 1895.  Crescent is a small community near Plaquemine along Bayou Plaquemine.  She grew up there along Bayou Road until the family moved to Lafayette in 1912.

In Lafayette she went to college at SLI and became a teacher.  She and her sisters taught in Lafayette a few years.  Then she decided to get married.  I’m not exactly sure when she got engaged.  She was married in November of 1921, so she probably got engaged earlier that year or the previous year.  And I think that’s around the time that this photo was taken.

This photo leaves me with more questions than answers.  The two girls are wearing large coats, so if I’m right about the time frame, this was probably taken around January or February of 1921.  I’m saying it was in Lafayette because that’s where Miss Patureau was living at the time.  But what’s with the parasol?  I would call it an umbrella, but it’s not raining and they are using the apparatus to (unsuccessfully) block the sun.  And I’ve never before seen a photo of someone wearing a big coat and carrying a parasol.  I looked!

And who is that girl holding the parasol?  It could be a friend, or it could be family.  The more I look at it, I think she looks like Erie’s younger sister Sylvie.  But when I look at it closer it doesn’t seem to look like her.  Just like with Erie; when I look at her in this photo it makes me think of my sister Karen.  There’s just something about it that seems Karenish.   The girl in the photo could be anyone.  I don’t think she was identified on the back of the photo.  It came from Box 301, and when I was taking photos of those pictures, I would photograph the back of it had identifying writing on it.  So she is a mystery for now and maybe forever.

But we know our dear sweet Mee Maw.  That’s who Erie became when she got older. But back then she was just Erie.  Excited about starting a new part of her life when she married that Rob Landry guy.  Counting down the days.  And making sure to protect her fair skin from the cruel winter sun.

H. C. and Daisy Carried on the Tradition

Leave a comment

Harry and Daisy Keys Phenice in Hathaway, Louisiana.

This is a post about the Phenice family.  My maternal grandmother was Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  She is my connection to the name.  So I thought I would post a photo of her parents.  Actually, the photo was the only thing I knew I wanted to have in the story for tonight.  Everything else followed in its wake.  It’s a photo I only recently acquired from one of my mom’s Phenice cousins.  (Thanks, Marilyn!) 

The photo is very charming because it has my great grandparents standing front and center in front of their home in their later years.  It’s a very symmetric composition, with a window showing on each side and the front door at the center.  The top of the roof is cropped off at the top, and their feet just barely made it into the frame.  It’s a great old photo.  At least the original of it is probably great.  The quality of this one isn’t.  I hope I’ll be able to improve on that with the help of a sharing relative.

The photo must have been taken around the time that H. C. (Harry Clifton Phenice) and Daisy (Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys) had repeated a tradition in my Phenice family line.  They got married on December 27, 1900, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and I’m thinking this photo is from around 1950 or 1951.  They survived to make it through fifty years of marriage.  That’s right, they weren’t the first couple to accomplish this in the Phenice family line, and they weren’t the last.

I’ve mentioned this “tradition” before, but I haven’t given the details.  I think it’s time to do that.  The first Phenice marriage of fifty years or more – that I know of – happened on May 29, 1792, in Hagerstown, Maryland.  I’m pretty positive of the connection, but I’m not sure of the spelling of the name.  Pretty ironic since Grandma was a stickler for correct spelling and it is my superpower.  The document I’ve seen gives the groom’s name as John Archibald Phenicie.  He was born in 1765 to Stephen and Ann Finnacy.  I don’t know much about them.  I don’t know when they were married or how long they lived, so I don’t know if they were part of the tradition.

But John married Margaret Maurer in 1792.  She was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1774.  They had at least eight children that I can attribute to them, including a son named Daniel born in 1809 in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.  John and Margaret both lived until at least 1850, so they were married for 58 years or so.  Margaret shows up in the 1850 Census, and her last name is given as Finnessy.  John and Margaret are Golden Marriage #1.

Daniel also was shown with the last name of Finnessy in the 1850 Census.  I always use the last name Phenice for him, since that is the way his descendants spell the name.  There was another Daniel born around the same time and around the same place (born in 1808 in Bedford County, Pennsylvania), but he goes by the last name Phenicie.  Our Daniel was already married to Susan Jackson by the time of the 1850 Census.  They had gotten married in 1830 or 1831, probably in Somerset County.  Susan had been born (in 1806) and reared in Somerset.

Daniel and Susan did not technically make it to the 50-year mark.  That’s because Susan did not live quite long enough.  She might have made it to the beginning of the 50th year, but the dates are uncertain.  I give it to her because I have a letter that she wrote in 1877, and she was all about the family.  Daniel and Susan are Golden Marriage #2.

Another person that showed up in that 1850 Census was 6-year-old Samuel Charles Phenice.  He would grow up in Mercer, Pennsylvania, and joined the military there to fight for the North in the Civil War in 1864.  He was a witness at the Lincoln Assassination the following year.  The next year he was married to Cathrine Jane Foster, who was four years younger than him.  They had eight children, including Harry Clifton who was born in Butler County, Pennsylvania, in 1874.  A few years later the family moved to Nebraska, which is where Samuel and Kate spent the rest of their marriage.

As some of you may remember, tragedy struck in 1920 on the eve of Christmas Eve.  Kate had a terrible accident where her clothes caught on fire, and she was seriously injured.  She died from the injuries two weeks later.  For some reason I’ve always thought of her as dying young.  But she lived to be 72 and she had been married for 54 years.  She lived about the same amount of time as her mother-in-law Susan had lived, but she had gotten married younger.  Samuel and Kate are Golden Marriage #3.

H. C. and Daisy were my mom’s grandparents.  H. C. was the only grandfather my mom knew.  Her paternal grandfather died before she was born.  She seemed to be very fond of old H. C.  H.C and Daisy had seven children.  Their sons had some long marriages as well.  Sylvan was married to Mary for 56 years.  Henry and Irma were married for 57 years.  Orville was married to Elta for 59 years.  Warren and Wilma were married for just short of 54 years.  H.C. and Daisy are Golden Marriage #4.

At least Myrtle could say she had the longest lasting marriage between herself and her two sisters.  Because if there was a competition between siblings, three of her brothers outdid her.  Myrtle Phenice married Fred Bucklin on March 12, 1930, in Raymond, Louisiana.  They had five children, including my mom, Betty Lou.  They lived most of their lives in Hathaway, Louisiana, but then moved to Jennings for their last few years.  When Grandpa died in 1984, they had been married almost 54 years.  Myrtle and Fred are Golden Marriage #5.

And finally, we get to my parents.  I didn’t realize this post would be so long when I started it.  I was just going to write a short little thing about each of the six couples who set up such a stable family foundation for their children and grandchildren.  But I didn’t want to leave anyone out.  Especially my parents.  Betty Lou Bucklin married Bob Landry on November 1, 1952, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I’m not sure about all of the previous marriage, but I can safely say that my parents had a happy marriage that lasted for 64 years.  It was the longest of all the marriages I mentioned, and they definitely were happy with each other.  Betty and Bob are Golden Marriage #6.

The tradition continues…

Bobbie and Siblings Circa 1930

Leave a comment

I came across this photo tonight and I just had to share it.  I didn’t remember seeing it before, but it is in a folder that I look through from time to time.  Tonight it really stood out to me, so I cleaned it up a bit.  It took me way too long.  I think my hand has a cramp in it from all of the cleanup.  It had lots of fine scratch lines all over it.  I had to make sure the faces were clear of blemishes.  Then I didn’t want so many scratches in the background either.  Like I said, it took way too long.

The Landry children of Lake Charles, Louisiana, around 1930

But doesn’t it look amazing?!  Maybe not amazing, but it is definitely a charming photo from almost a hundred years ago.  It’s a photo of my dad with his older siblings from around 1930.  My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and he was born on January 31, 1929, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  He was known as Bobbie back then to his family.  They called him that the rest of his life.

The parents of these children were Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry and Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  Rob was born and grew up in Westlake, Louisiana, and Erie was born and grew up in Crescent, Louisiana, which is around Plaquemine, Louisiana.  So how did they meet?  They were related, of course.  Erie’s mom Marie Therese Landry Patureau was the first cousin of Rob.  Cousins marrying cousins was way more common than it is now.  They definitely didn’t have the same aversion to it that people have now.

So Rob and Erie got married November 12, 1921, in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is where the Patureau family was living at the time.  But Rob and Erie went to live in Lake Charles, just across the lake from Westlake.  The first child they had was Marie Therese who was born in 1923.  That’s Marie on the far right of the photo.  The second born was Alcide Joseph and he was born in 1924.  A. J. is the one standing directly behind my dad, who you see in the front of the photo.  Actually, I think A. J. is sitting down next to the other two siblings.

When I was working on the photo, I zoomed in quite a bit to work on all the fine scratches on it.  Did I tell you that it took a long time?  Yes, I definitely did.  When I got to one little patch, I thought I was looking at some trellis under the porch or whatever it is they are sitting on.  I zoomed back out and realized that what I had seen were the plaid stockings that A. J. was wearing!  He’s got on an interesting outfit.  Moving along in the order of birth, we come to Hubert Joseph who was born in 1925.  That’s Hubert looking all cool on the far left of the photo.  I’m pretty sure this was before he learned how to play the harmonica. 

The fourth child of Rob and Erie came in 1927.  Germaine Erie was named after her mother but went by her first name.  I was thinking this photo might have come from her by way of the Secret Collection – so many of them do – but it actually came from an envelope of negatives that I discovered a few years ago.  My dad must have gotten them from his mom many years ago.  And now you can see it in all of its glory.  There may be a few little scratches left, but I got rid of most of the serious ones.  I think it was worth it.

Betty Lou in 1963

Leave a comment

Betty Lou Bucklin Landry on July 3, 1963, in Jennings, Louisiana.

I can’t believe I’ve never used this photo of my mom before in all of my family history posts I have written.  It’s one of my favorite photos of her.  It is so 1960s.  The bright red colors in the photo show up so saturated in the photos from that time.  And with this photo, it really makes it pop.  Her bright red lipstick.  Her red plaid flannel culottes. The red striped potholder.  Even the handy red ice crusher.  It all just pops.

The year was 1963.  The day was July 5.  See?  You can see the calendar on the wall.  I’m pretty sure that was a calendar that we would get every year from the Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic church in Jennings, Louisiana.  We had moved to Jennings from Lake Charles less than a year earlier.  My younger sister Jamie was born in Lake Charles, and July 5, 1963, was her first birthday. 

If you casually look at the calendar, you might think that July 5th was on a Wednesday that year, but you would be wrong.  It hasn’t been flipped over to July yet.  How could my mom let that happen?  Just because she had six children under the age of ten didn’t mean she could let things escape her notice!  I’m sure it was the least of her worries that day.  She had a house full of people.  Her sisters and their families were coming over to visit.

The day of the week was actually Friday.  It was probably the fourth of July weekend, so that’s why everyone was able to come.  Plus it was time for summer vacation.  Of course, I’m taking the word of whoever wrote the date on the back of this old photo.  I know all of the cousins at the time were there, because there are photos to prove that.  I don’t see a photo of a birthday cake for Jamie, but maybe I didn’t get that photo.  There might be proof.  But like the calendar, the fifth and sixth kids of the family didn’t get as much undivided attention as the earlier kids.  We don’t have as many photos of us as the others.  Of course, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

I like seeing all the little details in this photo.  Like the potholders and that oh so familiar red ice crusher.  That thing lasted for years.  So did that pot that she’s cooking the shrimp creole in.  Again, I think my mom wrote that on the back of the photo.  Yes, she did.  I just checked the original that is sitting on my shelf across the way.  She also mentions that it was the old Dupuy place.  In another blurb she wrote that it was the Dupre place.  I’m thinking that Dupre might have been correct.  For years I thought we rented it from a Mr. Sonnier.  That’s the name of the man that came by to fix things, or collect rent, or do businessy things.  I was just a kid less than three years old.  What did I know about such things?  

We rented that old place for two years when we first moved to Jennings.  It was kinda in the country and it had a big barn in the back.  We had a dog, cats, cows, and horses.  I know the dog was ours.  Her name was Princess and there are lots of photos of her.  The cats were ours.  They were outside cats.  I always thought that they found food on their own in the barn and such places.  But tonight, I noticed the Purina Cat Chow on the top of the cabinets in this photo.  I also know that the horses were ours.  Another thing I was corrected about later in life.  I don’t know if the cows belonged to us or not.  Probably not, but Princess was good about rounding them up if they ever got loose.

The Bucklin cousins in 1963

Obviously, that first photo was taken in the kitchen in the house.  I don’t know how my mom could possibly have made enough shrimp creole for all of the people that we see in the photo of all the cousins.  Maybe they brought their own food to share.  Maybe Grandma Myrtle and Grandpa Fred brought some, too.  Though they do not show up in any of the photos.  It seems like they would have been there.  They only lived ten minutes away in Hathaway.

But look, there’s Rhonda, Larry and Rob, Toni holding Glen, Jodie holding Jamie, Lynn, Karen, and Paul.  And there are more on the floor!  Kevin, Al, Van (me), Keith, and Brent all look so painstankling cute.  Wouldn’t you say so?

Ok, they were all cute.  And so was my mom.  That’s what this post is all about.

A Big Landry Family Reunion

Leave a comment

1991 get together of Landry family members

I posted a video of our family singing last week.  The previous post was a post about the Landry side of my family.  Since my family name is Landry, it would seem that last week was another Landry post.  But technically it wasn’t.  Because my mom was a Bucklin and we are just as much Bucklin as Landry.  Plus in the video, a brother of each of my parents showed up.  But to break the Landry-Bucklin tie, my mom’s brother Austin had one of his granddaughters with him.  Little Violet broke the tie, making it a Bucklin post after all.  That clears the way to post another Landry-related story this week.

I want to make a Landry post because of a comment on Facebook about the video.  A distant Landry cousin suggested that I bring my guitar to the big Landry Family Reunion during the Great Acadian Awakening event coming up next month.  It is also known as the Grand Reveil Acadien and it is held every few years in southern Louisiana.  This year it is from Oct. 11-19 and it has events in Lafayette, Broussard, St. Martinville, Abbeville, Loreauville, and more.  There are grand ceremonies, workshops, presentations, masses in French, French Tables, music, food, and more.  Part of that more is a big Landry Reunion on October 16 from 5:00-9:00PM in Lafayette.   More information can be found at louisiane-acadie.com.   Anyone with the Landry name in their family tree is invited to attend the reunion.  

Since I was writing about Landry family members getting together, I thought it would be appropriate to use these photos from 1991.  I have been looking at them a while and thinking it was time to use them in one of my posts.  Especially since they include some Landry family members getting together.  It wasn’t a family reunion, though.  I think it was a gathering of a few cousins who were interested in family history.  I have used information from three of them pretty extensively in my posts about the Landry family.

Of course, most of that information came from my dad. In case you don’t know him, Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. is the man shown on the far left of the first photo.  He spent about forty years tracing his lines back to the founders of Acadie.  At the time of the photo, he was only 62 and had spent about 20 years researching.  I have all of his research and collected photos that he had.  I think he got some of them from these cousins.  Next to my dad is Bernadine Haydell Landry, the wife of Tommy Landry.  Landry was her married name.  

In the middle of the photo is Alice Naomi “Sis” Landry Vincent.  She was my dad’s first cousin.  Daddy’s father was Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. and Sis’s father was Louis Joseph Peter Landry.  Rob and Louis were the sons of Simon Alcide Landry and Marie Celeste Leveque Landry.  Sis collected a lot of old Landry photos and Daddy made a video of her around the time of this photo.  In the video she talked about the history of their shared Landry family.  It has so much great family information about the Landrys of that generation.  Even though she is Daddy’s first cousin, she was twenty years older than him.  That’s because Rob (my Pee Paw) was the baby of the family.  In 1991, Sis was my dad’s only paternal first cousin that was still alive.  She died in 1996.  I don’t remember ever meeting her.  I’m sure she was at some family get togethers I went to.  

The man wearing the tie is Tommy Landry, the husband of Bernadine.  Our connection to Tommy is through my grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  Erie was known to us grandchildren as Mee Maw.  Tommy and Erie were first cousins because Erie’s mother (Marie Therese Landry Patureau) was the sister of Tommy’s father (Thomas Belisaire Landry).  Therese and Thomas were the children of Trasimond Landry and Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin.  Tommy did a lot of research about his family and one of the books that he put together was about Trasimond Landry.  I refer to that book all of the time.  He lived here in Baton Rouge, and I remember meeting him once.  It was before my interest in family history, so I didn’t thank him for writing that wonderful book of family information.  He died in 2005.

1991 photo of Landry family members

The woman on the far right is Myrtle “Myrt” Amelie Landry Cazes.  She was also a grandchild of Trasimond and Belite, so therefore a first cousin of Tommy and my grandmother Erie.  She was also the mother of Lew Cazes, who can be seen in the red shirt in the second photo. 

In Tommy’s book, he says that Lew had the biggest collection of information or memorabilia about Trasimond Landry.  Or was that Thomas Richey who said it in his book about Trasimond?  Somebody said it and I believed it.  I’ve gotten together with some of Myrt and Lew’s family, and they’ve shared some great photos with me, including these two.

But I don’t believe everything Tommy says in his book.  He has a photo of himself with Sis and Myrt.  Above the photo it says that they are the grandchildren of Trasimond Landry.  But Sis is not a granddaughter of Trasimond.  She is a granddaughter of Belite Bujol and Belite’s second husband Maglorie Babin.  Sis is a half-first cousin to Tommy and Myrt.  But she also has a Landry connection.  Belite and Magloire’s daughter Clemence Babin was married to Louis Landry.  They are Sis’s parents.  Louis was the son of Alcide Landry, who was the younger brother of Trasimond.  So, Sis is also a second cousin to Tommy and Myrt.  She is also a half first cousin once removed to my dad.

I tried to make that as clear as I could, but when I got to that last sentence, I realized I had failed in the attempt.  Whether it is accurate or not is beside the point.  When I have photos of my dad with his cousins, it gets complicated quickly.  I didn’t even talk about the fact that Marie Celeste Leveque’s mother was a Landry also.  That adds more connections to these people.  Because Belite’s mother and Marie Celeste’s mother were Landry sisters.  So, if you are related to these people, you may want to attend that Landry family reunion.

Jada – Looking Back 10 Years

Leave a comment

Last week I was looking for old recordings of our family band from back in the 70s and 80s.  I thought I had some files on my computer or some old CDs.  I didn’t find any on my computer, but I did find an old CD.  But it wouldn’t play on anything that I have.  It’s an old recordable CD, so that may be the issue.  When those things came out, we thought they’d be good forever!  I guess that is not the case.

Today when I first started to consider a topic for tonight’s post, I remembered something.  I do have a recording of our family singing – at least some of them.  It’s a recording of my parents, my sisters Jamie and Karen, and me singing and playing in Lake Charles when we were making arrangements for my parents to move into assisted living.  Then it donged on me – that was 10 years ago.  A ten-year anniversary is sufficient for making a Throwback Thursday.

I would have liked a recording of the whole family, but I’m not even sure we have that.  When I think of the family band, I think of the years that we played at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana, from 1976 to 1981.  And the name we performed under was – drumroll please – The Landry Family Band.  When we started, the oldest three kids – Jodie, Rob, and Karen – were in college, while the younger three – Al, Van (myself), and Jamie – were in high school.  That first year of performing – the 1976-1977 school year – was the only time that three of us were in high school at the same time. 

Jodie had gotten married to her first husband in 1973, and by this time they had moved to Texas A&M.  Rob started a Louisiana Tech in 1973, so he was away for most of the time.  They didn’t play at Shakey’s as much as the rest of us.  Karen went to McNeese in Lake Charles and actually got a job at Shakey’s, so she was there a lot.  During the first year, we played Wednesday through Saturday nights.  I don’t know how we did that with three of us in high school.

After the first year, Al graduated and he went to Tech as well, which meant he wasn’t at Shakey’s as much as Karen, Jamie, and me.  But when he was there, we got to play some of the Dixieland songs.  Daddy had a book that had arrangements for Dixieland songs to be played by the trumpet, clarinet, and trombone.  Those are the instruments that Al, Karen, and I played, respectively.  There were a few of the songs that we played regularly.  I can’t remember the names of all of those tunes, but one of my favorites was Bluin’ the Blues.  It was kind of jazzy, and it was a fun arrangement for all of us.

The one we did the most, though, had to have been Jada.  “Jada! Jada! Jada, Jada, Jean Jean Jean.”  Those were the words that I always sang.  But I looked up the words online tonight and realized that I’ve said them wrong all these years!!  It’s only been 50 years!  The correct lyrics are, “Ja-Da, Ja-Da. Ja-Da Ja-Da jing jing jing.”  When I posted this video 10 years ago, someone made the comment, “Jing jing jing.”  I didn’t think he knew the song, so I thought he just typed what he thought he heard.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Oh, well.  I still think I will sing “Jean Jean Jean” in honor of Karen, whose middle name was Jean.

When we recorded the song 10 years ago, we didn’t have all of our musical instruments.  It was Landry Family Band Lite.  So Daddy had to improvise.  He didn’t let us stop with just one quick verse.  He started us up again and accompanied us with his scat version of the trombone part of the arrangement.  I find it very charming.

1 2 3 4 5 6 … 58