Category: Bucklin

9th grade class at Hathaway High School in 1947 included my mother, Betty Lou Bucklin. Hathaway, Louisiana.

Hathaway High School.  My mom’s alma mater.  The home of the Hornets.  I suppose that since this is a photo of my mom’s ninth grade class, this is the year that she was officially in high school.  I’ve always heard the school called Hathaway High School, even though it had grades 1 thru 12.  At least that’s the way my mom always explained it to me.  It might have changed since then.  It was a long time ago.

In fact, it was in 1947.  At least that’s what the little chalk board says.  Actually it says that this was the photo of the 9th grade class at Hathaway for the school year ’47 + ’48.  From what I can remember about school activities, I seem to recall that the school photos were taken at closer to the beginning of the school year.  So I would think that the photo was taken in the fall of 1947.

Some of you already know that my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and you’ve already picked her out from the photo.  But others are not so fortunate to be familiar with my dear, sweet mother.  Fourteen-year-old Betty Lou is the second one from the right in the middle row.  She has a nice, big smile on her face.  It’s the first school photo that she is smiling like this.  In previous years she was either not smiling at all or just smiling with a grin.  Part of that could be that she was standing next to her friends.  The girl on the left of her was her best friend Lavelle Krumnow.  On the right of her is Lela Mae Jester, another good friend.  Sitting in front of her was Carol Bryan.  She was a friend, and she also was our next-door neighbor when we moved to Lucy Street in Jennings in 1964.

My mom didn’t name everyone in this photo like she did in some of her other photos, so I’m not going to try and figure them all out.  Not that I’d be able to do that if I tried.  There are probably a few Gary family members and some Cajun names as well.  I don’t know who the teacher is either.  If someone knows it, I’d appreciate the information.  Irregardless, I’m sure you are enjoying this old sepia-tone photo that includes my precious mother in her youth.

The Fred D. and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin family in 1949 in Hathaway, Louisiana

This is a photo of my mom and her siblings in 1949.  I’ve posted a photo of the same group from 1948.  Then there is one from 1950 that I’ve shared, and it has both of their parents in the photo as well.  These photos don’t exactly seem like formal portraits, because they look to be taken in my grandparents’ home at the time.  Plus, in this one it looks like my mom was just wearing a t-shirt and she added a scarf around her neck to dress up her appearance a bit.

From that bit of information, you can tell that my mom is the girl on the right in this photo.  Her name was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was the second child of Fred D. Bucklin and Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  She was born on May 20, 1933, in Hathaway, Louisiana.  Her older sister Sylvia was born in March of 1931.  You can see her sitting in the front on the left with the black dress. 

Alma was the next one born, though she looks like she is shorter than her younger sister Loris.  That didn’t stop her from being a really good basketball player.  The family was big into basketball.   Grandpa and Grandma both played when they were younger.  Mama always talked about working on Alma’s game by guarding her really hard when they practiced.  With height comes long arms and mom knew how to use them for blocking basketball shots.  So Alma learned to deal with this and one of the things she perfected was a hook shot that mom said was the best around.  She was proud to help her younger sister develop that.

Betty Lou Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, in 1949.

Loris was the youngest of the sisters, and we can thank her for sharing the group photo with me.  I had never seen it before she sent it to me in June.  Mom didn’t have a copy of it, but she did have this individual photo of herself taken the same day.  I’m kinda surprised that I’ve never shared this photo before.  I thought about waiting to share it as a post on its own, but the story calls for it to be shown now.

This was probably one of my mom’s favorite photos of herself.  She had an enlargement of it in her photo album.  Even though she’s smiling better in the group photo, this pose is better.  I didn’t realize she was just wearing a t-shirt until I saw the group photo.  The scarf fooled me into thinking she was all dressed up!  She looks older than 16 years old.  She kept this look for most of her life.  Most people find her easy to recognize in photos whether it was taken when she was three or when she was an elderly woman.

I can’t finish this post without identifying my mom’s brother Austin in that first photo.  He was the only boy with four older sisters.  He was five years younger than Loris, so there was an age gap that seems larger when you’re a kid growing up.  Fortunately for him, there were several male cousins who lived nearby.

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!  

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?

My mom’s birthday is coming up soon, so I’ve been thinking about her a bit more than usual.  It’s also that time of year when high school graduations occur.  In fact, tomorrow will be the 45th anniversary of my high school graduation.  Wow!  That’s a big number!  And I was calling myself an old fart when I wrote about my 40th year anniversary.  The years just keep flying by.  

Betty Lou Bucklin graduated from Hathaway High School in 1951. Go Hornets!

When I thought about what I’d write tonight, I decided it would be about my mom.  I don’t have any birthday photos of her when she was younger, but I do have her high school graduation photo.  So that’s what I decided to post today.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, in 1933 to Fred and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  She was the second of five children.  When growing up in Hathaway, she had several cousins living nearby from both sides of her family.  

It was a small community, so when they went to school, it was the same school for twelve years.  Hathaway High School was a large brick building back then and the school mascot was the Hornet.  It wasn’t always like that.  My grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin lived in Hathaway and went to several schools.  Her first two years of high school were at Hathaway School.  Then she spent a year going to Kinder and her final year at Jennings High School finished in 1925.  That must have been before they built Hathaway High School.

Hathaway High School graduating class of 1951.

And my mom did go to school for twelve years.  It changed a year or so before she graduated.  Previous years only went for eleven grades.  I’ve seen photos of previous grades and the class started out with more students.  I guess that’s the way it always is.  By the time her class made it to graduation, there were only fifteen of them left.  Like I said, it was a small community.  My mom was not the valedictorian, but she was the salutatorian.  The only reason I know that is because Grandma would tell people from time to time that Betty Lou had been the valedictorian.  And Mama would be quick to correct her by saying that she had been the salutatorian.  She didn’t want people believing something incorrect about her. 

So my mom graduated from high school 73 years ago.  And she shows up right in the middle of their high school graduation photo.  That’s because she was the most important, even if she wasn’t the valedictorian!  Of course, that’s my humble opinion.  Let me tell you who everyone is.  On the top row from left to right are James LeJeune, Lela Mae Jester, Edmond Gary, T. J. Tramel, and Lenus LeBlanc.  The middle row includes Clement Miller, LaVelle Krumnow, Betty Lou Bucklin, Lee James Clement, and Claribel Brown.  The front row consists of Doris Gotreaux, Arvis Gary, Carol Bryan, Dot Gary, and Julia Gary.

My would have been turning 91 this coming Monday.  Her classmates were of the same general age.  I think a few of them are still around.  I really don’t know.  I’ll be thinking of my mom on Monday…and most every day.

At Thanksgiving I wrote a post about some of my Bucklin family’s early American Immigrants.  They are part of a group of immigrants that came to America in the early to mid 1600s for religious freedom.  Some people have called it the Puritan Great Migration and it includes people who immigrated from 1621-1640.  I talked about the family names of Bucklin, Bosworth, Yeales, Whipple, Allen, and Frye.  As I was writing it, I realized that there were more immigrants in those lines than I had thought.  I wrote the post, but figured I’d end up doing a follow-up to that.

I ended up doing a spreadsheet to list all of the different family lines and keep track of them.  I’m not a spreadsheet fanatic, but I do use them from time to time.  With all of the names that I come across in my research, it might be more helpful to use them more often.  But that would be too much like work.  I rely on my tree-building software to keep track of most of it.  Those are indispensable.  I can just add as many details as I want.  

So while looking into the immigrants in my family, I came across an interesting group.  That group is the group of ancestors of Sarah Smith, my 7x great grandmother who lived her life in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  She was born there in 1670.  She married Jathniel Peck there in 1688.  She had all of her twelve children there from 1689 to 1712.  She died there in 1717.  Kinda sad that she died at only 46 years of age when her youngest child was only five years old.  I’ve mentioned Sarah in a previous post – not because she had a dozen children, but because of her connection to the Bucklin family.

Sarah was not an immigrant, but her family was.  Her father was Daniel Smith and he was born in 1634 in Hingham, England.  His parents were Henry Smith (1593-1647) and Judith Ray (1596-1650).  In 1638 Henry and Judith decided to bring their five children, three men servants, and two maid servants to the New World.  They arrived on the Diligent and originally settled in Hingham, Massachusetts.  In 1643 they moved to Rehoboth and spent the rest of their lives there.

Daniel grew up and married Esther Chickering.  Esther’s family immigrated earlier than Daniel’s and she was born in 1643, so she wasn’t an immigrant.  She was born in Dedham, Massachusetts.  Her parents were Francis Chickering (1606-1658) and Anne Fiske (1610-1649).  They were from Suffolk, England.  They were married around 1630 and had one child by the year 1637, which is the year that they immigrated.  Both Francis and Anne had widowed mothers.  Francis’s mother was Mary Austin Chickering.  Anne’s mother was Anne Lawter Fiske.  (Her husband John Fiske had been her second cousin.)  So when Francis and Anne decided to head off to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with their young daughter, both of their mothers decided to join them on their journey.

This was a great undertaking back then.  These were new settlements with none of the luxuries that we have become accustomed to.  You know, luxuries like running water, sewerage management, electricity, and air conditioning.  So the decision to go was not taken lightly.  I’m sure they had high hopes, though.  They had a strong belief that things would be better in this new place they were relocating to.  It would have been exciting to reach the shores of America after their long journey.  But a sad occurrence happened along the way.  The oldest member of the group – Anne Lawter Fiske – died during the voyage.  She was only 52 years old at the time.  She was likely buried at sea.

The rest of the family settled in Dedham, Massachusetts, which is where Esther Chickering was born.  Even though her family lived in Dedham, she somehow met Daniel Smith.  They were married in Rehoboth in 1659.  As I said earlier, their daughter was Sarah Smith, who married Jathniel Peck.  They had a son named Jathniel, Jr.  He was the father of Mary Peck, who married to James Bucklin (1709-1780).  Oh, no!  We’re still back in the 1700s and I want to bring this to the present.  Let me get going with a bunch of begetting.  James (1709) begat John Bucklin (1747-1795).  John (1747) begat John Bucklin (1792-1850).  John (1792) begat James Bucklin (1821-1890).  James begat Louis Charles Bucklin (1873-1927).  Louis begat Fred Bucklin (1907-1984).  Fred begat Betty Lou Bucklin, who was my mom.

Whew!  There, it’s done.  That’s my connection to the Smith and Chickering immigrants.

Family tree of my 7x great grandmother Sarah Smith