Category: Bucklin

I was originally going to call this post “The Bucklin Twins,” but I realized that Joseph had already written a post with that name.  Then I was going to add “Circa 1927” at the end of it.  But since Great Grandma Addie had two sets of twins, I thought I’d use the gender modifier.  The Bucklin twins in question are my maternal grandfather Fred Bucklin and his identical twin Clarence.  I got this photo from Clarence’s daughter Carla a few years ago.  Don’t you just love it?

I do.  There’s a lot going on in the photo.  I’m thinking that it might be a picnic or camp out and they are getting ready to cook their meal.  The guy on the left looks like he is tending to a campfire.  I’m not sure who he is, but he kinda reminds me of some of my grandmother’s (Myrtle Phenice Bucklin) brothers.  There were lots of friendships between the seven Bucklin brothers and  five Phenice brothers. 

The guy sitting at the front wheel of the truck looks like it is one of the Bucklin twins.  I’m still not able to tell them apart.  I wasn’t the only one.  School teachers would try to keep them identified with a blue and red ribbon, but they would always switch with each other to fool them.  My mom used to say that she had been fooled a few times when she was a kid.  Anyway, the brother in front looks he may have been roasting a marshmallow or something on a branch.

The guy next to him looks like the other twin.  He’s getting a pot of something ready to cook on the fire.  I can’t make out exactly what he is doing.  What makes me think it might be a picnic is the big picnic basket in the middle of the truck bed.  Not really!  It looks like it’s just a big cardboard box.  Maybe it was used as a picnic basket.  Maybe it wasn’t.  I don’t know the identities of the other two guys on the back end of the truck.  They could be friends, or they could be more Phenice or Bucklin brothers.  It looks like kinda like they could be eating something, but even more so it looks like they are smoking pipes.

What I like about these photos from back in this time is that it shows the brothers before the Big Rift.  Nobody knows (or is willing to tell me) what the Big Rift was.  Whatever it was, it kept the twins from being social with each other for the rest of their lives.  And they lived right down the road from each other!  When I would ask my mom why they didn’t get along, she would say that Grandpa would get upset when someone would show up at his brother’s nursery (they were both plant nurserymen!) thinking it was my grandfather’s.  He claimed his brother wouldn’t correct the person and take his business.  But this explanation only made sense if they were already not getting along.  Before the Big Rift, they had a nursery business together.

It’s odd how this Big Rift carried on after both of the brothers died.  When I started interacting with my cousin Carla a few years ago online, I felt like I was crossing a line that I wasn’t supposed to.  For a rift that no one knows what started!  I didn’t let it stop me, though.   It’s a shame the brothers weren’t able to cross that line back to the way it was, though they may have felt they had good reasons.  I still enjoy seeing these old photos of when they enjoyed each other’s company, whether they were camping or having a picnic with friends.

Earlier this year I wrote a post titled “James Bucklin and His Forebears.”  In that post I wrote about the ancestors of my great great grandfather (and my own, of course) James Bucklin (1821-1890).  One of those couples was a Bucklin and a Peck.  That would have been James Bucklin’s great grandparents (my 5x great grandparents) James Bucklin (1709-1780) and Mary Peck (1721-1770).   In that other post I followed the Bucklin line back a few generations.  This time I’ll look back along the Peck line, mainly because I found an old newspaper article about her great great grandfather Joseph Peck.

We’ll start with Mary’s parents Jathniel Peck, Jr. and Damaris Bowen.  Those are some unique names – at least compared to the Bucklin line that had Marys, Josephs, James, and Sarahs.  Of course you know that the Jathniel name is repeated – he’s a junior!  Jathniel Sr. was married to Sarah Smith.  Uh, oh!  I spoke too soon.  There’s another Sarah and with the most common of names – Smith.  At least her mother had an interesting name – Esther Chickering.  Going back to the Pecks, we have Jathniel Sr.’s parents Joseph Peck, Jr. and Hannah Playford.

All of these generations lived in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  The first generation that lived there was Joseph Jr. and Hannah.  Hannah actually died in Seekonk, Rhode Island.  If you read the article, you’ll see that Seekonk was part of the original Rehoboth.  Now Joseph Jr. is not the Joseph Peck I talked about at first.  If you were paying attention, you would know that Joseph Peck, Jr. was the great grandfather of Mary Peck.  Joseph Peck Jr. was the son of – drumroll, please – Joseph Peck Sr.  I suppose you saw that coming. 

Joseph Sr. was baptized on April 30, 1587, in the Beccles Church shown in the newspaper article.  Joseph grew up in Beccles, which is in Norfolk, England.  He married Rebecca Clark in 1617 in Hingham, England, and they had five children by the year 1635. Joseph and his family were Puritans, and his brother Robert was the pastor of their church in Hingham.  The Puritans were being persecuted in England at the time, so they decided to escape to America.   It looks like Rebecca died in 1637 before they left for the New World.  Their group arrived in North America on the Diligent in 1638.   The settlement that they founded was called Hingham, Massachusetts.

Joseph Sr. came to America with three sons and a daughter, as well as two men servants and three maid servants.  It looks like he was pretty well off, and the article talks about him being one of the most influential men of  Old Rehoboth.  It’s interesting to find information about ancestors from the early history of our country.  Since he was involved with such an historic time and was so prominent, there is a good bit of information about him.  So if you ever want to find out more about him, there is information to be found.

This is Part 2 of a post that I wrote two years ago.  I wrote that one because I had acquired a photo of my great grandfather’s (Louis Charles Bucklin’s) burial at Raymond Methodist Cemetery in Raymond, Louisiana.  It also showed the original look of his father James A. Bucklin’s grave.  In the selfie I took with that grave this past weekend, there is no obelisk sitting on top of the base.

But that’s not why I was there this weekend.  I was attending the funeral of my mom’s first cousin Ray Bucklin.  Besides being family, he and I shared an interest in genealogy and family history.  I suppose that’s why he was buried at this cemetery.  Even though he had lived in Florida for many years, he was buried at the old family grave site.  He is probably the last of four generations of Bucklins to be buried at that graveyard.

There may be other relatives buried in that graveyard in the future, but it’s likely that he will be the last family member with the Bucklin last name buried there.  His father Herbert Bucklin is buried there, as is his grandfather Louis Charles Bucklin (our common ancestor).  Louis’s father James A. Bucklin was the first Bucklin family member buried there.  He brought his family down to Louisiana in 1884 from Massachusetts.

James Bucklin actually had three sons, but only his son Louis has descendants at this point.  Louis had nine sons, but only three of them had a son.  Herbert was the father of Ray and Ray did not have any children.  Robert, Sr. had a son named Robert, Jr.  He had a daughter, so the Bucklin name did not carry on.  My grandfather Fred had a son.  Austin is still with us and he has grandsons with the Bucklin name, but they are not connected to the Raymond area.

So the family that came to pay respects to Ray are like me.  We’re part of the Bucklin family, but we don’t have the last name Bucklin.  We took a photo at the grave site and that is the picture I’m sharing today.  I warned them beforehand, so I guess that means that I have their permission to do so. 

I’ll name people by how they connect to the children of our common ancestor Louis C. Bucklin.  In the front row is the surviving family of Herbert Bucklin.  From the left is his son-in-law Joseph Connors III, the husband of Louise Bucklin Connors.  She is sitting next to him.  Next to her are their sons Joseph and John Connors. 

On the back row are the cousins.  First up on the left is me, Van Landry.  I am the son of Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and the grandson of Fred Bucklin.  Next is Kristi Jackson Davidson.  She is the daughter of Jeannette Bucklin Jackson and the granddaughter of Roy Bucklin.  To the right of her is Charles Bruchhaus, son of Harley Bruchhaus and grandson of Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  Directly behind Louise is Carol Taylor Fraser.  She is the daugther of Helen Bucklin Taylor and the granddaughter of Ralph Bucklin. 

The next four people are first cousins of Ray and Louise.  First we have a female cousin on the Koll side of the family.  Sorry, I can’t remember her name even though she nicely introduced herself.  Second is Doris Bucklin Lawson.  She is the younger daughter of Roy Bucklin.  That would make her Kristi’s aunt.  Third is a male cousin on the Koll side of the family.  Again, I can’t remember his name.  And fourth is Arlene Keys Ware.  She is the daughter of Edna Bucklin Keys.  She is related to my mom on both sides of the family through the Bucklin and Keys families.  The person on the far right in the back is Lauren Bruchhaus Fruge (not Foley!  I said it incorrectly a few times.  Sorry!)  She is the daughter of Laurence Bruchhaus and the granddaughter of Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  That would make her Charles’s first cousin.

It was good getting together with cousins to remember Ray.    Some of my mom’s Phenice first cousins were at the Methodist Church Annex after the grave site visit because they were helping to prepare the food for lunch afterward.  It was good to see them, also.  With this group of cousins, the common family background and DNA was noticeable.  Certain phrases, smiles, and mannerisms among them reminded me of my mom.  She was a part of all of our lives.

Since today is Veteran’s day, I would like to thank all of those who have served our country in the military.  Ray Bucklin was one of those.  He served in the Air Force.   Hat’s off to him.

Here is a photo of my mom from 1940.  It is the second grade school photo from the 1940-41 school year when Betty Lou Bucklin was a student at Hathaway High School.  Was it called Hathaway High School even though you were going there in the second grade?  That just sounds weird.  But I’ve never heard it called anything but Hathaway High School.

I like this photo of her, but I always wonder why she wasn’t smiling.  She was halfway smiling in her first grade photo.  Now that I say that, I realize the same thing about my own first and second grade photos.  I was smiling in the first grade and not in the second.  I never really wondered why I wasn’t smiling, even though I have no idea why.  Is second grade a difficult year for people?  But then again, my mom wasn’t smiling in her photos for the next few school years .  Lately I haven’t minded, because they work much better for animated photos that freak people out.

My mom was a blond back then, as were her younger sisters.  I think she got that from the Hine line of her family.  Her father was Fred Bucklin.  Fred was the son of Addie May Hine.  The photos of Grandpa when he was a child showed that he had the blond hair as a child also.  He would have been called towheaded. Like most towheaded children, their hair darkens as they get older.  In other photos that I’ve posted, you can see that the trait was common with his Hine cousins as well.

When you look at old photos of Addie, you can see that her brothers had light hair as children and it got darker as they got older.  So I say that the trait has been passed down by the Hine line of the family.  But I guess it might have come from the Stanbrough side.  Addie’s parents were George Hine and Sue Stanbrough.  I only have photos of them as adults and I don’t have many photos of their siblings.  But I still tend to think that the trait came from our German Hine line.

Even though her hair got darker as she got older, my mom said that her hair would lighten when she would be out in the sun.  She had brown eyes, but they weren’t dark brown.  They were light brown and when she had highlights in her hair from the sun, people used to tell her that she had golden eyes.  I have to admit that I did edit this photo and one of the things I did was to lighten her eyes.  They looked so much darker than what I remember her eyes looking like.  So I think it reflects what she really looked like back then.  I hope you like it.

Kat and the Hat

That’s right.  Today I’m writing a happy story about Joe Bucklin.   Joe was the brother of my great grandfather Louis Charles Bucklin.  Two of Louis’s sons were Fred and Roy Bucklin.  Fred had a daughter named Betty Lou, who was born on May 20th.  Roy had a daughter named Jeannette, who was also born on May 20th.  My mom was Betty Lou and she was several years older than Jeannette, who was the mother of Kristi.

Kristi is the reason for this happy story of Joe Bucklin.  She has a friend – a friend named Kat – and Kat had a hat.  It wasn’t just any old hat.  Well, it was an old hat.  It was a very old hat.  And Kat had the hat, but she didn’t remember how she came across the hat.  The hat was interesting, because it had a name in the hat that reminded Kat of Kristi.  She knew that Kristi’s mother was a Bucklin.  Likewise, the name in the hat of the friend whose name was Kat was that.

What am I doing?  This story’s getting twisty, so let’s get back to Kristi.  Kristi heard from Kat about the hat.  She was wondering if she knew her history to possibly solve this mystery.  She wondered if Kristi knew who J. C. Bucklin was and if she had ever seen the hat.  Kristi didn’t have a clue, so she asked the son of Betty Lou.

I recognized the name and the hat immediately.  I was so excited to see it.  Of course it was Joseph C. Bucklin!  He always looked so dapper in that old hat.  Of course, it wasn’t an old hat when Joe wore it.  It was probably very stylish.  He and his brother Edd had a clothing store in downtown Jennings, Louisiana, in the early 1900s called Bucklin Bros.  One of the things that he sold in the store was Stetson hats.  You can see that listed in this article from 1912 in the Jennings newspaper.

I was excited to find this photo of the interior of Bucklin Bros. store from over 100 years ago.  I had seen a version of it previously and all it showed was a big blob of black.  This is much better.  There are lots of shelves and display cases for those Bucklin brothers to display their merchandise.  Uncle Joe and Uncle Edd had it going on for a while there.  And to think that a piece of that history has survived until now.

I wish I knew the story of the hat.  And how Kat found the hat.  Joe moved from Jennings a few years later with his third wife.  She had been a milliner.  How about that?  She sold women’s hats.  They moved to Florida in 1915.  I found another newspaper article that published a letter he wrote that said he had settled in his new home on January 11th of that year.  I wonder how that hat made its way back to the Jennings area?  It wasn’t a family member that had possession of it all those years.

It was a woman named Kat that had the hat.  As a matter of fact, I’ve told you that.  You also know that it belonged to Joe,  an uncle of mine, to Lou he was Bro.  But now that hat has a new place to be:  Kristi is posting a package for me!

 

 

 

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I’ve previously written two sad stories about Joe Bucklin.  There are lots of tragedies in his life and those stories are not as lighthearted as this one is.

A Very Sad Story

The Sad History Surrounding Joe Bucklin

I don’t know what to write about these photos.  I just like them a lot.  I didn’t realize that I was repeating a recent theme until I was well into editing these photos.  It was just this month that I wrote about my Landry grandfather playing a sport and now I’m talking about my Bucklin grandfather doing the same thing.  Well, not quite the same.  Pee Paw Landry was a baseball player and Grandpa Bucklin played basketball.  While Pee Paw was a semi-professional baseball player, I don’t know how serious of a player Grandpa was.  I just have a few photos of him playing basketball and don’t remember any stories about his early years of playing the game.

But who cares how serious of a player he was?  Look at this photo!  It’s an action shot from almost 100 years ago.  That’s pretty cool.  I may have edited this photo a little, but I promise you that I did not add the basketball to the photo.  That would have been just wrong!  It doesn’t even look like the ball is going to make the basket, but that’s not important either.  It’s an action photo of my grandfather as a young man playing basketball with his brother and their friends.  I think it might even be my grandfather who is shooting the ball.  It’s a photo taken by his sister Edna (I think), so she would be focusing on getting photos of her brothers in action.

My grandfather’s name was Fred D. Bucklin.  He and his identical twin brother Clarence were born on October 2, 1907, in Roanoke, Louisiana.  The family lived in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, a few years and then moved back to Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana.  They settled in the Hathaway area.  Fred and Clarence went to school in Elton where they graduated from high school in 1926.

I had two different dates on these photos, though it looks like they could have been taken the same day.  I’m thinking that the 1925 date is probably correct, because it looks like it could be a school basketball team.  Yet schools in Louisiana weren’t integrated until much later, so I question that assumption.  It could be a few years later at some other city team or such.

I need to mention some other family connections in this photo.  The guy standing between the twins is Burr Dell Scott.  Clarence would marry Myrtle Moon in 1928.  Fred would marry his own Myrtle – Myrtle Phenice – in 1930.  She was my grandmother.  Myrtle Moon Bucklin died in 1937.  She and Clarence did not have any children.  Burr Dell married Sadie Manuel around 1942.  They had three children together and then Burr Dell died in 1958.  Then Clarence and Sadie got married around 1960, and they had Carla a few years later.  (Thanks, Carla, for providing these great photos for me to use!)  The interesting thing about that is that Burr Dell was a third cousin of my grandmother Myrtle through her English Horsnell line.

So there you have it.  If you didn’t enjoy the family history tidbit, I hope you enjoyed the photos.  If you didn’t like the photos, maybe I can help out a bit by showing you a colorized version of it.  Here you go:

There.  Everyone should be satisfied now.