Category: Cook

Calling all Keys!  Calling all Keys cousins.  It is time for a reunion!  Definitely time.  The reunion this year will be on June 15, 2024, starting at 10:00.  It will be held in Hathaway (Raymond), Louisiana, at the St. Lawrence Catholic Church.  That’s right.  This year it is at the Catholic church.  The last few times it was at the Methodist Church right across the street.  So if you know how to get to the previous reunion, all you’ll have to do is show up at the place across the street to the south.  The physical address is 5505 Pine Island Highway.  It’s at the crossroads of Pine Island Highway and Raymond Highway.

As you can see by the flyer, the festivities begin at 10:00.  As usual we are encouraged to bring food to share for the covered dish feast.  That will commence around noontime.  The forenoon will be for socializing and sharing old family photos.  Wait!  It doesn’t say that.  But I am.  I want to see any interesting old family photo, especially ones that I don’t have yet.  How can I continue writing posts about old family photos if I run out of them?  We’ve got to keep it going!  You can also bring a door prize.  If enough people bring one, it’ll be like a Christmas gift exchange.

One thing I wanted to point out is that this is an anniversary year.  It was 130 years ago that Martha Ann Cook Keys had a party at her house for friends and family.  The local Jennings paper reported that the party was a hit and “enjoyed by all present.”  It was just seven years after she had immigrated with her five children to Louisiana.  They came from the London area of England and moved to get away from the increasing crime at the time. Her husband Henry Keys had talked about the family coming to America and was planning on doing just that.  But sadly, he died at just 63 years old.  That’s the same age that I am!  

So it was quite an accomplishment for Martha to follow through with the plan and bring the family to a new place to live.  She was very motivated to come here and it is said that she never regretted her decision.  She loved her new home in America.  I’m not talking about the house she built.  I’m talking about the country that she felt welcomed by.  Perhaps that was the reason for the party in 1894.  She and her five children had made a home in America.  

At that time, none of her children had married yet.  The oldest was only 24 years old.  Martha didn’t live long enough to see any of them marry or have children.  She died in 1896 at the age of 59.  It wasn’t until 1900 that the first one was married.  That was my great grandmother Daisy Keys who married Harry Clifton Phenice.  Her younger sister Ruth followed suit less than a year later.  Eventually, all of the children were married and started having children.  Altogether, the five children had over thirty children between them.

I’m excited about this photo that I put together.  It was just last week that I did the same with my Landry grandfather’s family.  This time it is a grouping of the photos of all five of Henry and Martha’s children – Henry “The Judge” (1870-1950), Leonard (1873-1959), Daisy (1876-1952), Ruth (1879-1967), and Mabel (1881-1962).  I’ve posted a photo of the three sisters together previously.  Those three images come from the same photo.  I got a photo of Leonard from Carolyn, the daughter of Edith Keys Segraves.  Edith was the one who wrote the amazing book about the Cook and Keys family.  

So tonight I was wanting to have all five of the families represented, because I want to encourage descendants of all of them to show up for the reunion.  I didn’t have a good photo of the oldest son “The Judge.”  I was looking through the old book by Edith Segraves and found one of him.  It was a grainy old photo, but I had hopes of improving it with the great software that is available nowadays.  I worked on it a while and I am satisfied with it.  It goes well with the rest of them.  And now I have a group photo of all five of the Keys immigrant children.  The ancestors of all of us Keys relatives who will be attending this reunion.

Behold!

 

As you all may recall, my great great grandmother was Martha Ann Cook Keys. She was the brave widow woman who immigrated to America with her five young children in 1887. Her daughter was Daisy Keys who married Harry Clifton Phenice. One of their daughters’ name was Myrtle Phenice and she married Fred Bucklin. Myrtle and Fred’s second daughter was my mother Betty Lou Bucklin Landry. That tells you my connection to the Cook-Keys family, but let’s look a little further back.

Martha was married to Henry Keys in 1869 in Middlesex, England. But they were not the first Cook-Keys couple. Martha’s younger sister Henrietta had married Henry’s younger brother William in 1861 and shortly afterwards started a family. Their children were double first cousins to each other. That meant that they had more DNA in common than most first cousins. This helps us now because it increases the chances that 4th cousins of these couples still share DNA.

And they do. That’s what made me think of this post for this week. I started corresponding with two different descendants of Henrietta and William Keys. And since I always like to see photos of my ancestors, I thought I’d share the ones I have. I thought some of you might like to see some of this information as well.

This is a photo of Henrietta Cook Keys. My ancestry program identifies her as my great, great, great aunt. What I really appreciate about her is that she kept a diary and wrote about some of her and Martha’s family history. How cool is that? Too bad they didn’t have blogs back in her day. We might have seen even more information!

She talked about her father Job Cook dying when she was young (less than a year old). He was a sea captain who was “free of the river” and who had traveled the world. He died after voyaging to India. On his way home he was seized with pain in the head. Since they were so close to home, the doctor had already left the ship. The sailors tried to help him by cutting the hair off of the top of his had and applying some type of poultice. His situation only grew worse and he died only an hour after returning to shore. Supposedly if they had applied the ‘blister’ to the back of the head rather than the top of the head, he would have survived.

Henrietta says in her diary that she had in her possession the letter that brought her mother the sad news of her husband’s death. Now that’s a letter I’d like to see! There are other things that she refers to that I wish she had gone into more detail about. She talked about how her mother Ruth Horsnell ran a private school to make money. And it sounds like the dress shop that Martha had was partly run by their mother. Henrietta herself was not put to a business because a family friend had decided that she was “delicate.” She doesn’t look so delicate in this photo, but looks can be deceiving.

Henrietta also identified her paternal grandfather as William Cook and talks about his grave in Walthamstow, England. She was living there when she wrote the journal and she talked about people recognizing her as part of the Cook family. William had also been a seaman and died at a young age. Henrietta was certain that there was a connection between her Cook family and that of the famous sea captain James Cook.

All of this information was in the book that cousin Edith Keys Segraves put together in 1980. She, like Henrietta, was also pretty sure of the connection, though she was never able to find a link. She said that she included the information and the diary in hopes that someone in the family will one day find that link.

The search continues…

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To see the diary pages that I have a copy of, see this link.

I was excited to run across this photo a few weeks ago.  It is a photo of the ship that my Keys ancestors boarded when they were immigrating to the United States from England.  The name of the ship is Aurania.  It was part of the Cunard Lines.  I’ve mentioned the name of the ship before, but I had never seen a photo of the ship until I saw this one.

Martha Ann Cook Keys was born in Great Wigsborough, England, on November 8, 1836.  Henry Keys was born in Chipping Ongar, England, on April 18, 1822.  Martha and Henry were married on Martha’s 33rd birthday.  They went about starting a family of their own.  Henry Alfred was born in 1870 and Leonard James was born in 1873.

Their next child was my great grandmother Daisy Henrietta Martha, who was born in 1876.  (Daisy’s daughter Myrtle would become my maternal grandmother.)  Henry and Martha’s last two children were daughters Rosetta Ruth born in 1879 and Mabel Olive born in 1881.  The family lived in Hackney and Tottenham around London when the children were young.

They decided that they wanted to move their children to America because of some increased incidents of crime where they were living.  They also had some family members already living in the United States and they must have heard some positive reports.  They began saving up money for the move, but then tragedy struck.  Henry fell ill with bronchitis.  He fought it for four months, but then succumbed to the illness in 1886 at the age of 63.

Martha mourned the loss of her husband, but did not let their dream die along with him.  She continued to save for the journey and the following year decided it was time to make the move.  They sold off most of their belongings and went to London to meet up with the Aurania.  It was the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and people were celebrating during the week that they went to London.

On June 21, the queen took part in a procession or parade.  I don’t know if my ancestors had a view of this event, but my great grandmother told her children about the celebratory atmosphere when her family was boarding the ship.  She was a child herself at the time and remembered the other passengers on the upper decks throwing candy and treats down to them.

I’m not sure when the ship left port in England, but it arrived in New York on June 27, 1887.  The family did not immediately head for Louisiana.  They spent a short amount of time in New York at the Great Exposition or some such thing.  It was some type of fair that you could enter your handiwork into competition.  Leonard entered a handkerchief and Daisy submitted a pinafore.  They both won honorable mention.

They then moved on to Louisiana.  Their intention was to go to Louisiana by boat, but for some reason none were available.  The Cunard Lines set them up with train tickets.  The tickets were for Beaumont, but according to the passenger list for the Aurania, their destination was Louisiana.

They arrived in Louisiana in July 1887, and the rest, they say, is history.

I’ve spoken a few times about my Keys family when they first moved to the United States from England in the spring of 1887.  The main thing that people in the family talk about is how the family of Thomas Lord MacVey let the family stay in their chicken house because the Keys didn’t have a home when they first moved to southern Louisiana.

And since the Keys arrived in the spring, it was a good time for building a house.  The matron of the family – Martha Ann Cook Keys – decided to stay in the China, Louisiana, area, so she purchased forty two acres of land.  Soon after that there was a building bee by the local townsfolk to build the family a house.  And this photo shows that house.

The lumber was hauled to the site by oxen and wagon.  The house had wooden floors with a kitchen, bedroom and living room with bookshelves downstairs.  The half story upstairs was one big room.  The house was heated with a fireplace.  A chimney can be seen on the right side of the house in the photo.

I’m sure they were grateful to have their own home to live in, especially since it had all the conveniences of a modern home.  A man named Monroe brought mail from Jennings to Art Anderson’s store where Martha would go to pick it up.  She would go to Welsh or Jennings by horse or wagon for the few needs required by the family.  Eventually there was a nice trail beaten down by the horse’s hooves.  The prairie grass was as tall as or taller than the wagon.  The different houses in the area had driveways in a sense – they each had their own beaten down path to the main trail that led to Jennings or Elton.  That main trail was on the high ground, of course.

And while we are getting closer to cars that drive themselves, our ancestors had something similar.  Since taking a trip to Jennings or Welsh could take all day, sometimes they would fall asleep on their way home.  It was no problem, though, because the horses knew the way home.  What more could you ask for?

There was one problem they had to look out for while living out on the primitive prairie during the fall, and that was grass fires.  My mom used to talk about this from time to time.  I think she was proud of her great grandmother’s resourcefulness.  Martha learned how to “back fire” a prairie fire.  This is done by starting a controlled burn of the grass near your house in the direction of the wind.  That way the grass will slowly burn toward the prairie fire and there is no fuel for the fire around your house.

When I look at this photo, I imagine that Martha is standing in the doorway looking out at her youngest daughter Mabel sitting on their horse.  It has only been a couple of years since the move, but she is satisfied with the changes that she has made for her family.  They have a home in a quiet, safe place with horses, cows, pigs and chickens aplenty.  She admires the trees that she’s planted, knowing that they will grow and produce food for her family.  She and her children are adjusting well to this new, strange land.  Yet it is already feeling like home.

My great great grandmother Martha Ann Cook was a dressmaker who studied her art in Paris, France.  She had completed a two year apprenticeship presumably in Walthamstow, England, prior to going to Paris in 1860 to study.  Her sister Henrietta was three years younger than Martha and was not put to a business because she was thought “too delicate.” Being delicate was never a term I’ve heard describing my great great grandmother.

After completing her studies in Paris, she opened up her own dressmaking business in England.  She designed and made clothes for small children and sold ribbons and dress accessories.  Her business was successful and she was able to hire other women to work in her shop, which continued even after she was married and having children.  She would also travel to Paris every year to see the latest styles. It appears that she put a lot of thought and effort into her whole business endeavor.

Which would make me think that she would have been concerned with the look of her own dresses and wardrobe choices.  And this would be particularly true when she decided to sit for a portrait.  The portrait that I’m talking about is today’s photo.  When I first saw it, I thought it might be a photo.  It was a Xerox copy of a photo that was in the book “Cook-Keys Family: Two Centuries in England and America” by Edith Keys Segraves.  I’ve posted that old version before, but I just recently obtained a much better version.

Edith Segraves’ daughter Carolyn let me scan the best version of the photo.  I could tell from this version that it was actually a photo of an old painting.  I decided to clean it up to get it looking as best I could.  Nothing but the best for old Martha!  One of the first things I noticed was that painting hands was not the artist’s strong point.  The fact that the painting showed two hands is telling.  The old phrase “cost you an arm and a leg” was in reference to having your portrait painted (or so I’ve heard).  Supposedly the extra limbs were quite pricey.  So to have both hands in the portrait was a sign of prosperity.

It could also be Martha’s desire to show off her dress properly.  How can you show the true design of a dress without arms and hands showing?  Whatever the case, those pricey hands didn’t quite look right.  So I changed them!  That’s right.  She’s got brand new hands after well over one hundred years.  So the pixilized hands are not authentic, but I’m sure they look closer to the real thing than what was there previously.

I also cleaned up her face a little.  There were scratches across them that had to be removed.  I was careful to make sure I didn’t change the way she looked.  Then I came to her dress.  Some of it had been damaged and it wasn’t complete because it had been a circular painting.  I cloned parts of the painting with paint parts and pixels.  It ended up looking like a dress-shaped blob on the drawing.  I knew that Martha would not approve of that.  She was all about dresses!

So I did a search online for French dresses from the 1860s and came across something that might help the photo out.  It was a black mourning dress that somewhat matched what Martha was wearing.  I used that image to give the dress a bit of shading and texture.  With some helpful input from Carolyn, I think I came up with something that Martha would approve.  French fashion with paints and pixels.