Category: Hine

My Favorite Finds From 2025

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I thought I’d write a post about the favorite things I came across in my family history ramblings last year.  I found two really good stories about my ancestors doing commendable things.  And the other thing was an old record that was found from hundreds of years ago.  I’m always on the lookout for things like that and like to share what I find with everyone.  That way family members can see some information about their ancestors, and I’ll have a way of recording it so I don’t forget about it!  The downside is that I don’t give resources for the things I find.  I figure if people what to verify it is true or not, they can do an online search and find it, too.  At least they know what to search for.

“French Peasant” by Kevin Leveque circa May 19, 2020 (the day he posted it online).

The first image I’m using in this post is of a painting by a cousin.  The painting is called “French Peasant” and it was painted around 2020 by Kevin Leveque, a third cousin from my Landry great grandmother.  He posted a photo of the painting on Facebook, and I commented on how much I liked it.  It always makes me think of my French and Acadian ancestresses who lived and worked on farms through the years.  Kevin and I have many common ancestors, including two of the maternal ones I’m talking about here.

The first discovery I’m talking about is the discovery of Michelle Aucoin’s birth record.  She was born in LaRochelle, France, on January 29, 1620.  Her parents were Martin Aucoin and Barbe Minguette.  The family made the crossing to the New World in 1642 and were some of the founders of Acadie.  Many of those early founders’ birth records are a mystery.  There have been people looking for them for years with no luck.  So when one is discovered, it’s kind of a big thing.  At least for those of us who are looking.

Daddy had her in his tree with the correct birthplace and a close estimated birth year.  He also had the father’s name correct.  He didn’t have the correct mother and hadn’t made all of the connections to her, but I’m always amazed at all of the information he discovered.  He put in most of the branches on the tree, while I’m just fine tuning and pruning a bit.  My work is based on the groundwork provided by him and Mee Maw.  I know they would be excited with the new information being discovered.

The second discovery had something to do with a witchcraft trial in Quebec in 1684.  Though the trial was in Quebec, the events that were being questioned occurred in Acadie and involved our ancestors Francois Pellerin and Andree Martin.  The witchcraft part of the story was intriguing, but my favorite part was about the actions of my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother Andree Martin.  That’s right, she was my 8X great grandmother.  It was a long time ago.  By the way, Michelle Aucoin was also my 8X great grandmother. 

Anyway, Andree was visiting her sister one year.  As they were walking along, they witnessed a man harassing a young girl.  Instead of ignoring the situation, she asked the man to stop, then made him stop.  I love that she did the right thing.  It was not the last of their unpleasant interactions, though.  That may have led to her accusing him of using witchcraft to kill her husband.  She might have believed it, but she may have said what she needed to so the man would be stopped.  It worked.

The last of my favorite discoveries has to do with the Hine line in my mom’s tree.  This event occurred over a hundred years later than the first two stories, and it has to do with my 4X great grandfather John Hein.  He was born in 1747 in Dillenberg, Germany, to Johannes Jacob Hein and Ann Schober.  He immigrated with his father and stepmother in October 1753 to Broad Bay, Maine.  They later moved to Wachovia, North Carolina, which is where our ancestor John performed his heroic act.  He and two friends were attempting to cross a flooded creek to respond to some request for help.  All they had was a shabby canoe, and they decided to make the attempt anyway.  The canoe sank and Brother Hein was the only one that knew how to swim.  Despite the strong currents, our John was able to save his two friends.  Commendable indeed!

So now we’re on to another year.  I’m hoping for new discoveries, new photos…new everything.  We’re living in the future.  Happy New Year to everyone.

Ten Years

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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

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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.

Brother Hein Could Swim

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I thought I would talk about a few events that happened about two hundred and thirty years ago in my Hine family.  I found some information a few years ago and thought that they might make an interesting story.  Now I’ve finally gotten around to doing it.  I’ll start by tracing my line back to the aquatically gifted ancestor of mine.  I’m Van and my mother was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Her father was Fred Bucklin, who was the son of Addie May Hine Bucklin.  She’s the last one in my line to carry the Hine name.  Her father was George Henry Hine.  I thought I would share a photo of him, because he’s the one furthest back that has a photo.  You’ve probably seen the photo before.  It’s a favorite of mine.

George Hine circa 1900 in Louisiana.

George was the son of John Peter Hine.  John Peter’s father was Peter Hine.  Peter had the unfortunate situation that he became a father posthumously.  He died at the age of 24 on July 22, 1819.  His only child was John Peter, who was born on September 3, 1819.  Of all of my maternal ancestors that I am familiar with, Peter Hine had the shortest lifespan.  He was the youngest son of Johannes John Hein, who was an immigrant from Dillenberg, Germany.  The documents from the 1700s show his name spelled as Johannes or John Hein.  Only later generations adopted the Hine spelling that we use today.

John Hein arrived in Wachovia, NC.

Johannes was my 5x great grandfather.  He came to North America with his father Johannes Jacob Hein and his stepmother in 1753.  They originally settled in the Broad Bay, Maine, area.  They were part of a religious group called the Moravians.  The Heins then moved to Friedland, North Carolina, at some point.  That sets the story up for the few pages of information I found. On page 811 of “The Records of the Moravians in North Carolina” there is an entry that talks about some of the new members that have found their way to Wachovia around 1774.

Hein could swim on July 5, 1775.

John Hein is listed separately from his father and the rest of his family.  I don’t know if the others were there before or after him, but they were all at the same place later on.  On other pages they talk about the wagons coming into town with prospective new citizens.  There were less than 300 people in the town at that point.  There is talk about building roads and bridges to make life more convenient and appealing to people.  Then one night they must have had a big rainfall.  On the morning of July 5 (1775), they woke up to higher water than they had ever seen in the area.

It says something about the mill sending for help.  I’m sure they didn’t send a text!    Somehow, they got a message, and they needed to cross the creek.  There had been discussion about needing a bridge across Muddy Creek and I’m not sure this is the same place.  But they needed to cross the water and all they had was a shabby canoe.  The older, more sensible people probably didn’t want them to use such an unsteady vessel, but the young men insisted.  One of them was our John Hein.  He went along with Kremser and Schaub.  They ran into a strong current, which caused the canoe to leak and then sink.  Fortunately for all involved, John Hein knew how to swim.  From the look of it, he saved the other two young men’s lives.  I think that is pretty commendable.  I like seeing stories like that about my ancestors.

1777 – Banns to be published

The last thing I wanted to show was from July 17, 1777.  John was almost thirty years old, so it was time for him to start a family of his own.  The girl that caught his eye was Juliana Catharina Schneider.  She was a few years younger than him, and she had been born in Broad Bay, Maine.  She was the daughter of another German immigrant Melchior Schneider.  He and his wife Jacobina Doerflinger were married in 1742 on the ship carrying them across the Atlantic Ocean.

John and Juliana were not so dramatic.  John went to Br. Graff with his future father-in-law Michael (aka Melchior) Schneider to request the marriage of John and Juliana.  They wished the Banns of marriage to be published, which was promised to them.  The young couple was married August 19, 1777.

The Stanbrough Family of Westfield

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Susan G. Stanbrough Hine circa 1890.

In case you don’t know, Westfield is in Indiana.  My connection to the place is through my mom.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, on May 20, 1933.  She was born just 52 days after her great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough Hine died.  My mom’s dad was Fred D. Bucklin, the son of Susan G.’s daughter Addie May Hine Bucklin.  But Susan was better known as Sue.  Her siblings called her that, her niblings called her Aunt Sue, so I always refer to her as Grandma Sue.

Brother Joseph

Sue was born on October 3, 1851, to John Stanbrough and Lydia Mills Stanbrough in Westfield, Indiana.  She was the sixth of twelve children to be born to this couple.  She had an older half-brother by her father and his first wife.  Albert was born in 1839 to John and Lydia Hunt Stanbrough.  Lydia Hunt Stanbrough died in 1842 at just 21 years of age.  John’s father Evan James Stanbrough had died earlier that year, so that year started out rough.  In addition to those deaths, he also had two sisters and a brother that died in 1842.  The oldest sibling that died was only 28 years old.  I had never noted this fact before.  That was definitely a tough year for my ancestor.

Sister Etta

He remarried the next year to Lydia Mills, and children soon followed.  Nelson was born in 1844, Joseph in 1845, Julietta “Etta” in 1847, Mary Etta “Mollie” in 1848, James Evan “Jim” in 1850, and our Sue in 1851.  Those were followed by Anna Jane in 1853 and Lucius in 1854.  Lucius lived for less than three weeks.  He was the only one of these twelve children that had a short lifespan.  Following those, there was Sarah Eliza “Ida” in 1856, Elisha “Ell” in 1857, Nathan Oliver “Oll” in 1860, and Charles Romanzo “Man” in 1863.  All of the children were born in Westfield, though sometimes I’ve seen that the property was located in Eagletown.  Eagletown is now an unincorporated area around Westfield.

Sister Mollie

John himself was from a large family.  He was the fifth of thirteen children, and he had been born in Ohio in 1820.  The first nine children were born Ohio, and then the family moved to Indiana around 1830.  His family was Quaker with a pretty long history in the United States.  The Quakers kept lots of records, which is very helpful for genealogists and those interested in family history.

Sue and her older siblings had their parents and their remaining grandparents for a few years.  Her older half-brother Albert died in July of 1854 at the age of 15.  Just a few days later her mom’s mother Elizabeth Brown Mills died at the age of 61.  I was thinking she was so much older, but she was younger than I am now.  Those two deaths happened just a few months before the birth and death of little Lucius, so that must have been a difficult time period for the family as well.

They lost their paternal grandmother Elizabeth Frances Hester Stanbrough in 1861 and their maternal grandfather James Mills in 1869.  By this time Sue was practically an adult and ready to be out on her own.   Her mother died in March of 1873.  Lydia Mills Stanbrough was only 49 years old at the time of her death.  Her youngest child Man was only 9 years old at the time of her death.  I’m sure some of the older siblings helped their father care for the younger ones.  Others were getting married and starting families of their own.  Grandma Sue was one of the latter.

Sue Stanbrough married George Hine on October 12, 1873, probably in Westfield.  In 1876 my great grandmother Addie was born in Noblesville, Indiana.  That’s not too far from Westfield.  I’m sure she was in close contact with the rest of the family then and in 1877 when her father John died as a result of poisoning himself with morphine.  He had remarried a woman with six children of her own and they were having difficulties.  He was also having financial problems.  On top of that it looks like he was suffering terribly from painful symptoms of malaria.  It was another tragic time for the Stanbrough family.

Brothers Oll, Man, and Ell in Westfield in 1944.

Sue and George stayed in Indiana and added five sons to their family.  They then moved south to Louisiana in 1894.  According to a newspaper article in 1926, Grandma Sue never returned even to visit Indiana.  Several of her siblings lived out their lives there.  Others of them moved to different states.  Joseph ended up in New Mexico, Mollie in Michigan (with her daughter), Ida in West Virginia, and brother Jim lived in Louisiana with Sue’s family. 

Even though the family was spread out, it seems like they stayed close.  I have copies of letters and photos that they sent each other through the years. That’s how I learned some interesting details about their lives.  It’s also how I got these interesting photos of the Stanbrough family.  They represent cherished memories of Sue’s family back in Westfield.  That’s why they’ve lasted through the years.

Maternal Ancestors in 3D in 1926

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Bucklin, Hine, Phenice, Keys, and Stanbrough ancestors show up in this photo from 1926 in Elton, Louisiana. If you cross your eyes slightly and bring the two images together, you will see a 3D view of the gathering.

I thought I would write a post about my mom’s family in honor of Mother’s Day this weekend.  I thought I should write something about how wonderful she was, but I think I’ve already done that.  Of course, you can never really say enough about a wonderful mother and capture that essence on the page.  It transcends words.  So you write what you can and hope that people can relate to some of the things you express.  What I’m trying to say is that I can’t write about her every time.  I feel like I’m trying to defend my decision not to write about her.  And what’s funny about that is that she wouldn’t have been concerned in the least.  All she ever wanted was to be treated kindly and with respect.

So I’m writing about her ancestors.  When I decided that, I started thinking about finding a photo with the biggest number of her maternal ancestors in it.  I’m talking about grandmothers, great grandmothers, or great great grandmothers.  They didn’t have to necessarily be on my mom’s maternal side.  It didn’t take me long to figure out which photo that was.  I’ve posted a few photos from this gathering in 1926 before.  My mom and her cousins worked at identifying as many of the people in the photo that they could.  That was very helpful, being that there were so many.  (This is a cropped photo.  There are 86 people in the original photo.)  What I was always amazed at was the number of relatives in the photo.

The photo was taken on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the joint birthday celebration of my great great grandmother Susan G. “Sue” Stanbrough Hine and her good friend Edessa Jane “Jennie” Welton Havenar.  My Grandma Sue is the older woman in a dark dress on the far right of the photo.  In the exact center of this grouping is my grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice.  She was almost twenty years old at the time and still single.  You can only see her head in this photo.  To the left of her is a girl with glasses and a long tie.  To the left of this girl are my grandmother’s parents.  That would be Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice.

1926 – Addie Hine Bucklin with her mother Sue Stanbrough Hine.

There are three maternal ancestors in that first photo – Sue, Myrtle, and Daisy.  But there was another of my maternal ancestors present at this event.  That would be Addie May Hine Bucklin.  Of course she would be there, the gathering was to celebrate her mom’s birthday.  I don’t know why she wasn’t in the large group photo.  That would have been even better.

But I also have some paternal ancestors in the group.  You know that already because I mentioned H. C. Phenice.  He was the husband of Daisy and the father of Myrtle.  On the far left of the first photo is my grandfather Fred D. Bucklin.  He takes after his grandmother Sue.  They both have a middle initial that doesn’t stand for anything.  Fred’s father Louis Charles Bucklin was still alive at the time and lived in the area, but he didn’t come to this event.  He’s not in photos as a rule, but there was also a newspaper article about this event.  It named all those present and it named Addie Bucklin by herself.

Now that I think about it, H. C.’s father was also alive at the time!  Samuel Charles Phenice lived up north in Nebraska and was 80 years old at the time.  Grandma Sue was only 75 years old.  Samuel’s granddaughter Mary Bucklin had married Sue’s grandson Sylvan Phenice earlier in 1926.  I wonder if Samuel came down for that?  Samuel and Sue could have met.  They had both lost their spouses six years earlier.  Things that make you wonder.

About the photo I posted.  There were several photos taken on that long ago day in 1926.  I found two of them that were taken at almost exactly the same time from two different photographers.  I say this because when you bring the two photos together, you get a 3D effect.  This happens when you have two eyes looking at the same thing.  Or two camera lenses in this situation.  So I combined the two photos to make this one image.  To see the 3D effect, get a comfortable distance from the screen.  While looking at the image, slightly cross your eyes and bring the two images together.  It helps to focus on a certain person and bring their images together.  It’s not a perfect 3D image, because it wasn’t taken at the exact same time.  But it was close, and it happened unintentionally.

I am a big fan of the 3D photos.  I am an even bigger fan of old family photos.  It’s great to have an old family photo that shows five of my ancestors in it AND it is a 3D photo.  How can you ask for more?  Happy Mother’s Day to all of you!

Bucklin Family in 1960

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Sept. 23, 1960, was the date of my great grandmother Addie May Hine Bucklin’s last birthday. This is a photo of her with her children at the birthday party in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to post today.  When I saw this photo I wasn’t sure if I had used it before.  It seems like I would, because it’s a really nice group photo from my great grandmother’s last birthday.  Her birthday was September 23 and in 1960, that date fell on a Friday.  My guess is that the birthday celebration happened on the day after her birthday.  So the photo was probably taken on Sept. 24, 1960.  That was five weeks before I was born.  In another photo of the event I think that my oldest sister Jodie was there.  That would mean the rest of the family was there as well, including my mom – with me along for the ride.

My great grandmother was Addie May Hine Bucklin.  She was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana.  The Hine family moved down to Louisiana in 1894 and settled in Jefferson Davis Parish around Hathaway.  A few years later Addie met Louis C. Bucklin and they were married in 1898 in Lake Charles.  Soon after that they started a family.  She was pregnant ten times and had a total of a dozen children.  

When those children were growing up, their grandmother – Addie’s mother Susan Stanbrough Hine – had a big celebration every year for her and her friend’s birthday at the beginning of October.  I don’t know if that tradition followed through to Addie and her birthday, but at this birthday there seemed to be a lot of people there.  I think most of them were family.  When you have twelve children, you tend to have a lot of grandchildren as well.  Addie had eighteen grandchildren.  I wish there was a photo of Addie with all of her grandchildren.  Then I’d know for sure if my family had been there.  

I know that my grandfather was there.  He’s the one standing up on the left in the photo.  His name was Fred D. Bucklin and he was born in 1907.  He was married to Myrtle Phenice.  Their second daughter was Betty Lou, who is my mom.  She had four siblings – Sylvia, Alma, Loris, and Austin.  To the right of Grandpa is his oldest brother Leo.  He was born in 1898, which means that Addie had a short pregnancy for him.  Leo was married to Emily Sonnier, but they did not have any children together.  To the right of Leo is Herbert who was born in 1906.  He was married to Dora Koll.  They had two children that lived to adulthood – Louise and Ray.  Next in line is Clarence.  He was the identical twin of my grandfather Fred.  I never met him.  He was married to Sadie Manuel.  They had one daughter together, but Carla was born after the death of Grandma Addie.  Next we have Ralph, who was the second son.  He was born in 1902.  He married Leona Johnson and they had Helen.  Standing up on the right side is Roy, the youngest son.  He was married to Effie Hetzel and they had Jeannette and Doris.

On the front row, sitting on the left is Mary Bucklin Phenice.  She was born in 1900 and was married to Sylvan Phenice.  He was Grandma’s older brother.  That’s right, Grandpa’s oldest sister was married to Grandma’s older brother.  Aunt Mary and Uncle Sylvan did not have any children, so there were no double cousins.  Sitting next to Mary was good old Addie, who was celebrating her 84th birthday.  She looks pretty happy, right?!  She’s not known for smiling in photos.  But by all accounts, she was a very sweet woman.  She loved her family.  To the right of Grandma Addie is Edna Bucklin Keys.  She was married to Frank Keys.  Frank was Grandma’s first cousin.  Edna and Frank had four children – Melvin (of Star Trek fame), Stanley, Arlene, and Vernon.  Sitting on the right is Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  She was married to Budda Bruchhaus and they had two sons – Harley and Laurence.

So the photo is of Addie and nine of her surviving children.  There was a son Carl who had special needs, but I think at the time that the photo was taken he was living in a facility in Metairie.  There had been a son named Paul who died as an infant in 1904.  Robert Bucklin was born in 1911 and was married to Freida Rampmier.  They had a son named Robert Jr., but Robert Sr. died in 1944 at the age of 32.  My mom was 11 at the time and she remembered how traumatic that death was to the family.  In my mom’s own words “Losing a child must be the ultimate challenge for a mother – beyond comprehension – shouldn’t happen.”  She said something similar when she talked about the death of Robert, but those words were written about her own experience losing my oldest sister Jodie.

Of course, all of these people are gone now.  It’s nice to have photos to look back on those people who came before us.  We wouldn’t be here without them.

Double View of Grandma Sue

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October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana. The George Henry and Susan Stanbrough Hine family at Grandma Sue’s 75 birthday celebration.

I’ve shared several pictures from this event back in 1926.  The photos are just so good because they have so many of my family members in them.  Though it says that it is a double view of Grandma Sue in the title, it’s not a double exposure from the event.  I shared that one two years ago.  That was the last time that I shared a photo from that event, so I thought it was time to look at that event again.  I was looking very thoroughly through those photos a few weeks ago to look for something specific, but I can’t remember what it was.  I didn’t have any new revelations about the photos either, but I still want to share these photos from 98 years ago.  

And it was exactly 98 years ago today.  My great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough was born on October 3, 1851, in Westfield, Indiana.  That was 173 years ago.  She married George Henry Hine in 1873.  Their first child was my great grandmother Addie Mae Hine and she was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana.  They went on to have five more children – all of them boys.  In 1894 the family moved south to Louisiana and settled in Hathway, Louisiana, in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Addie got married in 1898 to Louis Charles Bucklin, who had moved down to Louisiana from Iowa with his family in 1884.  Their seventh and eighth children were Fred and Clarence Bucklin, who were born on October 2, 1907.  Fred is my grandfather, because he was the father of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

View no 2 – same family, same place, same time

Let’s go back to the year before my grandfather was born.  In 1906 Grandma Sue and her friend Jennie Welton Havenar decided to have a joint birthday celebration.  You see, Jennie also had a birthday on October 3, though she was a few years younger than Sue.  According to the newspaper, the first birthday celebration must have happened around the beginning of December in 1906.  It was reported to be a great turnout with over seventy of their friends and family in attendance.  The reporter wrote about “hearty wishes given to the two ladies for many more such happy occasions in their lives.” 

Sue and Jennie must have taken that to heart, because that’s exactly what they did.  They had a joint celebration for their birthday for the next twenty years at least.   And it seems that the number of family and guests grew along the way.  We know that the following year at least two new family members appeared – Fred and Clarence.  And their birthday is just a day before Sue and Jennie’s.  I wonder if that was a good thing for the boys.  For at least the first twenty years of their lives, there was a big birthday celebration that everyone showed up for – and it was for their grandmother and her friend!  I’m sure that at least a time or two it actually fell on their birthday.  Hopefully people remembered to wish them a happy birthday as well.

The photos I’m sharing today were from the 20th Anniversary of the Double Birthday Celebration.  The two photos look like they were taken at almost the exact same time by two different photographers.  Very interesting.  According to the newspaper it was held on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the home of Mrs. W. E. Havenar – that would be our Jennie.  They both had one daughter and four sons alive at the time, as well as many more grandchildren and extended families.  These photos were taken of Grandma Sue’s family.  Uncle Rowe died in 1916, and Grandpa George died in 1919, so they were not there.  Addie is standing just behind Grandma Sue, a habit she had in family photos taken through the years.  Fred Bucklin (Addie’s son – my grandfather) is the nice looking 19-year-old young man on the back row toward the middle of the photo.  He seems to be happy to be celebrating his grandmother’s birthday.  Maybe they had a birthday cake for him, too!

The 1926 newspaper article called this event the climax of these double birthday celebrations.  Did he know something that he didn’t mention?  Maybe Sue and Jennie had decided that this would be their last one and they decided to have a big send-off for the event.  If not, at most they could only have had three more joint celebrations, because Jennie passed away in March of 1930.  She was only 63 years old, younger than I am now.  Three years later Grandma Sue died at the age of 81.  

Here’s to Sue and Jennie.  Let’s celebrate their births all those years ago.  Hear, hear!

Susan G. Stanbrough Was Known as Sue

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Susan G. Stanbrough in Jennings, Louisiana, circa 1900.

I’m talking about my great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough.  In this photo she looks like a rather serious woman.  I have a few other photos of her, and she looks equally serious in those as well.  Of course, when you look at old photos from that time period, that was usually the case.  But in her correspondence with family that I have found, she would sign off with a casual Sue.  So most of the times I refer to her as Grandma Sue.  In this post I’ll just call her Sue.

Sue was the mother of Addie May Hine, my great grandmother.  Sue had five sons as well.  Addie had more sons and more daughters, with a total of twelve children.  I descend from her son Fred D. Bucklin.  Fred, like Sue, had a middle initial in his name that didn’t stand for anything.  Fred was the father of Betty Lou Bucklin, my dear sweet mother.

Sue started her life in Westfield, Indiana, on October the 3rd of 1851.  Her parents were John Stanbrough and Lydia Jane Mills.  Sue was the seventh of thirteen Stanbrough children, though some of those siblings shortened their last names to Stanbro or Stambro.   Sue spent her childhood in Hamilton County, Indiana.  Her mother died early in 1873, and later that year Sue married George Henry Hine.  They were 4th cousins through their common ancestors William Vestal and Elizabeth Mercer.  Sue and George might not have been aware of that, because their common ancestors died almost a hundred years before the younger couple were born.

Sue and George had all six of their children in Indiana – some in Hamilton County and others in Boone County.  There was family in both counties.  They then decided to move south to Louisiana.  I’m not sure what the motivation was, but it was a time when the railroads came through southern Louisiana and made it more accessible.  There were different people who promoted the area as a great place for farming with mild winters. 

1900 U. S. Census of Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana.

The family moved to Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana in 1894.  They acquired a homestead in China, Louisiana.  In the 1900 Census, the family included George, Susan, John U. (must be Bert James by year of birth), Romanzo (“Rowe”), James, and Oliver.  But also included in the household is James Stanbrough.  That would be Sue’s brother Jim who was a year older than her.  He had moved down to Louisiana and was living with them.  Addie was not in the household, because she had gotten married and had started a family of her own.  I don’t know where 18-year-old Lonnie Hine was at the time.  Perhaps in the military?  He didn’t get married until 1903.

If I’m correct about the date of this photo, it was taken around the same time as the Census.  The family had been in the South for about six years and Sue had recently become a grandmother.  They probably took the photo in Jennings, Louisiana, because that was the nearest town that was likely to have a photo studio.  This is actually cropped from a photo of the whole family.  It’s a great family photo, but I just wanted to focus on Sue today.  

If you look at this photo long enough, you’ll start to catch a glimpse of a smile on her lips.  Go ahead.  Try it!

Addie and Two Grandsons

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Addie Hine Bucklin in 1937 with grandsons in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Here’s a pleasant photo of my great grandmother Addie from 87 years ago.  She looks like such a doting, loving grandmother.  I wish I had known her.  She seems like such a warm, likable person.  She was alive when I was born, but she died just a month later.

Her name at birth was Addie May Hine.  She was born on September 23, 1876, in Noblesville, Indiana.  She was the firstborn of George Henry Hine and Susan G. Stanbrough.  She had five younger brothers.  The family moved south to Louisiana in 1894 and settled in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Addie lived the rest of her life in Louisiana, except for a short stint in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, around 1911.  She was married to Louis Charles Bucklin at that point.  She gave birth to their son Robert in Arkansas, but all the rest of the twelve children were born in Louisiana.  That would include my grandfather Fred Bucklin.  He would later become the father of my mom, Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

I wish that I had a photo of my mom with Addie like this one.  I’ve never seen one, so I doubt there is one.  I would be happy to be proven wrong.  But we do have this one, and the back of the photo says that the photo was made in September of 1937.  I’m assuming that the photo was taken shortly before then.  If that is correct, I would think this photo is of Addie and her Bruchhaus grandsons.  Her youngest daughter was Ruth, who married William Charles “Budda” Bruchhaus.  They had two sons – Harley in 1933 and Laurence in 1936.  So that would be Harley standing to the right of Addie, and Laurence would be sitting in her lap. 

My mom was just a few months older than Harley.  Why aren’t there any photos of her or her sisters and brother with Grandma Addie?  To make matters worse, the cat made it into the photo.  And it’s not the only photo of this cat with Addie!  I’ve posted a different photo before that is just the two of them.  Why couldn’t there be any of mom and Addie together?  It’s probably the same reason that there were far more photos of my oldest sister Jodie when she was a child than there were of me and my younger sister Jamie.  Ain’t nobody got time for that!  Who’s going to be able to keep track of every event in a child’s life when there are six of them running around.  For Addie, there were 12 children and even more grandchildren.  It’s just a result of being in a big family.  My mom only had positive things to say about Addie.

Another thing this photo makes me think about is Addie’s hair.  It looks like she had it very long, but always seemed to keep it in a bun.  But not only that, her hair is very dark in this photo and she was 61 years old.  I remember my mom talking about that when I was a kid.  She hoped that her hair would get darker as she aged, just like her grandmother.  Addie lived to the age of 84.  In the photo taken on her last birthday, her hair was still pretty dark.  My mom did have a good bit of gray hair, but she had enough brown left to keep her hair from looking white as some people’s did.  Of course, by the time she was in her eighties she wasn’t too concerned about the color of her hair.

There are a few other things that this photo makes me think about.   Like – with all those Bucklin sons, that Bucklin surname didn’t multiply very well.  It seems like there are more Bruchhaus and Landry descendants than Bucklins.  Maybe it’ll make you think of something else.  If it does, let me know about it.  I like talking about old photos.  Have you noticed?

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