Category: Landry

For those of you have been reading these blog posts that I write, you’ll have learned about the cousin marriages in my family history. For those that have researched families with Cajun or Acadian ancestry, you’ll know that this was a common practice. Some people are not very comfortable with these marriages, while others don’t seem to have a problem with it at all. It’s just part of history and I owe my life to it all.

In my family, I don’t have to look far to find an example. My grandparents were first cousins once removed. You can see that in the handy diagram that I created for myself to help me keep it all straight in my mind. It can all get a bit confusing sometimes. At the bottom of the diagram is my dad Bob Landry. Following the lines up from him bring you to Rob and Erie. Those are my paternal grandparents Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie Patureau. Their grandkids knew them as Pee Paw and Mee Maw.

If you follow Rob and Erie’s lines up through the middle of the chart, you come to their common ancestor Narcisse Landry. (I normally like to name both parents of individuals when I know them, but in this case I’m just listing those in the line leading to the ultimate common ancestor Joseph Ignatius Landry.) Rob and Erie were first cousins once removed because Narcisse was Rob’s grandfather while he was Erie’s great grandfather. Or put another way, Simon Alcide Landry and Jean Trasimond Landry were the sons of Narcisse. Rob was the son of Alcide and Marie Therese Landry Patureau was the daughter of Trasimond. Rob then married his first cousin Therese’s daughter Erie. Since Narcisse, Alcide, Trasimond, and Therese had all died before 1921, none of them were alive to celebrate Rob and Erie’s union.

But that’s not the only way that they were related, just the closest. That first connection was derived from Rob and his first cousin Therese’s fathers. The next connection we’ll look at the connection through their mothers. Rob’s mother was Marie Celeste Leveque Landry. Celeste’s mother was Marguerite Basalite Landry Leveque. Basalite was the daughter of Joseph Emmanuel Landry.

Now for Therese’s mother’s line. Her mother was Marie Amelie Bujol Landry. Since she had a long life, I have more photos of her and have written a few posts about her. Remember? We call her Belite. (She is also known as Grandma Babin to some of her descendants. Don’t let this throw you.) I’ve also referred to her as one of the beautiful daughters of the Widow Bujol. That would be her mother Anna Adele Landry Bujol. Adele was also the daughter of Joseph Emmanuel “Manuel” Landry. So if you look at the maternal lines to see the connection between Rob and Erie, you find that they were second cousins once removed.

We’ve looked at both sides of Pee Paw’s tree and on both sides of Mee Maw’s mother’s tree. Now it’s time to look at Mee Maw’s father’s line. We all know him as Grampa Max, but his full name was Vincent Maximilian Patureau. I don’t usually think of him as a Landry, but his mother was a Landry. Her name was Marie Emma Landry Patureau. Emma’s father was Elie Onezime Landry. Though both Rob & Erie descend from Narcisse and Manuel, only Erie descends from Onezime.

But there are still more connections, because Narcisse, Manuel, and Onezime were all sons of Joseph Ignatius Landry. Joseph was born in Acadie in 1748. He was only seven years old when the Grand Derangement took place. It was 1755 when the English exiled the French Acadian population. Joseph and his family spent the next 12 years in Exile in Maryland, then settled in Louisiana in 1767. He married Scholastique Breaux in 1776. She was also an Acadian who spent the Exile in Maryland. She happened to be his double third cousin as well. They had four children together including a son named Manuel.

Scholastique died in 1785. Two years later he married Olive Elizabeth Breaux. She was the 2nd cousin of Scholastique and a 3rd cousin of Joseph. They had six children together including Narcisse and Onezime. So Narcisse and Onezime were full brothers and Manuel was their half brother.

So there they are. My paths to Joseph Ignatius. My siblings, nieces, nephews, and first cousins share these common paths. Some of my other cousins share a path or two and have a few of their own twisted paths to Joseph Ignatius. I even know of at least one with seven paths to that illustrious ancestor. I have to admit that fact makes me a little jealous. Is that weird?

I love this old photo of my grandmother and aunts. It was taken some time around 1939 and it was probably taken in Lake Charles somewhere. The only thing I don’t like about the photo is that their feet don’t show in the photo. I’m not particularly fond of feet. It’s just that if you’re going to take a full length photo of a group of people, get the whole person (or persons) in the photo. This was long before phones with cameras or digital photos with instant results to check, so I guess I’ll have to forgive them. It would also have been nice to see the group centered in the photo. Oh, well, at least they took this wonderful photo.

My dad came from a somewhat large family. There were eight children, with four boys and four girls. I’ve shared a photo of the male members of the family previously. The photos look like they were taken the same day. The background is the same, the lighting looks the same, and the border is the same. But instead of a father with his four sons in the previous photo, this one is of a mother with her four daughters.

But it’s not just any old mother in the photo. This is my beloved paternal grandmother who we all called Mee Maw. Her given name was Germaine Erie Patureau. She married Robert Joseph (Rob or Bob) Landry, Sr. and then went by Erie Landry. The first child of this couple was their oldest daughter Marie Therese Landry. Aunt Marie is shown on the far left in the photo. She would later marry Malloy Reeves, and they had one son named Mark. The next daughter born to Rob and Erie was Germaine Erie. Aunt Germaine can be seen to the right of Mee Maw in the darker dress. She would later marry Ross Winn, and they had three children.

The third daughter of Erie and Rob was Wana Lidwin. She can be seen on the far right in the photo. She would later marry Norman Duffy. Aunt Wana and Uncle Duffy had six children. The youngest of the girls – though not the youngest of the eight – was little Frances Mae. Aunt Frances or Framay would later marry Joseph Raley. Aunt Framay and Uncle Joe had five children.

These lovely ladies and warm, nurturing women are a strong emotional backbone for our family. That stood out particularly clearly to me in regard to the death of my sister Jodie in 1989. These four sisters were not there just for their brother, they were there for all the family. They were such a great example of what family can do for one another. They still are.

A while back I posted a photo of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. with a picture of a ship behind him. (Pee Paw and the Aquitania)  While we knew the name of the ship, we didn’t know the reason that  he was posing beside a photo of it.  This is a photo of him with a different boat.  We don’t know the name of it (at least I don’t!), but we can be pretty sure why he was posing beside it.

Pee Paw with his fishing boat in 1951.

As you can see by this photo, it is a fishing boat that he likely owned.   He looks like he is working on painting or varnishing the vessel to make it seaworthy.   I know he went fishing quite frequently and made his own flies and rods.  I don’t know if he made his own boats.  If I find out that he did, I will follow up on that with the details.

This photo was taken around 1951.  I know that because of what was written on the back of it.  It says that the photo belonged to my dad’s (Bob Landry) older brother Hubert.  It gives the approximate year and it was based on my cousin Hugh being three years old when this photo was taken.  Hugh is not in the photo (unless he was dressed up as a cow in the background, but most likely not!), so Uncle Hubert must have remembered that fact about this photo.

I wonder how many boats he had over the years?  I posted a photo of Pee Paw and my dad in a boat in 1942.  I suppose it could be the same one.  ( I have been told that it was not.  The earlier one was a flat-bottomed boat and this is a canoe.)  It looks like he takes good care of it, which should make it last a while.  He must have been proud of his handiwork, because he seems to be happy to pose with it.

But my biggest question is this:  Why is he wearing a tie and dress clothes while he is working on his boat?  Didn’t they know about comfy clothes back then?

Landry Family Band performing at Shakey’s in 1978.

Today is the second anniversary of my dad’s death, so I thought I would write something in his honor.  I was thinking about it this week, and one evening I came across this photo.  It was from a slide that I took on December 23, 1978, at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I posted a photo from this same evening a while back.  The other photo is a photo of my mom and dad along with me and all of my siblings.  It wasn’t often that all of us were there together, so it’s a special photo.  Any time I mention to someone that my family used to sing together at Shakey’s in the late 70s, I’ll invariably show them that photo.

But this photo is different.  It shows the family members who are no longer with us.  Jodie died in 1989.  It’s hard to believe that it will be 30 years this year.  Then my mom and dad died two years ago within five days of each other from natural causes.  As far as performing at Shakey’s, Mama and Daddy were there more often than the rest of us.  Jodie or Rob were probably there the least.  You can also see my dad’s brother Hubert Landry in the yellow shirt and his wife Mildred Sutherlin Landry next to him.  Uncle Hubert would play the harmonica with us pretty often.  Uncle Hubert and Aunt Mildred are no longer with us as well.  Aunt Mildred died in 1990, less than a year after Jodie, and Uncle Hubert died in 2006.

All of those changes happened after our time at Shakey’s.  We started playing there in June of 1976 and finished up five years later in August of 1981.  Those were times of big changes in the Robert Joseph Landry, Jr./Betty Lou Bucklin Landry family.  In 1976 there were still five of us living at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings.  There was Mama, Daddy, Al, me (Van), and Jamie.  We were the youngest three of the six children and the following school year was the only time that there were three Landry children in high school at the same time.  Al was going to be a senior, I was going to be a sophomore, and Jamie was going to be a freshman.

Also at that time, Jodie was married to her first husband.  They were in Lake Charles at McNeese when they first got married, but later moved to Texas to go to Texas A & M.  They must have moved by this time, otherwise we would have seen them more often at Shakey’s.  Rob was single and in school at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  Karen was single also, but she was at McNeese.  She was able to be at Shakey’s frequently, too.  In fact she got a job there and worked there during the week as well.

By the time 1981 came around, Mom and Dad had become empty nesters.  Al graduated in 1977 and followed Rob up to Tech.  I graduated in 1979 and went to McNeese.  How could I give up performing at Shakey’s on the weekends?  Jamie graduated in 1980 and also went to McNeese.  I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it.  My mom didn’t work outside of the home and my dad was a band director living on a school teacher’s salary.  I seem to recall there being five of us in college at the same time at one point.  Performing at Shakey’s was a way to make ends meet.  I always just thought of it as fun.

A big change for the family during that time was that Jodie went through a divorce.  In some ways that doesn’t sound like a huge thing.  You see it all of the time.  But it wasn’t something that happened in OUR family.  That’s what other people did.  It wasn’t something Jodie wanted for herself, but it happened.  I know she had a bit of anxiety breaking the news to Mom and Dad.  This photo and the photos from that same evening remind me of that situation.  Seeing how Jodie went through that helped me and probably other siblings in breaking troubling news to our parents.

Rob’s first marriage was in 1980.  (He improved that situation a few years later.)  Karen and Jamie met their future spouses during that time as well.  And eventually, so did Jodie.   She even got married during that time.  Al and I were in college.  I actually missed the last month or so of the family performing at Shakey’s.  I was working at AstroWorld in Houston during the summer of 1981.  I’m not sorry I missed it, because I got to see Jodie more often and see her going through her last few months of pregnancy.  I was going to be an uncle!

So the years 1976 through 1981 saw my mom and dad through the last years with children in the house and then on to empty nesters.  Then the following month they became grandparents when little Christopher Rhodes made his grand entrance into the world.  He was the first of the twelve grandchildren enjoyed by Grammie and Pappy.  It was a start to the last era in their lives.  They had some good years.

Rob, Jodie, Jamie, Karen, Al, Bob, and Van Landry in 1963 in Jennings, Louisiana

I was reminded of that fact recently.  We went to our friend Lulu’s house where her son Matthew was selling copies of a book he had just written.  I was not keenly excited about the book, because I have never been interested in hunting.  But we were wanting to support him for various reasons.  Plus the book was written about southern Louisiana by someone who grew up in the area.

Matthew read a short passage from his book (“The Duck Camp” by Matthew Wemple) about when he was a child and his father came home from hunting.  It brought back so many memories of my own that I hadn’t thought about in years.  I don’t really have that many references to hunting to jar those old memories of mine.

But his writing brought back plenty.  For one thing, it reminded me of this old photo from around 1963.  I’m pretty sure it was an instance of my dad coming home from hunting.  He’s got his hunting cap on as well as his rubber boots.  That was some of the standard hunting clothes that he had back then.  There were a few photos taken of this event.  I posted one of them on Facebook last year for Father’s Day.

Daddy hunting in 2000.

There was another article of clothing that Matthew reminded me of in his excerpt – my dad’s old hunting vest.  For some reason, I remember being intrigued with that thing.  It seemed like there were pockets all over it for various things and there were even places to store shotgun cartridges on it somewhere.

There are other vague hunting memories that I remember.  He and my mom’s dad would prepare for duck hunting by getting decoys ready.  My grandfather would make some of those decoys himself and also carved ducks that could be hung on a wall.  He and my dad would sometimes test their aim with a pistol by tossing a coin up in the air and shooting at it.  I seem to recall them actually hitting it at least once.

Bob and Johnny Landry (brothers) hunting in 2000.

Then there were the unpleasant memories associated with hunting.  They were always getting up really early on cold mornings.  Who wants to do that?  Then they’d bring all those birds home and you’d have to pluck them.  That wasn’t so bad until you had to singe them.  Not a smell that you’d want to be around too long.

Those things were enough to keep me from wanting to go hunting.  The desire just wasn’t there.  But you can see from this photo of my dad that he enjoyed it.  I can see how it can be an enjoyable diversion.  And I was glad to be reminded of those long ago pleasant memories of my dad that were lurking in my brain.  Thanks Matthew.

Bob Landry in Jennings, Louisiana. It looks like he was a pretty good shot.

Now that we are looking back at Christmas, I thought I’d take it back to a Christmas of long ago.  I’ve written at least two Christmas related stories that were about tragedies, but I’m not going to do that this year.  Our family has been hit with a tragedy this week, so I will look back to a photo that shows some peace and calm.

Germaine, Johnny, Frances, Wana, and Bobbie Landry at Christmas in 1938.

This is a photo of my dad’s family at Christmas from the late 1930s.  From the apparent ages of the kids in this photo, I estimate it to be from the Christmas of 1938.  That’s the month before my dad turned 10 years old.  I still remember how I thought it was such a big deal when my age turned from a single digit age to a double digit age.  Plus you got to use all ten fingers to show how old you were!  Oh, the joys of childhood.

And one of those joys of childhood is Christmastime.  It was such a magical time.  The expectation was so high.  And the wait was so painstankling long.  From comments from my siblings this week, I realized how well our parents protected us from the turmoil that can show itself in the world.  We all have cherished memories from childhood.

And what led to that was probably similar memories that my parents had, such as the scene from this week’s photo.  That’s my dad on the far right of the photo.  He came from a family of eight children.  The oldest three (Marie, A. J., and Hubert) are not shown in the photo.  A. J. died at the good old age of 94 last week, leaving three surviving siblings.  Those three siblings are the first three children shown in this photo from left to right.  On the left is Germaine,  who was 11 years old at the time.  Her nurturing skills were already starting, because as you can see, she seems to be comforting 2-year-old little brother Johnny in this photo.

The little girl with her head down is 4-year-old Frances Mae.  I’m not sure what she is doing.  She might have something in her lap, but my photo isn’t clear enough to make it out.  Wana, of course, is the little girl with the curly hair.  She was a happy 6-year-old who looks like she was getting ready to tell her sister a funny little story about the boy next door.  Bobbie (my dad) looks mostly happy. Or should I say content?  He doesn’t really have a big smile, but you can’t say he is sad or upset.

So there it is.  A flash into the past.  Happy times at Christmastime.  These siblings would continue to get together for Christmas for decades to come, which provided a lifetime of great memories for more people than I’ll ever know.

A. J., Rob, Johnny, Bobbie, and Hubert Landry circa 1939

Some of you may have seen this photo before.  I know it was posted on Facebook at least once.  I copied it from there and I’m not even sure who it came from.  But I haven’t used it for my family history posts, so I will now.  Besides, I’m running really low on Landry photos.  I need some of you cousins to send me some scans or photos of some of those old photos you have.  I know there must be more out there.  I’ll be searching, too.

This is a really good photo of the Landry men in 1939.  Of course, not all of them were men just yet at that point. The photo has my grandfather – or Pee Paw as the grandchildren called him – with his four sons.  From left to right are A. J. (Alcide Joseph), Pee Paw (Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. or Rob or Pappy), Johnny, my dad Robert Joseph or Bob, and Hubert.

Growing up, I didn’t really notice that much difference in the ages of my uncles.  They were adults, after all, and I was just a silly little boy.  The difference in their ages is very noticeable at the time the photo was taken.  A.J. was about 15 years old and the oldest boy, while Johnny was the baby of the family at 3 years old.  I noticed the same thing in a photo I posted of my mom’s siblings a few weeks back.  The oldest two look like adults while the other three looked more like children.

My mom always told me that the Landry family had a very good and respectable reputation in Lake Charles.  I would have to agree and say that these men did a good job in adding to that favorable family reputation.

Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. and Lloyd Lynch circa 1915-1925.

This photo was from around 100 years ago.  I’m not really sure of when the photo was taken.  The main reason is that I wasn’t around back then.  The other reason is that nobody wrote the date on the photo.

Fortunately the subjects in the photo were named.  The man on the left is my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  He was the father of my dad Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  The other guy in the photo is Lloyd Lynch.

I’m thinking that the time period is some time during Papa’s twenties. (I usually refer to him as Pee Paw, which is what my generation called him.  This is my dad’s name for his dad.)  It’s difficult to know the exact age of people because people don’t change their looks that quickly.  Sure, there can be hair styles and clothing trends, but casual male clothes can look very similar through the years.

Papa was in the military during the Great War, so I don’t think it was during that time period (1917-1918).  I think he played baseball before and after that period and I think this photo might be related to his interest in baseball.  Maybe because most of the other photos that I have of him from that time are baseball related.

So I’m assuming that Lloyd Lynch was a baseball buddy.  I had never heard of him before and I was pleasantly surprised that his name was given.  If anybody knows anything about him, let me know.

I mainly liked the photo because it is a nice photo of my grandfather.  He seems so relaxed and at ease with a nice smile.  What more could you want?