Landry | Family History

Hathaway Horse Sense

April 27, 2016 Van Leave a comment

A Little Bit of Horse Sense Goes a Long Way

I have recently been going through the book that Edith Keys Segraves put together and published in 1980. It is called “Cook-Keys Family: Two Centuries in England and America.” In it she lists the ancestors of Henry Keys and Martha Cook, my great great grandparents. I’m sure you know all about them because I have mentioned them before and recently posted a photo of their three daughters – Daisy, Mabel and Ruth. (See Dec. 13, 2015 post by clicking on thumbnail.) Those three daughters are the root of the discovery I recently was able to confirm.

In the book Cousin Edith not only lists the ancestors, but also spent a good bit of time and energy in finding and naming as many descendants as she could find. At that time it would have meant a lot of telephone calls (with real phones connected to the wall!) and letters (remember those? You would sit down and write on paper with a pen!) And she didn’t stop with just the descendants of Henry and Martha, she went back two generations further – namely to William Horsnell who was born in 1770. I posted a photo of Uncle Will Horsnell (son of William) a while back. (See Feb. 24, 2016 post by clicking on thumbnail.) He’s the uncle that moved from Iowa to Louisiana and Martha Cook Keys followed him there. He’s the first person buried at China cemetery.

But before Martha moved to Louisiana, some of her Horsnell and Cook relatives followed Unce Will and his brothers to Iowa in the 1850s. Cousin Edith tracked most of this information and listed their descendants at the end of her book. And me being the devoted (or deranged – you can choose your adjective!) genealogist that I am, I have been entering all of these people into my own family tree. Then I take it a bit further and try to bring it up to date. Using birth and death notices on Ancestry is the first thing I do. Then I look up obituaries online or on FindAGrave.com. Some of them will list all of the family members, which is really helpful. Once I get to people born in the 50s, I take to Facebook and see who I can find.

There is a lot of information that people share on Facebook. Has anyone noticed that? It can be helpful with my research. I even copy photos of relatives and add them to my tree. It’s interesting to see how some family lines kind of die out, while others spread like wildfire. In my quest, I came across some Hunters with a Horsnell mother. From time to time I’ll send a note to someone if it looks like they are interested in genealogy, but most of the time I find as much as I can then move on. That’s what I did with the Hunters.

But then on a genetic genealogy site a few days later, someone with the same last name as one of the Hunter sisters posted a note about being on a DNA site GEDmatch.com, which is where I do a lot of my research. So I went to the site and searched the name in Mama and aunt Loris’s match list. The guy’s name didn’t show up in their list, but a Cheryl Benham did come up. And the name sounded familiar from the Hunter sisters. So I looked her up, and sure enough Cheryl Hunter married a Benham. Could it be our Horsnell cousin Cheryl? She had matching DNA to aunt Loris and a smaller amount with Mama.

1770 William Horsnell Connection - 3

So I sent her a note, and she replied quickly. Yes, her mother was a Hornsell. Even though she matched mom and Loris, I still wanted to get more verification. She was a member of 23andMe where many Keys relatives have tested, so I invited her to share with me. She quickly agreed and yesterday I compared her with the other Keys cousins and “Eureka!” she matched Kay Bryan and Myra Miller (who are 2nd cousins to each other and 4th cousins with Cheryl) on the exact same spot.

Definitely some Horsnell DNA that has been passed down through the generations. (In case you were wondering about the title, this is what I was refering to. Mama always said that she had “Hathaway horse sense.” Come to find out, she inherited it!)

So that book by Edith Keys Segraves is a treasure. I wish I could thank her. I’m sure she would be excited to see the verification of the research with the matching DNA. Maybe even more excited than all of you are! But to see DNA from each of the Keys sisters – Daisy being represented by mom and Loris, Mabel being represented by Myra Miller, and Ruth being represented by Kay Bryan – that was passed down from even further back and being able to identify it is remarkable. Thanks again, Cousin Edith.

Sisters: Part 2

April 20, 2016 Van Leave a comment

1935 - Unknown, Germaine, Wana, Frances, Bobbie

Unknown girl, Germaine, Wana, Frances, and Bobbie Landry circa 1935

I thought I’d continue the theme of sisters/siblings for another week. This is a photo of my dad with three of his sisters. I don’t know who the girl on the left is (any info on who that might be would be appreciated), but next to her is Germaine, Wana, Frances, and Bob Landry. When you come from family lines with lots of kids, there are sisters and aunts everywhere! This time the focus is on my dad’s side of the family. He, like my mom, had four girls in his family. There were also four boys as well. And this was in the middle of the Great Depression!

A. J. and Marie Landry circa 1925

But they didn’t seem to lack the important things. They had their brothers and sisters in Lake Charles. They had some cousins in Plaquemine that they liked to visit. My dad talks about how he liked to sleep on the porch at their house. I guess sometimes “important things” don’t include beds! When I think of him sleeping on the porch as a kid, I picture him at the age he is in this first photo. Such a cute group of kids.

I wouldn’t want to leave Aunt Marie out of the discussion. She’s the oldest of my father’s siblings. This photo is from 1925 when the family only consisted of my grandparents and their first two children. This is A. J. and Marie Landry. I love this old photo. I just wish the chicken’s beak was in the photo. That would be perfect!

Kinda like this!

A good editor can capture the attention of a chicken after 90 years and make it look at the camera!

Landry

The Bujol Connection

April 6, 2016 Van One comment

Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin circa 1915

My paternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother was born Marie Amelie Bujol in 1843 in Brusly, Louisiana. Her parents were Joseph Hubert “Amedee” Bujol (b. 1815) and Anna Adele Landry (b. 1817). At some point she started going by the nickname Belite (rhymes with petite). In 1867 she was married to Confederate Civil War hero Trasimond Landry, who was her mother’s half first cousin.

Trasimond and Belite had five children together in their first nine years of marriage. I descend from their first born child Marie Therese. Trasimond died of yellow fever in 1879. Belite then married Magloire Babin in 1880 and they had three daughters together. The first daughter was born in 1880 (according to 1880 Census) and must not have lived very long.

They lived in Plaquemine and then moved to Lafayette some time before 1910. She lived close to her daughter Clemence and her family. A few years later her deceased daughter Marie Therese Landry Patureau’s family moved nearby as well. Family seemed important to her. She looks like a hard, no nonsense woman. Some of that could be that she experienced the death of both of her husbands and also went through the deaths of six of her eight children. So let’s give Belite a nod of respect. I think she earned it.

Dec. 2020 Update – adjusted the number of children that she had with Magloire Babin.

Bujol
Landry

A Pitcher from the Past

March 23, 2016 Van Leave a comment

1915-03 - Robert Joseph Landry Sr. Baseball team

March 1915 – tryouts for the Texas League Beaumont Oilers.

It’s a picture pun. This photo is from 101 years ago. My grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. was a baseball player in his younger days. I’ve always heard that he was a semi-pro player. This photo (according to the information on the back of it) was taken at the tryouts for Beaumont in the Texas League in March 1915.

When I was working on this photo, I mistakenly picked out the wrong person to be my grandfather. (I wasn’t around back then, you see. And evidently I can’t read names very well, either) When I got to the guy I thought was my grandfather, I cleared up scratches and such, but I didn’t get any visions of cousins like I usually do when working on photos of my grandparents. The only way I knew I had the wrong guy is that when I started working on the right guy, I had visions of Uncle Hubert, Uncle AJ, Douglas Winn, Mark Reeves, Kenny Landry, Al Landry, Rob Landry, Dennis Landry, Bob Landry, Gregory Raley, Micha Duffy.

BTW the right guy is the one standing on the far right. From the little research that I did, the name of the semi-professional team was the Beaumont Oilers. The team rosters for 1914 and 1915 showed many of the same names from this photo.

1915-03 - Robert Joseph Landry Sr. Baseball team back IDs

Back of the photo showing names of players in the photo; 1914 and 1915 rosters for Beaumont Oilers

Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. in March of 1915

In case anybody is still unsure of which one was my grandfather, here is a crop of the photo above. You can see more details in it.

Landry

Erie Patureau

March 9, 2016 Van 3 comments

Previously I have posted about my paternal grandmother, who we all called Mee Maw. Everybody still fights over who was her favorite and it’s a good kind of fight. And even though I posted a photo of her as a young girl a while back, I still think of her a matronly woman who loved to travel and visit with her children and grandchildren. But lately I’ve been getting to know her as just Erie Patureau. A girl who grew up in Plaquemine with six sisters and two brothers. The family ran a shop and there was lots of family around.

Things changed when her mother died in 1909 when Erie was just a teenager. The shop was closed, she graduated from Crescent Graded School around 1911, and the family moved to Lafayette in 1912. I’m not sure of all of the dates of those events, but I found a little clue in an article about her graduating class from SLI from March of 1915. It states that “The following January (1912) after all danger of finals was over Erie showed up. Modest and retiring, she was hard to make friends with, but we were determined and now she’s ours.”

So now I too feel like I have gotten to know her a bit and she is mine. But I’m willing to share her with the rest of the family.

The End of an Era

February 18, 2016 Van Leave a comment

The Yellow House on Lucy Street

The Landry Family moved to 758 Lucy Street over 50 years ago and soon it will no longer be part of the family. Our parents moved to an assisted living apartment in Lake Charles a few months ago. In the meantime, someone decided they just had to have that house on 758 Lucy Street. They had taken a walk through it before it was cleaned out and they declared the house to be a “happy space.”

My parents agreed to go ahead and sell the house. So we all got together and cleaned it up, cleared it out, and said our good byes. So many years of Christmases, New Years, Easters, Halloweens, and Thanksgivings with us kids, then grandkids, and now with the great grandkids. So many good memories there.

Here is a photo of the family soon after we moved in. When my parents were looking for a house, they were unsure of which house they wanted. The children, however, were not. We all wanted the yellow house on Lucy Street. We eventually covered over the yellow with siding, but in this photo you can still see the appealing yellow color. It was also before we concreted the driveway. Just like it was when we first moved in.

In order from left to right: Al Landry, Jamie Landry, Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, Van Landry, Jodie Landry, Karen Landry, and Rob Landry

Lieutenant Landry

January 28, 2016 Van One comment

Rob Landry circa 1919 during World War I

I’ve posted two photos of my dad’s mom, so it’s time to post one of her husband Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. This is a photo from around 1919 when he was 26 and involved with World War I. He was a 1st lieutenant in the US Army. He later married his first cousin’s daughter Germaine Erie Patureau and they had eight children together.

Even though my dad was the third son, he was named Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. My dad and his siblings called their dad Pappy. He was known by his grandchildren as Pee Paw. Sadly I never really knew him because he died in 1957 (three years before I was born). I’ve heard many good things about him and he was a handsome young man.

Sock Monkeys in the Past

January 6, 2016 Jacko One comment

Hello! Your friendly, charming sock monkey here. Now we’re going to do something good for Throw Away Thursday. Van has been a bit serious and boring lately showing all those photos of serious dead people. None of them ever seem to be smiling. That’s not fun. And you want to know why? Just look at the photos – there’s not a sock monkey in sight! And everybody knows that sock monkeys bring joy wherever they go.

My Papi tells me about how excited Van used to be when he visited his grandma Murder and found him in the toy chest. (See second photo in this post.) It was the highlight of the visit.

But this post is not about Van. It’s about sock monkeys bringing joy. I found a real old picture – probably a bunch of munce ago – and even though it is old, the humans are smiling. Why? Because a sock monkey is in the picture, that’s why! Case closed. This is Papi and his Bettilou back in the day.

Photo of Van with Papi in 1964. See how happy he was?

Throwback Thursday Threefer: Part I

December 24, 2015 Van 2 comments

Merry Christmas to my Landry/Leveque relatives. Last week I had Marie Celeste Leveque and this week I have her father Joseph Auguste Leveque, my great great grandfather.

Joseph Auguste Leveque circa 1885

He was born in 1805 and died in 1894 in Westlake, Louisiana. He was first married to Clarissa Doralise Landry and they had six children together. Shortly after the sixth child was born, his wife died. He then married her sister Marguerite Basalite Landry and they had eight children together. Marie Celeste was their second child and she married Simon Alcide Landry. They were my great grandparents. There are lots of big families in this line, so there are lots of Landry and Leveque relatives out there.

Leveque and Landry United

December 16, 2015 Van One comment

Last week I posted a photo of my paternal grandmother. This week I am posting a photo of my dad’s paternal grandmother. Her name was Marie Celeste Leveque and she was born in 1847 in Brusly, Louisiana. That is just across the river from where I live now. In fact this evening I’ll be passing right through there on my way to Plaquemine.

Marie Celeste Leveque circa 1868

She married Simon Alcide Joseph Landry in 1868. My assumption is that this photo was from her wedding engagement around the time prior to the wedding. If anyone knows better, let me know. I’m not sure who has an original printing of this photograph. I have a scan that was faded and in sepia that I edited to bring to this condition. Enjoy it.

July 2020 Update – New colorized version of the photo

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