Category: Patureau

Technically, I am not a Patureau.  My last name is Landry.  But I’ve said previously that I am a Patureau.  My paternal grandmother’s name was Germaine Erie Patureau.  I could also say that I am a Bucklin and a Phenice.  I am a product of all of my family lines.  But it was definitely my Patureau part that got me to France.

Toward the end of last May, I got a message on LinkedIn from someone I had never heard of before.  He wrote, “Hi Van! I hope you’re well. I’m doing my genealogy research and I’m looking for the son of Robert Joseph Landry, descendant of Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, could it be you? Take care, Pierre.”  This was very intriguing to me, and also a bit suspicious.  What did this person want?  His profile said something about being an AI startup company.  Was it some phony company that had collected information on me to lure me in?

I wasn’t surprised that someone would link me to my dad and to Ferdinand Pierre Patureau.  I do a lot of research on the Patureau family, so my name would be connected to him in various places.  So why was the message sent to me on LinkedIn, where there wasn’t any connection to that?  People at work were also suspicious and warned me about people trying to steal someone’s liver!  

The other thing that made me suspicious was that I had been learning French online for three years.  I have been watching YouTube channels about people restoring French chateaus for two years.  I had also just gotten my passport.  You have to have a Real ID or a passport if you want to fly anywhere, so I decided on the passport.  I had no plans to go overseas, but the passport would be there if I wanted to do that.  Was someone watching all of this?  I decided to respond to the message carefully.  I wrote back, “Yes, that is me.  What are you interested in?”  He did, after all, say that he was doing genealogy research.

He wrote back talking about Ferdinand Pierre Patureau coming to Louisiana from Dordogne, France, where he lives.  He said that his sister was Uphrosine Patureau who married Pierre Louis Tambrun.  Their father was Liobon Patureau.  This response helped me to feel less leery.  Ferdinand Pierre did come to Louisiana with his father Pierre Ferdinand Patureau in 1840.  It was Pierre Ferdinand that had a sister that I knew of as Euphrosine Tambrun.  And I knew Pierre and Euphrosine’s father as Leobon Patureau.  Mixing up that father and son and spelling the names differently showed me that I was dealing with a real person, not some AI data gatherer.

That made the next part even more interesting.  Pierre said that he lives in the family mansion in LaRoche-Chalais, which is where our Patureau ancestors lived.  I wondered if this was the family “castle” that my grandmother’s brother Rome Patureau talked about visiting during World War I.  I wrote about that three years ago and was hoping to find out where he had gone.  Pierre said that if I wanted to discover France with my loved ones that we were more than welcome to come and stay!

He showed a photo of his place with a rose garden in front.  How could I resist all of that?  I started telling friends and family about it, and before I realized it, I had decided to go to France.  I’d be using that passport after all.  My sister Jamie decided that she’d like to go to France also, so we made plans to make it a long trip to Germany, Austria, and France with Jamie, her husband Allen, and myself.  We decided that May would work for all of us, and off we went.

The first part of the trip was in Germany and Austria around the Bavarian alps.  It was beautiful and charming.  The weather was cooler and we even had a light snowfall on our last morning there.  Then we made our way to France.  After a sketchy night in Bordeaux, we drove on to the Patureau homeland.  Pierre and his family were very welcoming.  The house was amazing.  It was built over a hundred years ago by his great great grandfather Charles Tambrun (I think), a second cousin to my great grandfather Max Patureau.  His grandfather was the leader for the French Resistance in the LaRoche-Chalais area.  The house had so many old books, documents, flags, and other memorabilia related to the family.

We went walking around the village to get a feel for the place.  We found an old graveyard and looked for any Patureau graves.  We didn’t find any.  We visited the Catholic church.  It is not the church that was in existence in the early 1800s, but the old church was in the same location.  That’s where Ferdinand was baptized in 1826, where Pierre Patureau married Rose Machet in 1820, and where Pierre was baptized in 1800.  Pierre’s parents Leobon Patureau and Jeanne Lanson were married in Bors in 1787, and a few years later they brought their family to LaRoche-Chalais.

As we walked around, we found a local boulangerie and supermarket.  We had to try out the croissants, cheeses, pate, and wine.  I got to meet the mayor of the village.  Pierre asked them about the Patureau family name, and they were going to look up some information for him.  We ended the day with a nice meal and visiting with cousins.

The next day we went driving around the countryside of rural France.  In talking to Pierre, we realized that when Pierre and Rose Machet Patureau brought their family to the US, they had been living in Riberac.  That was just a short distance from LaRoche-Chalais, so Jamie, Allen, and I decided to head that way for lunch.  On the way, we stopped and visited a nice chateau in Saint Aulaye.  All of the villages in the area are so charming.  We had lunch in Riberac, then we headed to Chalais for a tour of Chateau de Chalais.

Chateau de Chalais was a larger chateau than the one in Saint Aulaye.  It even had a drawbridge!  I don’t know of any connection to this chateau in the Patureau family, but I’m sure they must have been aware of it.  Many of these old chateaus and churches were originally built 800 to 900 years ago.  Some have original foundations and walls.  All of them have lots of history.  It’s fascinating.

We then hurried back to Pierre’s place, because there were other cousins wanting to meet the American branch of the family!  Pierre’s mother’s name is Florence, and she is my fifth cousin.  (Jamie’s too!)  The cousin we met was Florence’s first cousin Pascal and her husband Thierry.  We looked over some of the family history documents that I brought along.  It was mainly the marriage document for Leobon Patureau and Jeanne Lanson, our common ancestors.  I also had the birth registers for our Ferdinand Patureau and their Pierre Tambrun.  They were both born in LaRoche-Chalais.

Pierre speaks English really well, as does his partner Michelle.  Of course she does, she’s from Canada and she’s lived in the United States.  Pascal and Thierry spoke a little English, which gave me an opportunity to use a bit of my French.  It forces me to try more, which is good practice.  Jamie and Allen felt a little left out of some conversations, but most of the time English was being spoken.  Little Arthur isn’t speaking yet, but I’m sure he will be fluent in both when he starts talking.

The next day was the one I was looking forward to the most.  We were going to visit the Chateau des Plassons in Bors-de-Montmoreau.  Does this sound familiar?  Probably the reason it doesn’t is because I have never mentioned it before.  Not intentionally.  I thought I had mentioned it before on several occasions.  I talk about it all of the time.  But somehow, I overlooked it in the blogs that I wrote. 

I first found out about it in 2018 when I found the 1787 marriage record for Leobon Patureau and Jeanne Lanson in the church in Bors-de-Montmoreau.  In that document it states that Leobon Patureau was a schoolmaster living in the village of Juignac, which is just north of Bors.  He was from Palluaud, where his parents were still living. 

Jeanne Lanson was living in Bors with her parents Francois Lanson and Jeanne Ivain.  Here is the interesting part – Francois is identified as the master chef at Plassons.  The main thing in Bors that is identified as Plassons is the Chateau.  In their granddaughter’s baptismal record in 1790, their son Francois fils is identified as a chef at Chateau des Plassons.  The grandfather Francois is named as godfather.  Our 5X great grandfather Francois Lanson was the master chef at this chateau.  The chateau was built in the 1500s and is still around today.

One of the ways for a place to acquire the name of chateau is for it to have vineyards.  That is the case with Plassons.  It has had vineyards in the area for generations and it still does.  They produce cognac and a drink known as Pineau des Charentes.  It is a local drink that is a combination of grape juice and cognac.  There are different regions in France that give wines their specific names.  Plassons is in the Charentes area.  LaRoche-Chalais is in Dordogne, but we crossed the border when we went to Plassons.  So Pineau des Charentes can only be made in the Charentes region.  It is one of my favorite drinks, though it is somewhat difficult to get.

We went to Plassons for the tour and tasting.  The tasting took place in what I think might have been the old chateau kitchen.  In the back corner of the room was a bread oven.  Don’t ovens belong in a kitchen?  Either way, it was probably a place that old Francois was very familiar with.  I’m not sure when Francois died.  I wonder if he lived long enough to pass some of his culinary skills to his grandson Pierre Patureau.  Pierre’s profession was a baker.  If only that old bread oven could talk.

When we left Plassons, we took the road leading straight out from the front of the chateau.  That short road leads to the church called Notre Dame de Bors-de-Montmoreau.  It’s where Leobon Patureau married Jeanne Lanson.  Leobon had been a schoolteacher in a place called Juignac.  At the end of that short road at the church, you would turn left to go to Juignac.  It’s only about three miles away.  Maybe they met at the church when Leobon was teaching nearby.  There is also a bistro/bar across the street from the church, but I’m not sure how long that was there.  In any case, that was the area where they met each other and fell in love.

But we turned right after the bistro and headed for Palluaud, which is where Leobon was from.  His parents’ names were Antoine Patureau and Marie Sicaud.  Part of the road along the way to Palluaud is called Chez Sicaud.  That means the home of the Sicauds.  This was definitely the area that our Sicaud ancestors were from!  Marie Sicaud spent her whole life there.  It’s a small little village, where the population has been less than 300 for the past fifty years.  There is a church, the mayor’s office, and a bistro all in one little area.  

Pierre and I went into the bistro and asked if anyone knew about the name of Sicaud.  The bartender referred us to the mayor, who just happened to be there when we asked.  So we talked to the mayor of another little village that our ancestors lived.  Everyone was very friendly, but they didn’t know anything about the family Sicaud or Patureau.  I never saw a plaque or anything that mentioned the name of the church or any history about it.  It looked really old, so I’m sure it was the location that Antoine Patureau and Marie Sicaud were married in 1767.  Antoine was a surgeon back then.  In 1787 they listed him as a master surgeon.

It was difficult to keep track of the places that our Patureau ancestors lived and worked over 200 years ago.  They moved around a lot.  They were Go Go Patureaus even back then!  I realized after the fact that I had passed through a few places where our ancestors had lived.  It’s so nice that cell phones identify the location of where photos are taken.  I did take a photo of a sign for Bazac, which is where Rose Machet’s mother lived her life.  Her name was Louise Roux, and she lived there from 1761 to 1804.  She died pretty young, so Rose was two months short of three years old when her mother died.  I never realized that before.  A better photo was of the village of Montboyer, which is where Louise Roux’s mother Marie Bonain was born in 1728.  That’s the photo I show here.

There were also a few places nearby that I knew about but didn’t visit.  Beside Juignac, there was Mareuil.  It is 15 or 20 miles northeast of Bors and it was the birthplace of Rose Machet.  Her parents Louis Machet – the chapelier – and Louise Roux were married there in 1793.  We were short on time, so we headed back toward LaRoche-Chalais and visited the villages of St. Emilion and Aubeterre-sur-Dronne.  They are really charming places in the area with a bit more population.  They have great shopping with local artists and crafts people, churches, old roads and buildings, an underground church, and a monastery.  It was all very charming.

Pierre and Michelle invited us to go to a party at a local chateau on the weekend, but we had plans to go to Paris on Saturday morning.  His parents were waiting for us with our place to stay for the next few days.  It was time to say our good-byes to our newfound family.  I’m so glad that Pierre contacted me because of our Patureau connection.  I had always been curious about the areas that the Patureau family came from, but I never had the motivation to go visit.  His invitation was the motivation I needed.  The place that he lived in may not have been the “castle” that my ancestors lived in, but it was a home built by a Patureau cousin.  

I do think that that home was the place that Rome Patureau visited during World War I.  The Patureau family was associated with LaRoche-Chalais and the family he would have visited would have been the Tambrun family.  There are no other chateaus in the area associated with the Patureau family.  In all of the old books in that house, there may be some with mention of the Patureau name written in it.  It’s going to take a while for someone to go through all of that.

Paris was next.  After such a wonderful time in southern France, I didn’t think I would like the big city.  But I was wrong.  It’s not like any other big city I’ve been in.  It is so captivating and has so many old buildings.  And on top of all of that, there was more family there!  Pierre’s parents Florence and Regis greeted us when we arrived in Paris.  They also were very warm and welcoming.  I guess we passed the test with Pierre!

Regis was really funny.  He and Florence speak English well, but not as good as Pierre.  This gave me more chance to use my French speaking.  Regis was quick to correct me and my pronunciation.  We’d be saying “ah” and “ah” back and forth to each other until I would finally get an acceptable version.  I loved it.  We didn’t have much time that first evening, because we had a dinner cruise planned.  They left to go upstairs so we could get ready for the evening.  The cruise was nice with delicious food.  The odd thing was that we were sitting next to two tables with people from Louisiana.  The guy next to me was from New Orleans and his son works for the same company that I do.  It’s a small world sometimes.  We met the cruise at the base of the Eiffel Tower, so we got to see it during the daylight and at night.  It looks much better with the sparkling lights on it.

We explored Paris over the next few days, then we had a dinner at Florence and Regis’s on Tuesday night.  Not that I knew it was Tuesday.  I lost all sense of time when I was there.  Jamie did all of the planning, for which I am very grateful.  We finally got to meet their daughter Diane, who had let us use her apartment while we were in Paris.  She was very sweet, and she welcomed us warmly as the rest of the family had.

Regis continued his guidance of all things associated with French words.  He said that he had looked up the etymology of the name Patureau.  In some cases, it is spelled Pastureau, which points to it being associated with fields or pastures.  The name could have derived from shepherds or dairy farmers.  Florence provided a very nice meal of several courses.  I may have made a faux pas or two.  I may have kissed her on the wrong side first.  I still can’t remember which side comes first.  Is it my left, or their left?  I also may have used one of the plates too early and I ended up short for the evening.  So many new customs to learn.  Thankfully, she seemed to take it all in stride.

Before we left Paris, we were able to get together with Diane for dinner for our last evening.  She met us after we visited Sacre Coeur.  It’s an amazing old basilica in the Montmartre part of Paris.  Diane met us at a restaurant not far from there.  We had a great meal.  She also helped me with some of my French language instruction.  She tried to help me with the rolling guttural French R.  I have never been able to roll my tongue, even though I have tried throughout my whole life.  It’s my kryptonite!  She would start like her father, with gentle repeats for me to mimic.  But then she’d say, “Ok,” in a dismissive way.  She knew I wouldn’t get it, and I did, too.  I thought it was hilarious and I couldn’t stop laughing.  I would try and it was always forced and pressured and wrong.  It would just roll off the back of her tongue so easily.  Oh, well.

After dinner, we went outside and looked down the street.  I noticed some lights and asked what they were.  Diane said that we had to go to see.  It was Moulin Rouge.  I definitely wanted to go see that.  Besides The Sound of Music, it’s one of the musicals I like.  As we walked down the street, we saw some more risqué parts of the city.  I didn’t notice any of those places during the day.  I thought I might be misremembering that, but I wasn’t.  It’s just down the way from Sacre Coeur.  We took a few photos in front of Moulin Rouge, then took the metro home.  We worked on pronouncing the names of the stops as we went along.  As long as the R was not involved, I did fine.  I even got a “perfect” from Diane.  I was very proud.  (I can’t say that in French because it has Rs in it!)

The next day we said our goodbyes to Paris and headed to Germany.  I couldn’t have had a better time with the family we met in France.  None of us knew what to expect.  After all, we had never met each other before we headed across the world to see them.  But we allowed ourselves to trust that they were family and things would work out.  And they did.  I hope to see them again, either here in America or in France.  Or both!

I decided on a photo for tonight’s post and decided to edit it before I used it.  I thought I’d delete the lines, scratches, and small spots that were all over the photo.  Light spots in the dark areas and dark spots in the light areas.  They were all over the place and it took way longer than what I wanted to spend.  As I was zoomed in on certain areas, the image reminded me of images seen from the James Webb space telescope.  It’s like I was extinguishing stars in a large nebula!  When I would zoom out, I could still see my grandmother Erie with her group of friends and/or family.  Hence the title.

The photo is of a group of seventeen young adults from around 1920.  I’m thinking that the photo was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is where my grandmother was living back then.  My dad’s mother was Germaine Erie Patureau before she married Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry in 1921.  She was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, but the family moved to Lafayette around 1912.  

Erie went to SLI and got her teaching degree and then worked as a teacher for a few years in Lafayette.  I don’t think this is a picture of a group of teachers.  It looks more like couples.  Maybe not.  There are more than twice as many women.  I compared the men to the photo of her graduating class, but I couldn’t make any certain connections.

In the photo, Erie is fourth from the right.  She’s looking down and to the left and is wearing a dark coat.  She doesn’t really seem so happy, but I still like the photo.  They seem like a tight little group.  I really wish I knew who they all were.  I’m pretty sure that one of them is her youngest sister, Sylvie.  The one I’m talking about is the one that is fourth from the left.  She’s standing, wearing a dark coat, but she’s smiling and looks somewhat happy.

Maybe it’s because she is wearing moss around her neck.  She’s not the only one.  The two young women sitting in front of her are also wearing the moss.  I didn’t notice it until I was cleaning up the photo.  I was getting ready to get rid of it because I thought it was a bad scratch or something.  Then I realized it was moss and that a few of them were wearing it.  I don’t recognize the other two wearing moss around their necks.  They could be cousins, but they don’t look like Patureau sisters.  But the two young women between Erie and Sylvie (tentative ID) look like they could be. 

So, this might be a photo with at least four Patureau sisters in it.  It’s a bit nebulous.

 

I always try to be creative and unique with the titles of my posts.  They are easier to find that way when I later go searching for them.  Maybe I should say that I try to make my posts easily searchable by their titles.  I’m not sure I succeed with either one of those descriptions.  But I do it.  I keep writing posts and I keep coming up with titles for them.  I’ve been doing that every week for almost ten years now.  Ten years!!  That’s 544 posts in that time.  And 544 titles.  I’ve been thinking about that the past few days.  It’s time for me to get serious about putting some of them together to make some books for the different family groups.  I’m not getting any younger.

Here is a photo of my paternal grandmother from around 1921.  Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau, but most of her friends just referred to her as Erie.  You know, like the lake.  She was born in Crescent, Louisiana, in 1895.  Crescent is a small community near Plaquemine along Bayou Plaquemine.  She grew up there along Bayou Road until the family moved to Lafayette in 1912.

In Lafayette she went to college at SLI and became a teacher.  She and her sisters taught in Lafayette a few years.  Then she decided to get married.  I’m not exactly sure when she got engaged.  She was married in November of 1921, so she probably got engaged earlier that year or the previous year.  And I think that’s around the time that this photo was taken.

This photo leaves me with more questions than answers.  The two girls are wearing large coats, so if I’m right about the time frame, this was probably taken around January or February of 1921.  I’m saying it was in Lafayette because that’s where Miss Patureau was living at the time.  But what’s with the parasol?  I would call it an umbrella, but it’s not raining and they are using the apparatus to (unsuccessfully) block the sun.  And I’ve never before seen a photo of someone wearing a big coat and carrying a parasol.  I looked!

And who is that girl holding the parasol?  It could be a friend, or it could be family.  The more I look at it, I think she looks like Erie’s younger sister Sylvie.  But when I look at it closer it doesn’t seem to look like her.  Just like with Erie; when I look at her in this photo it makes me think of my sister Karen.  There’s just something about it that seems Karenish.   The girl in the photo could be anyone.  I don’t think she was identified on the back of the photo.  It came from Box 301, and when I was taking photos of those pictures, I would photograph the back of it had identifying writing on it.  So she is a mystery for now and maybe forever.

But we know our dear sweet Mee Maw.  That’s who Erie became when she got older. But back then she was just Erie.  Excited about starting a new part of her life when she married that Rob Landry guy.  Counting down the days.  And making sure to protect her fair skin from the cruel winter sun.

Last year, my favorite acquired photo was an old tintype of these Patureau siblings.  That old photo was taken in 1881 and it’s the earliest photo of my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau that I know of.  It was from the Box 301 Collection that was discovered in my Aunt Wana’s attic.  She is my dad’s sister, and they both were grandchildren of Grampa Max through their mother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  That old 1881 photo of Max and his brother (Pierre) Oscar wasn’t the only photo of them in that collection.  There was this other one from about forty years later.

So I’m estimating that this photo was taken around 1920.  I came up with that date because of another photo that was taken on the same day.  That photo includes one of Max’s sons, and I used his apparent age to estimate the date.  But looking at these two old geezers makes me question that.  They look to be in their sixties, but that wouldn’t be correct for 1920.  Max was only 55 in 1920, while Oscar was only 54.  I think people looked older sooner than we do now.  Or maybe I’m just kidding myself.  

I still think the date is pretty accurate.  The latest the photo could be is 1926.  That was the year that Oscar died.  He never did make it to the age of 60, so there never was a photo of those Patureau brothers in their sixties.  The earliest photo I have of them was when they were teenagers.  I had trouble identifying Grampa Max at first because it was from before he grew out his ever-present mustache.   Late last year I posted that photo in a post titled Patureau Brothers: Before They Were Doctors.

It was always my intention to use this later photo for a follow-up to that post.  The two Doctors Patureau look like they were well-dressed and respectable.  I think Grampa Max started his veterinary business in Plaquemine, Louisiana, sometime after 1900.  Before then, he made barrels, provided a service for delivering groceries, and ran a grocery store.  In 1889 there was an ad for installing lightning rods, and the provider of these services was V. M. Patureau and Bro.  I’m thinking Max was probably working with Oscar, because his other two younger brothers – Alcide and Omer – were working as barbers.

The first piece of information about Max’s veterinary practice was in the form of newspaper recommendations in the 1908 Plaquemine newspaper.  He may have asked people to write to the paper to help him get his business started.  People had good things to say about his skills and kindly manner.  Max’s wife – Marie Therese Landry Patureau – died in 1909, and then a few years later he moved his family and his practice to Lafayette, Louisiana.

Oscar Patureau went to dental school in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1895.  I don’t know how he managed that, because he had married in 1888, and by 1895 they had three young children.  He must have been determined to accomplish that and worked hard.  By the time of the 1900 Census, the family was living in New Orleans and he was working as a dentist.  In 1920 he was still working in the medical field.  I assume he continued working until his death in 1926.  Grampa Max continued to work as a veterinarian until 1933, when he retired due to declining health.

So there you have it – Doctor Patureau and his brother Doctor Patureau.  Otherwise known as Max and Oscar.  Taking some time out of their busy schedules 100 years ago to visit their brother and probably sharing a funny story or two.  Grampa Max strikes me as someone who would have had some interesting stories to tell.

 

I’ve posted two other photos from the same long ago day in June of 1953.  The first one I posted was a photo of my Mee Maw with her sisters that I found after the death of one of my dad’s cousins ten years ago.  That was just a few months before I started posting these weekly family history blogs.  Then cousin Sis gave me a copy of another photo from that 1953 event.  It was of Mee Maw with her siblings and some of her niblings, including her niece Sis.  I shared that photo five years ago.

I suppose that means that it is time for another photo from that event.  I just happen to have the perfect photo for that.  It was given to me by Wade, another cousin from the Patureau family.  The Patureau family in Louisiana started in 1840 when Pierre Patureau and Anne Rose Machet brought their children here from Riberac (near LaRoche-Chalais), France.  Their son Ferdinand reached the age of maturity in Louisiana and married a woman of Acadian descent.  Her name was Marie Emma Landry.  They had more than a dozen children, and my line comes from their son Vincent Maximilian Patureau.  I like to refer to him as Grampa Max.

Max grew up in Plaquemine, Louisiana, and when he was old enough, he married a Marie Landry of his own.  Mrs. Max Patureau had the given name of Marie Therese Landry.  They had more than a dozen children of their own, though only nine of them lived to adulthood.  The oldest was Marie Emma Patureau, who was born August 3, 1889.  She married Anthony Joseph Mouton in 1919.  Aunt Emma and Uncle Toby lived in Duson, Louisiana.  Next is Romuald Sylvester Patureau, who was born December 27, 1891.  He was married to Etta Mae Reese, though I don’t know when.  They were known as Uncle Rome and Mom Pat, though they didn’t have any children.  They lived in Baton Rouge and Alexandria.  Marie Lydwin is next and she was born November 28, 1893.  Aunt Win was never married and she lived in Plaquemine.  My grandmother was next.  She was born on August 6, 1895.  She was married to Robert Joseph Landry on November 12, 1921, in Lafayette.  They were known as Uncle Rob and Aunt Erie, though to me they were Pee Paw and Mee Maw.  They lived in Lake Charles.  My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  He was known as Bob.

Following Erie was Frances Lorena, who was born October 10, 1896.  She married Samuel Sidney Cary in 1916.  Aunt Lorena and Uncle Sidney lived in Opelousas.  The next two were Zita Amelie and Marie Therese.  Aunt Zita was born November 29, 1897.  Bee (Marie Therese) was born on March 16, 1899.  She married Clarence George Schafer in 1933.  They had two daughters, and then Bee died in 1937. (Uncle Rome died the same year.)  Uncle Clarence then married Aunt Zita in 1940 and they reared the two girls together.  She is still referred to as Aunt Zita.  They all lived in Plaquemine.

The last two children that made it to adulthood were born in the 1900s.  Vincent Maximilian Patureau, Jr. was born November 4, 1901.  He married Effie Clements in 1936.  Uncle Vincent and Aunt Effie lived in Baton Rouge and Beaumont, Texas.  Lastly we have Sylvie Albine, who was born July 28, 1903.  She married John Walter Marionneaux in 1929.  Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Son lived in Plaquemine.

The siblings seemed pretty close.  That’s kind of obvious from the fact that they all came together for an event honoring their sister Emma when they were all in their 50s and 60s.  Some siblings don’t even talk to one another for periods of time.  An example is my maternal grandfather and his identical twin.  That seems very sad to me.  Since I’ve already given you the names of Mee Maw and her siblings, now let me identify them in the photo.  From left to right we have Win, Zita, Vincent, Emma, Lorena, Erie, and Sylvia.

I thought I would keep it simple today.  I don’t have a lot to say.  Sure there have been some interesting things happening, particularly with the Patureau family.  I’m not ready to say more about some of it yet.  But there have been lots of cousins commenting on old Patureau posts the last few days.  So Patureau has been on my mind lately.

For some reason this old photo of my great grandfather with three other people has always caught my attention.  I had an old copy of it from my dad for a few years.  It was just these four people standing in a field.  I always thought it was a cropped photo.  I imagined that someone cropped the bottom part of the photo, and I always wanted to be able to see their lower legs and feet.

So when this photo showed up in Box 301 last year, I was a little surprised.  I was correct about it being cropped, but wrong about what part was cropped off.  Instead of their feet showing, lots more sky can be seen.  I kinda like it.  I was very pleased that it was labeled with everyone’s name.  That is always so helpful with photos from 100 years ago.

On the left in the suit is my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau.  He was born in Matamoras, Mexico, in 1865 to French and Acadian parents.  His father was from France and his mother was from Louisiana with Acadian ancestry (with a little bit of French thrown in there).  Standing next to him is Mrs. Broussard.  Not very helpful, but it is better than nothing.  There can’t be that many Mrs. Broussards in the Lafayette area, right?  To the right of her is my grand uncle Louis Landry.  My grandparents were Erie Patureau and Rob Landry.  Erie was the daughter of Grampa Max, and Rob was the younger brother of Uncle Louie.  On the right is Aunt Lorena, another daughter of Grampa Max.

The photo looked so empty with that huge amount of sky above their heads.  I thought maybe I would put the word Patureau up in the air in an interesting font.  But then I decided that a signature would be better.  Since the Box 301 Collection included a document with Grampa Max’s signature, it was an easy thing to add to the photo.  The signature was from 1905.  

There, that’s simple enough.

I’ve shared a few photos of my paternal grandmother Erie Patureau (Known to her grandchildren as Mee Maw) and this group of people.  The first one I shared of this little group was in 2016.  The back of that photo was really helpful because it named all of the people and also gave a general date (summer 1912).  Then in 2018 I shared a photo of Erie by herself that was taken on the same day.  It is a sweet photo of her.  It wasn’t until 2020 that I made the connection that these photos were taken around the time that she must have gotten engaged.  I posted a more formal photo from around the same time.  Those photos were from my dad and from the Tin Can Collection.  The Tin Can Collection was from my Aunt Wana’s attic.  It was the first collection from that attic.

Last year when some cousins got together after a funeral, we got to see the second collection from Aunt Wana’s attic.  Those photos were in a box labeled Box 301.  I was happy to see a few more photos from the same days as the other informal photos.  I actually used one of them as the intro for the Box 301 Collection.  Today I’m sharing another one.  I’m sure you are very happy to be hearing that.  I would be if I were you!  I decided to use this photo at work today, so when I got home, I did some editing on it.  It was a bit rough looking with age spots and scratches.  That’s normal when you have photos from 100 years ago.

I’m still not exactly sure where these photos are taken, though I am pretty sure they were taken in Lafayette, Louisiana.  That’s where she and her sister were living at the time and it looks like it could be from there.  Actually, many places in southern Louisiana look like the settings.  They could have driven around to find interesting places for photos.  There’s really no way to know.

But like I said, we know the date and the actors.  It was the summer of 1921, so I usually say it was the July of 1921.  Erie would marry Rob Landry (Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.) on November 12th of that year.  In case you aren’t aware yet, Erie is the young woman in the white dress.  The young woman on the right of her is her younger sister Zita Patureau.  They were both young schoolteachers in Lafayette at the time.  I don’t recall ever meeting her, but surely I must have.  She was alive when Mee Maw died, so she would have been at the funeral.  She would have been at get togethers for the family before then.  But I have no memory of her.

The young boy on the left in the photo is Henry Louis Landry.  He is related to both Rob and Erie.  He is Rob’s nephew and Erie’s half first cousin.  H. L. was the third son in a Landry family of three boys and three girls – like me.  He grew up in Lafayette.  The young man on the left is Clifford Clements.  I have not found any relation to him.  He must have been just a friend.  The young man between Clifford and Erie is Erie and Zita’s first cousin on the Patureau side of the family.  Joseph Earnest Cropper was born in White Castle, Louisiana, but lived in Beaumont, Texas, the rest of his life.

The gang looks like they’re doing a bit of gambling!  Clifford, Earnest, and Zita all have some cash in their hands.  Clifford and Zita look like they have each cast a die and are looking expectantly for the outcome.  The tension is palpable!  The dice have not settled and look like random spots on the photo.  I almost deleted one accidentally!  That would have ruined the whole photo.  I think this might be a bit staged.  Erie doesn’t look too concerned about any outcome.  She’s just happily smiling for the photographer as she makes sure her engagement ring can be seen.  I think she had love on her mind.