Category: Patureau

Circa 1905 Patureau Lane in Crescent, Louisiana

I came into possession of this photo a little over a year ago.  I had seen it in the book “Trasimond Landry: Soldier and Public Servant” by Thomas R. Landry (my Mee Maw’s first cousin) and was on the lookout for a good copy of it.  That book is one of two books that I have about my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry.  It has some history of the Landry family and also lists all of the descendants of Trasimond Landry.  But this post is technically a Patureau post since he was my grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau’s maternal grandfather.

When I started writing these posts, I knew I was going to have to track down more photos because I really didn’t have that many to begin with.  So I referred to this book to see what photos I wanted and this was one of the top ones I wanted.

Then we moved my parents out of their home in Jennings when they moved to assisted living in Lake Charles in August 2015.  Someone saw the “happy house” at 758 Lucy Street and decided they wanted it, so my siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws and I cleared out their home in January 2016.  As you may have guessed, this photo was discovered while clearing out the house.  My brother-in-law Allen found it with some other old photos that I had never seen before.  I’ve already posted some of the others, but now it’s time for Patureau Lane Properties.

I called it that because this is a south-facing view of Patureau Lane in Crescent, Louisiana, around 1905.  It was named Crescent because of the crescent shaped bend in Bayou Plaquemine about 4.5 miles west of Plaquemine proper.  For a period of time it was a central portage area for travelers in that area of Louisiana.  This led to a community in Crescent in the early 1900s that consisted of many members of the Landry and Patureau extended families.  (Which made it easy to find and marry your not too distant cousins!)

One part of that community was the Star Club.  This was long before social media, so people had to have some place to get together to share news with their neighbors.  It was a social club, but it also performed services for the community.  But the big event was a ball that they had at the end of the year.  The ball was held in the Star Club Hall, which is shown on the right in this photo.

But another important fact about the Star Club was that the secretary for the year of 1902 was my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau and the treasurer was my great great uncle Thomas B. Landry (Thomas R.’s father).  In the photo V. M. Patureau’s home is the house that is to the left (across from the Star Club Hall).  The home on the right belonged to the Leobon Patureau family.  The Thomas B. Landry family lived across the bayou road from V. M. Patureau. (The horse and carriage in the full-frame photo was in front of that home.  This photo was taken at the intersection of Patureau Lane and the bayou road.)

The main problem with this photo is not really a problem with the photo.  It’s a problem with my knowledge.  I don’t know who all of these people are!  Even though there are several little girls in the photo and they look similar to old photos of the Patureau family, I can’t definitely identify anyone.  But I’m sure they must be family.  Why else would we have the photo and the photo was used in the book about descendants of Trasimond Landry?  I sure would like to know who they were.  Does anyone know?  There may be other copies of this photo out there.  If anyone knows more or finds out more, I would appreciate being kept in the loop.  Inquiring minds want to know!

Full-frame photo of Patureau Lane looking south from the bayou road. Behind to the left would be Thomas B. Landry’s home, to the left is V. M. Patureau’s home, Star Club Hall is in the middle to the right, and to the right is the home of Leobon Patureau. Circa 1905.

Grampa Max makes a house call.

What can you say about a photo of a man and a cow?  I guess I’ll try to give you something!  I came across this photo last year when we cleared out our Lucy Street home in Jennings.  My dad must have collected some old photos and had them stashed away in the big closet in the “running” or “dance” room of the house.  I don’t ever remember seeing the photos.  He didn’t take them out and show anybody that I recall.  I guess he was just saving them until I could get my grabby little paws on them!

But it seems to run in the family.  Maybe it’s genetic?  Because my cousin Tricia found some old photos in her mom’s (my aunt Wana’s, my dad’s sister Wana’s) attic.  And from what I can make out about the way the photos are displayed, an old photo album of Mee Maw’s must have been dismantled and divided.  Take this photo of Vincent Maximilian Patureau (my great grandfather,  “Grampa Max” to my dad) which was pasted onto a white page with several other small photos as an example.  There were a few pages like this that were part of my dad’s collection.

Then Tricia found her mom’s collection just before the family reunion last June.  She showed me a few of them and sure enough, some of them were on the same type of white paper.  I’m hoping some of the other cousins might find more in the future.  Or maybe Daddy and Wana were hiding them because they took all of them and didn’t want their siblings to know about it!  That doesn’t really sound like them, so I’m still hoping for more to show up.  I need to replenish my supply for these Throwback Thursday posts!

As I said earlier, this is Grampa Max, the family veterinarian in Lafayette sometime around the mid 1920s.  The cow is obviously his patient.  Jacko wants to know where the baritone is to call the cow.  I told him that the cow was sick, so the vet had to travel to the cow.  (We saw his nice car in a Veterinarian at Your Service.)  He seems satisfied with that explanation.  Actually, the cow in the photo seems satisfied as well.  I’m not exactly sure what the nature of the call was, but I’m thinking that this is a happy customer.  And as the old saying goes, a happy cow makes for a happy family!  I’m glad that some of Grampa Max’s visits had happy endings.  I hope that most of them did.  I know that some of them did not, but that story is for another time.

A few weeks ago I erroneously stated that I had posted photos of all of my great grandparents.  I was wrong about that.  There was someone that I had left out.  I’ve mentioned her in other posts, but no photo was shown.  She was the first of them to die in 1909, so there aren’t as many photos of her.  Still, I hope you will forgive this oversight.  And curiously no one pointed out this error to me.  I thought everyone was reading these posts and keeping track of all of the information in them.  I’m going to have to start giving tests!

So if you haven’t gone back through all of my posts and figured it out yet, I will give you a minute to take the time to do so.  In the meantime I will write this sentence.  There.  Now you’ve had time to find it if you want to. If you haven’t figured it out, I will let you in on this morsel of information.

The person that I’ve left out was Marie Therese Landry Patureau.  She was born Sept. 25, 1868, in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  She was the oldest child of Trasimond Landry and Marie Amalie “Belite” Bujol Landry.  She had two younger sisters and two younger brothers before her father died in 1879.  Her mother remarried and gave her two younger half sisters.  A few years later she met the man of her dreams.  (He also happened to be her 2nd cousin.)

A Landry-Patureau wedding in 1888.

This photo is of the marriage between Marie Therese Landry and Vincent Maximilian Patureau on Oct. 10, 1888.  It is a beautiful photo of these two people.  I first remember seeing it in the home of Patricia Marionneaux Nelson last year after her funeral.  I was on the lookout for it until it somehow popped up in my cousin Tricia’s house while she was cleaning.  (Thank you, Tricia.)  She brought it to the latest reunion and I took a few photos of it.

The only thing I knew about the wedding before I saw the photo was a description that was allegedly in some newspaper.  It stated, “The lovely bride, arrayed in her snowy wedding robes, looked even more charming than usual, while the manly groom, proud in the consciousness of the conquest he had made, appeared to the best advantage.”  When I read that, it made me want to see what they were talking about.  It’s so much better to have the photo of the event.  They certainly do appear to be at their best.

I found the “alleged” newspaper article I mentioned in my post.

Feb. 5, 2020 Update

Feb. 7, 2021 Update continued – I was looking at the newspaper article and noticed the names of the bridesmaids and groomsmen.  I had never bothered to look them up in my tree to see if they were there.  Sure enough, many of them were.  That’s because they were related to the couple getting married.  The bridesmaids were all relatives.  Kate Landry was Marie Therese’s younger sister who was 18 at the time.  The youngest sister Manette was only 12 years old and was not mentioned.  She was probably too young to be a bridesmaid.  Olive and Della Bergeron were two other bridesmaids and they were first cousins to Marie Therese.  Their mother (Marie Adele Bujol Bergeron) was the sister of Marie Therese’s mother (Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry).  Anoise (Marie Constance Anaise) Doiron was a first cousin to the others.  Her mother Marianne Celile Bujol Doiron was a sister of Belite and Marie Adele.

Louis Aillet was the first groomsman listed.  I’m assuming he was the best man and Kate was the maid of honor.  Louis Aillet was the first cousin of Max Patureau.  Max’s mother was Emma Landry Patureau and Louis’s mother was Emma’s sister Henriette Zulma Landry Aillet.  I couldn’t find a connection between the other groomsmen.  They were probably friends and/or business associates of Grampa Max.  N. C. Roth is one of the groomsmen and I did find a Nicolas Celestin Roth who was about the same age as Max and lived in Plaquemine.  Though he is not related, in a few years he would marry Pauline LeBlanc who was related to both the bride and the groom through the Landry family line.