Category: Patureau

This post is about a very sad letter concerning Patureau family members from 1876.  The Patureau family came from France in 1840.  The family that came over at the time consisted of Pierre Patureau (born 1800) and his wife Anne Rose Machet (b. 1801), with their children Victorine (b. 1824), Ferdinand (b. 1826), Abel (b. 1827), and Elisa (b. 1828).  The family first settled in Opelousas, Louisiana.  In October of 1842 first Anne Rose, then Elisa died during a yellow fever epidemic.  They were buried near each other in the old Catholic cemetery in Opelousas.  It is believed that they are in unmarked graves, because they have not been located.

A year or two later, Pierre brought his three remaining children with him to Donaldsonville.  On September 3, 1846, daughter Victorine married Pierre Emile Laulom and they settled in Smoke Bend, which is near Donaldsonville.  Pierre Laulom was a French immigrant also.  Five months later, on February 10, 1847, Ferdinand married Emma Landry of Brusly.  Supposedly, they lived in Brusly for a few years after their marriage. 

In the 1850 Census, both Ferdinand’s and Victorine’s families were living in Baton Rouge.  No other family writings mention that, and Pierre and Abel are not found in the 1850 Census.  According to family lore, Abel remained a single man and lived with his father.  They were both bakers.  Wait!!  I just found them in the 1850 Census!  Pierre and Abrille Patuar lived in Baton Rouge.  I think the Census taker wrote Paturo, and the transcriber wrote Patuar.  I only looked for him in Baton Rouge because Ferdinand and Victorine were both here.  I went through every page looking at those individuals born in France.  And there he was – Pierre Patureau, caterer.  That means that all of his belongings were in Baton Rouge, including the bed that I now have in my home in Baton Rouge.  I wonder where he lived. 

This doesn’t match what family records say about Ferdinand and Emma.  That shows that their first three children were born in Brusly in 1848, 1849, and 1851.  It doesn’t seem like they would be moving back and forth across the Mississippi River back then.  They next moved to Plaquemine in 1852 or 53 and stayed there for a while as their family grew.  Father Pierre went to live with Ferdinand’s family in Plaquemine and stayed there until his death in 1860.  I think Abel stayed in Baton Rouge.

Victorine and Emile had two children, Eliza and Louis.  Their family moved to Brownsville, Texas, around the time of the death of the elder Patureau.  In 1864 Eliza got married at the age of 17.  She married Vicente Crixell, an immigrant from Cataluna, Spain.  They lived in Bagdad, Matamoros, Mexico, which was just across the border from Brownsville, Texas.  So when things got a little hectic in Louisiana during the Civil War, Ferdinand and his family went to Bagdad to get away from it all.  That is where my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau was born in 1865.  Eliza Laulom Crixell had a son around the same time.  It seems like the families were pretty close.

Soon after Grampa Max was born, Ferdinand and Emma brought their family back to Plaquemine, which is where they lived out the rest of their lives.  Emma gave birth to fifteen children, though only ten of them grew to adulthood.  When his youngest child (a daughter named Victorine after his sister) was about three years old, Ferdinand must have heard some news about his sister Victorine being ill.  He was probably worried about her and thought about her yet continued on with his family and work.

Then he received a letter from his niece Eliza Laulom Crixell in mid-February 1876 that told him about his sister’s condition.  The news was not good.  Here is a copy of that letter:

I got this letter from the Pierre Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas.  I recently joined a group on Facebook that does translations for people.  I am learning French but don’t have the skills to translate everything in the letter.  But I received a wonderful translation from a fellow group member Marie-Helene, who lives in southern France.  Thanks, Helene.  Here is the translation that was provided:

[Translation].

Corpus Christi, February 15th, 1876

Dear Uncle.

It is with pain that I take up my pen to tell you about Mom’s illness. Doctors say they can’t do anything to save her. She has cancer in the womb, she has been in the hands of the doctors for 8 months. There is no hope, we are in desperate pain. She says she is very sorry to die without seeing you and my Uncle Abel. If it were possible to give her this satisfaction, she would be more serene. She always talks about Zulma, she would like to see her. Doctors say she can live two or three months, or she can die when we least expect it. She continuously loses blood. It is a cruel suffering day and night. We don’t give her any medicine at all, only opium to make her sleep, but it doesn’t help much. Dear Uncle, I no longer have the courage to write any more. Write to me, kiss the whole family for all of us as well as Aunt and Uncle Abel.

Goodbye dear Uncle, your niece who loves you and embraces you.

Eliza Crixell.

{on the side of the sheet:}

If it were possible for you and Uncle Abel to come and see Mom.  [End of Translation]

Isn’t that the most heartbreaking letter?  I can imagine what my great great grandfather felt when he read this letter about his sister.  I remember hearing the news about my own sister’s terminal prognosis with lymphoma.  But I don’t know his or his brother’s reaction.  I’m sure they were saddened by the news, but I have no way of knowing whether or not they were able to go visit their sister before she passed away.  It didn’t sound like she had long to live.

This is the only evidence I’ve found that provides a clue about when she died.  I have not seen any records, nor estimates for when she died.  But from the information in the letter, I’m sure she couldn’t have survived for more than a month or two at most.  She was only about 52 years old.  Ferdinand wasn’t far behind.  He suffered an accident in his sawmill and died the following year.  He was only 51.  Then Abel died in 1881 at the age of 53.  So the last three of the Patureau immigrants died within five years of this letter. 

Long live the Patureaus!

This photo was part of a group of photos that I believe came from my grandmother.  To me now, that seems rather obvious.  The photo is of her father, after all.  Where else would it come from?  But some old photos that I have do not have any information about who is in the photo.  Therefore, I don’t know where the photos came from.  If I did know where they came from, I’d have a better idea of who was in those unidentified photos.  I’ve been thinking about posting some of these photos to see if any cousins might know who the subjects of the photos might be.  In the meantime, make sure to label all of the photos you have with the names of the people you know are in them.  Maybe one day someone will thank you.

So today I’ll be thanking my dad for writing some information under these photos that he had collected.  My dad’s name was Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr.  He was the son of Mr. & Mrs. Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  This leaves you with the question, “Who was Mrs. Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.?”  And the answer would be, “Why, the wife of Mr. R. J. Landry, Sr., of course.”  So if you follow my advice to label your photos, don’t use the logic I just used.  Use a person’s full name!  My wonderful Mee Maw was Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  She was the daughter of Vincent Maximilian Patureau, the subject of this post.

Actually my dad labeled these photos with just a “VMP.”  But being that the photos included a photo of Grampa Max with a business sign that shows his name, it was more than acceptable and deserving of a mention of gratitude.  Thanks, Daddy!  I’ve estimated that this photo was taken around 1915 based on the age of Grampa Max.  That would mean that it was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana.  He had worked for a while as a self-taught veterinarian in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  According to newspaper articles, Dr. Patureau moved to Lafayette and set up a practice in October of 1911 on Pinhook Road.  He brought his family to Lafayette six months later in April of 1912.  He rented the “Boze house on the east side of the railroad.”  I have no clue where that would be.  Somewhere in Lafayette.

The photo shows Grampa Max at work with two dogs, though you only see one dog in this photo.  Between him and the dog, you can see a young girl with flowers on her top.  Even less conspicuous is a young boy reaching through the wooden fence to the dog’s collar.  I’m thinking that they are part of the family that owned the dogs, and Grampa Max was there in the capacity of Dr. Patureau.  The photos look like promotional photos to be used to advertise his veterinarian services.  

I just like having this photo of my great grandfather on the job.  Dr. Patureau, at your service.

Getting a late start tonight.  I just had an opportunity that I didn’t want to pass up.  But I still wanted to write this post.  I even thought about it off and on today.  Someone posted an article about one of the Patureau brothers on the Plaquemine Facebook group page and that’s what got me thinking about this topic.  I’ve written about Patureau brothers before.  I wrote one post called Patureau Brothers.  It would have been Part I if I had thought about it.  Then there are two other posts that could have been parts II and III.  But really, there are lots of stories about Patureau brothers – there have been so many of them through the years!  

But this one is about the brothers of my grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  I knew her as my dear sweet Mee Maw.  I didn’t know either of them, because they died before I was born.  I’ve mentioned them in posts before, but I thought they deserved a post of their own.  Plus, I have a photo of each of them from the same year.  And in both photos, they are wearing a uniform.  

Max Patureau and Marie Therese Landry were married in 1888 and set up their home in Plaquemine, Louisiana.  They had nine children that lived to adulthood, including my grandmother Erie.  Their second of nine children was Romuald who was born on December 27, 1891.  He was called Rome (rhymes with homey).  Erie was number four of nine.  Number eight was Vincent Maximilian Patureau, Jr.  He was called Vincent and he was born on November 4, 1901.

The major event going on in 1917 was World War I.  That’s not what it was called at the time, though.  It wasn’t like they were planning on having the second World War twenty or so years later.  But there was conflict going on in Europe, and America joined in on the fight on April 7, 1917.  That meant that Americans would soon be going to military engagements in Europe.  Men between the ages of 21 and 31 were required to register for the draft.  Vincent was not required to register since he was only 15 at the time.  

But I do have this photo of him in what looks like a World War I uniform.  I saw somewhere that some young men could sign up for the military at the age of 16 with their parents’ permission.  That would have been Grampa Max at the time.  Their mother had died in 1909.  Some boys also lied about their age so they could go to war.  I don’t know the story behind this photo.  It says that it was taken on Dec. 4, 1918, when Vincent was almost 17 years old.  According to the birthdate that I told you, he would already be 17 on that Dec. 4.  Not only that, but the war would have been over by that time.  It ended on November 11, 1918, a day known as Armistice Day.

That brings us to the other Patureau brother.  Rome would have been in that first group of young men required to register for the draft.  He was the perfect age for war!  So off he went.  There is a very interesting article that was written by a Patureau cousin.  It was written by Mona Mel Mouton.  She was the daughter of Erie’s oldest sister Emma Patureau Mouton.  I actually edited this newspaper article.  It was longer than what I wanted and it had a picture of somebody else she talked about.  I wanted a photo of Rome to go with the article, so I found one and grouped it together with the part of the article about Rome.  

The topic of the complete article was Armistice Day, but I wanted this post to be about Patureau family history.  And this article says something really interesting about that.  Something that I haven’t been able to confirm or find anywhere else.

The part about Rome says that she (Mona Mel) first heard Taps at Uncle Rome’s funeral in Baton Rouge.  (He died in 1937 when Mona Mel was 15.)  I was listening to my brother Rob play that just the other day online.  He participated in Taps Across America on Memorial Day.  Mona Mel talks about how her Uncle Rome would tell stories about his war days in France in 1917 and 1918.  The photo of Rome was taken in Aix-les-Bains, France, during that time.

He was a motorcycle courier who delivered messages across the French countryside to military members.  Since the Patureau family originated in France, Rome decided to see if he could connect with some of the Patureau family.  His grandparents Pierre Ferdinand Patureau and Anne Rose Machet brought their family to America in 1840.

When Rome was in the Bordeaux area, it is reported that he was able to make contact with Patureau family members.  But the most intriguing part is that he stated that he visited the ancestral home of the Patureau family – a castle overlooking an expanse of land.  This made Rome wonder why the family moved away from that rich countryside.  He never found out more, because he had to get back to soldiering.  Fortunately for us, he told that story to someone who liked to listen and to write.

The article encourages me to explore the Patureau family even further.  Ou est le chateau de famille?

 

Here is the photo of Ferdinand Patureau that all of my Patureau cousins have been waiting for.  Actually, they didn’t know anything about it.  I didn’t know anything about it before sixteen months ago.  I had only seen one photo of Great Great Grandpa Ferdinand through the years.  Well, there really were two that I knew of.  One was a portrait of him by himself and the other one was a group family portrait from 1864.   Both of them were really terrible versions of the photos that I was able to improve upon by visiting the Pierre Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas.

I’ve shared the improved versions of those two photos already.  I shared early versions of those photos with Patureau cousin Jo Ann.  She’s the one that had the Patureau bed that is now in my home.  As we were texting, she sent me this new photo that I had never seen before.  But I could tell right away that it was Ferdinand Patureau.  It looks like an old tintype photo in a cased frame.  It’s amazing that these old photos have survived through the years in our family.  

And yet again, this photo comes down through the Victorine Patureau Cropper line.  The Patureau bed and the Pierre Patureau Collection in Beaumont both come from that line.  That Victorine was a collector who cherished and protected those old treasures.  And by her example, her offspring followed in her footsteps.  I do not come from that line.  Victorine was the youngest child of Ferdinand Patureau and Emma Landry.  She had an older brother named Vincent Maximilian Patureau.  I descend from Grampa Max.  His daughter Germaine Erie Patureau Landry was my Mee Maw.  She was the mother of Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr., my father.  My dad and my grandmother spent many years researching the family.  They passed down an amazing amount of information that I am grateful for.  But they didn’t have nearly the number of artifacts or keepsakes that Max’s sister Victorine had.

But I definitely can’t complain – I’ve got the Patureau bed that came from France with my immigrant ancestors in 1840!  And this wonderful photo was generously shared with me as well.  I estimate it to be from around 1867.  It would probably have been taken in Baton Rouge.  Ferdinand was born in LaRoche-Chalais, Dordogne, France, on October 27, 1826.  If my estimated date for the photo is correct, he would be around 40 years old in this photo.  The family was living in Plaquemine, Louisiana, at this time after a short time spent in Mexico.  His large family was still growing, and he was probably busy getting his own sawmill operational and productive.  

It’s nice to have a glimpse into the past of one of our ancestors from over 150 years ago.  Thanks, Jo Ann, for sharing your treasures.