Category: Phenice

Harry Clifton Phenice in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1949.

I thought it was time for a Phenice post today.  For those of you who may not know, my maternal grandmother was a Phenice.  It is not a common last name.  From what I can tell, any time you see that last name in the United States, you can assume that the person is related to me.  And most of the time, you would be correct.  It’s pronounced like Fee-niss, with the accent on the first syllable.  

But I don’t think it was always pronounced or spelled that way.  I can see how the spelling would change through the years.  Even though my Grandma Myrtle (Phenice Bucklin) was a stickler for spelling, I don’t think her ancestors were.  Lots of names changed spelling because of Americanizing the names.  That’s what we do here in America – we assimilate.  Resistance is futile!

But it seems odd to me that the pronunciation would change so much.  In the mid 1800s, it must have been pronounced to rhyme with Tennessee, with the accent on the first syllable.  The Census workers would write the name as Finnessy.  In some documents it was written as Phenicy.  Those people writing it were most likely spelling it phonetically.  And if they had pronounced the name like I’ve heard our family pronounce it, you wouldn’t write it as Finnessy.

When I have DNA matches that are distant cousins, most of them spell the name as Phenicie.  So it looks like they most likely pronounce it with three syllables.  In the picture you see my great grandfather Harry Clifton Phenice.  We always refer to him as Grandpa Phenice or H. C.  He was my mom’s maternal grandfather, and she was quite fond of him.  He seemed like a very pleasant person.  I’ve always seen his name spelled as Phenice.  But his father was Samuel Charles Phenice.  I think he was the one who made the changes for some reason.  Early on, he signed his name as Phenicie.  I guess I should explain that back in those earlier years, the Phenice/Phenicie family lived in Pennsylvania.  My line was in Mercer County, but other Phenicie cousins were in Bedford and Franklin counties.  I’m not sure where the family immigrated from, or even when they came to the USA.  I don’t know the origin of the name.

Maybe Samuel changed the spelling for a reason from Phenicie to Phenice.  Maybe our group pronounced it with two syllables (no long E at the end of the name), so he dropped the second ‘i’ from the spelling.  If there was a reason or not, it didn’t help at all with getting people to pronounce the name correctly.  People are a little afraid to attempt to say it without hearing it said beforehand.

But now that I’ve explained it, you don’t have that problem.  And you may be able to understand why I always refer to him as H. C. and not Harry.  It’s what he preferred to be called.

Phenice sisters

When I was looking for a subject for tonight’s blog, I decided to share a recent photo I found online.  It’s a photo of my great grandfather’s older sister.  As I was thinking of what to write, I realized that there have been a lot of sisters in my family.  I grew up having three sisters and both of my parents had three sisters.  My paternal grandfather (Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.) only had two sisters and both of them died at about 20 years of age.  My maternal grandmother (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice) was one of three sisters.  My maternal grandfather (Fred D. Bucklin) had three sisters.  But the grandparent with the most was my paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau.  She was one of seven sisters.  But her own grandmother wins the prize.  Amelie Bujol was one of ten sisters.

That’s what happens when you have large families, and I have large families on both sides of my family tree.  But I mainly am concerned with the family of my grandmother Myrtle’s father.  His name was Harry Clifton Phenice.  He was born in Butler County in Pennsylvania on May 24, 1874, to Samuel Charles Phenice and Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice.  He was the fifth child born to them.  I was a fifth myself.  He had three older brothers – Chauncey,  William Emory, and Edd – and an older sister named Anna May.  He had two younger sisters – Lolo Myrtle and Emma.

Phenice family in 1906.

It’s interesting that the only one that I don’t have a photo of is William Emory.  Yet it was a newspaper article about W. E. Phenice that helped me discover the family history of his mother Cathrine.  Just a short little blurb about him visiting an uncle in Kansas with the last name of Millison was all it took.  I do wish I had a photo of W. E.  If you know of one, please share!  In fact, sharing is what helped me to have these photos.  My generous Phenice cousin Mona had several photos of the Phenice sisters.  That’s because her grandmother Emma was one of them.  And she was good about labeling who they were in the photos.

The combined photo is from three photos I’ve posted before.  I combined them like this at some point to make sure I could recognize who’s who in the photo.  Now I know how to recognize my great grandfather’s sisters.  Now you know that I’m a fanatic!  

Those photos helped me to correctly identify a photo that I’ve known my whole life.  That is this second photo of the Phenice family all dressed up.  I’m pretty sure they are dressed up for the March 1906 wedding of Lola Myrtle Phenice.  It took place in Precept, Nebraska, which was where the Phenice family lived at the time.  Lola Myrtle is in the center of the photo.  On the left is Harry Clifton and his wife Daisy Keys Phenice (my great grandparents).  On the right are two other Phenice siblings.  In the back is Emma (grandmother of Mona) and in front is Edd.  I’ve shared this photo before.  It is decidedly a favorite.

Anna May Phenice Taylor with two children.

And now we come to the new photo.  Drum roll, please.  This is a photo that I found on the profile of Anna May Phenice on the FamilySearch website.  When I first saw it, I thought she had the right look.  But I still had to pull out the reference photo collage of the three sisters.  I decided it was definitely a photo of Anna May Phenice.  And it is a very good photo of her.  It was definitely a studio portrait.

But it still left me with some questions.  Who are these children in the photo?  You can read a number in the bottom right corner.  It looks like 1916.  Was the photo taken in 1916?  Her youngest children were born in 1907 and 1910, which would make them 9 and 6 in 1916.  These children look younger.  Does this woman look 47 years old in this photo?  Anna May was born in 1869.  Thoughts?  Opinions?

I always enjoy finding new photos of family members.  Especially when they’re really old.  I think this one qualifies.  

Harry Clifton Phenice in a Colorado goldmine in 1906.

This photo is a cropped version of one of my most favorite old photos.  The original version was one of the first few photos I posted when I started writing this weekly blog over seven years ago.  I think it was my mom’s favorite old photo too.  When she was older and forgetting things about her life, she never did forget about this photo.  She would ask me regularly if I knew where it was, and I would reassure her that I did.  I would hate for this photo to be lost.  It’s one of the main reasons I share these photos and stories of my ancestors.  I want them to be ‘out there’ in the digital landscape so they can be seen by many people and are less likely to disappear.

I only know of one original photo.  I think my mom had it glued into a photo album that she had when she was younger.  I remember seeing that album when I was a kid.  But at some point, she pulled those photos out of the album and had them in a box.  I don’t know if she threw any of them away or not.  The photo seems pretty fragile, yet she was able to get it out of that album mostly intact.  The back of the photo still has a thin layer of the black album page that it was glued to.  I’m curious if any other family member has an original copy of this photo.

The photo of course has been edited.  I cleaned up the original photo.  When I cropped this version, I also ran it through a program to sharpen it a bit.  With him being the only one in this photo, I don’t have to say which one is him.  The original photo has five other men around him.  It was taken at a Cripple Creek goldmine in Colorado.  When I got a book about H. C.’s niece Enola Phenice, it talked about her father Chauncey Phenice and another brother William Emory Phenice mining for gold in Colorado in the early 1900s.  I didn’t realize it was a family activity.  Chauncey and Will went to Victor, Colorado, to hopefully earn some cash in the gold mines.

When H.C. went to Cripple Creek in 1906, he brought his family with him.  He had married his English sweetheart Daisy Keys in 1900.  Their son Sylvan was born in 1901.  (Eleven months after they were married, thank you.) Grace was born in 1903.  They were both born in China.  No, not the country China, but the village of China in Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana.  They were only in Colorado for a short time, so I’m thinking they moved there in the spring of 1906.  I know that H.C. and Daisy were in Precept, Nebraska, in March of 1906 for the wedding of H.C.’s younger sister Lola Myrtle.  They were witnesses at the wedding.  They also took a photo with Lola Myrtle and other siblings Emma and Edd.

H.C.’s younger brother Edd circa 1900. (Photo edited and colorized by Van Landry)

So I’m thinking that they moved to Colorado after the wedding.  It would have been too cold before that I would think.  Like I said, they didn’t stay there long.  What I heard was that Daisy wasn’t too fond of the local woman.  Or maybe it was women who came to town to “keep company” with the men who came alone to try to make it rich.  Supposedly they were flirting with little Sylvan when he was walking to school or church or some such thing.  He was only 5 years old!  It’s more likely that they were flirting with the older Harry Phenice and Daisy didn’t care for that.  So back they moved to the small community of Hathaway where my grandmother Myrtle was born later that year.

As a bonus, I’m posting this photo of H.C.’s younger brother James Edmund Phenice.  He never married and lived with his parents Charles and Kate most of his life.  This photo is from the Lincoln collection from my cousin Mona.  Her father Harry Lincoln Quillen had a fondness for his Uncle Edd.  It was a rough little photo that was part of a strip of photos like you get from a photo booth.  I cleaned it up, sharpened it, and colorized it, so I thought I’d share it, too.  Enjoy.

The Phenice family of Nebraska had a family get together in Kansas in 1935.

Now here is a great old photo.  I got this photo from my Phenice cousin Diane at a Keys Reunion over five years ago.  How can it have been five years already?  It seems so recent to me.  In 2018 I posted one of the other photos she gave me and I always thought I’d post this photo at some point.   And now is the time.  Thanks again, Diane!

This is a group of family members from my Phenice side.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Her mother was Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  She was the daughter of Harry Clifton (HC) and Daisy Keys Phenice.  HC was the son of Samuel Phenice, the Civil War Veteran from Pennsylvania. 

Samuel was in that other photo that I posted in 2018, but he is not in this one.  I’m pretty sure they were taken on the same day.  The scenery and weather look the same.  It has many of the same people in the photos and they are wearing the same thing.  It seems like Samuel should be in all of the photos.  He’s the one that kept these people visiting each other through the years.  He lived to be 95 years old and he died in 1939.  If I didn’t have that other photo with all of the clues I pointed out, I would be tempted to think that this is a photo of the family coming together for his funeral.  Black seems to be the predominant color.  On the other hand, they do look like they are having a rather good time.

I wish I could tell you who everyone is.  I’m pretty sure that they are all family members.  Let me start from the back row on the left.  I know for sure who this is.  His name was James Edmund Phenice, but we all know him as Edd.  He was HC’s older brother.  Edd and HC had two older brothers – Chauncey and Emory – who didn’t show up for the family gatherings that I have photos of.  Next to Edd is an unknown female relative.  My guess is that she is Beryl Racine, the granddaughter of May Phenice Taylor.  May is the sister of HC and Edd.  She was in the other photo from this day, but is not in this photo.  Most of her family lived in southern Nebraska. 

The next person in the photo is Myrtle Phenice Cozad, another sibling of HC.  She lived in Almena, Kansas, which is just south of the Nebraska/Kansas border.  Samuel and Cathrine Foster Phenice reared their family in Precept, Nebraska, which is just north of that border.  When Samuel was an elderly man in the 1930s, he went to live with Myrtle and her family a few miles south.  So even though the photo was taken in Kansas, it was not far from where the family grew up.  In the photo, there are two unidentified people standing behind Myrtle.  It looks like it could be a mother and a child.  It could be Marie Taylor Racine – the daughter of May Phenice Taylor – and her daughter Doris.  Doris would be the younger sister of Beryl.

The next person in the photo is one of my favorites.  That would be my great grandmother Daisy.  This is the only photo I’ve seen of Daisy visiting her husband’s family in Nebraska/Kansas.  She looks like she’s having a good time.  She’s got a smile on her face.  Standing in front of her is another unknown family member.  It could be the son of Marie Racine.  Marie’s family fit the profile for these unknown family members.  If it was Marie’s son, his name was Charles.   Standing next to Daisy is another person who married into the Phenice family – her brother-in-law Charlie Quillen.  He was married to HC’s youngest sibling Emma.  They were both in the other photo I posted, but only Charlie shows up in this one.  Unless, of course, she is bending over and letting her nephew Warren Phenice stand up on her back!  Something or someone is holding him up.  Warren is the younger brother of my Grandma Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  He seems to be having a good time and he is getting some assistance from his Uncle Charlie and another unknown male cousin.  He might be a son of Myrtle, Emma, or May.  There were lots of cousins back then.

Three of those cousins can be seen to the right of Warren Phenice.  These are the three daughters of Myrtle Phenice Cozad.  From left to right, I believe their names are Leora, Ruby, and Pauline.  I could be wrong, but I base that on other photos that I’ve seen of the family.  The person on the far right is Henry Phenice.  He was one of my mom’s uncles.  He is actually buried just across the path from my mom and dad.  He was the son of Harry Clifton Phenice and the husband of Irma Hetzel Phenice.  Those two individuals are squatting in front of everyone else in the photo.  They, too, look like they are enjoying themselves.

Whew!  That’s a lot of names.  I know some people might lose interest after seeing more than one or two names.  Then it all becomes yadda- yadda- yadda.  But some of you are special people who stayed with me all the way to the end.  I admire you for your endurance.  Hats off to you.

I really didn’t have anything in mind for my blog post this week.  Sometimes I’ll see a story that needs to be told or find an amazing old photo that I just have to share.  But this week I just went looking back in some of my mom’s old photos.  It is my mom’s turn, after all.  I gotta keep it relatively even. 

I’ve been thinking of posting this photo for a few years now.  I had to look back at my old posts to make sure I hadn’t used the photo before.  This is my 350th post, so it’s getting harder and harder to remember which photos I’ve posted and which ones I have thought about posting over the years.  350 posts is a lot!  It’s almost enough for a post for every day of the year.  Of course some of those posts weren’t “official” posts.  Either they were lagniappe or documents supporting another post.

Phenice family cousins in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa April 1951.

This picture was taken around April of 1951 in Hathaway, Louisiana.  I estimated the date based on the youngest subject of the photo.  I can identify her as Carol Phenice.  She was born in the winter of 1950/51 and she looks like she is still quite young and the weather and plants looks like it is springtime.  The oldest subject of the photo is my dear sweet mom.  Her name was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was born on May 20, 1933.  Her parents’ names were Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice.

I’m mentioning her parents so I can explain to you the connection between my mom and her younger companions.  And in this case, the connection comes from Myrtle Phenice AKA Grandma Bucklin or just Grandma.  Myrtle had a younger brother named Orville Phenice.  Orville and his wife Elta Whitman Phenice had five children, including their three youngest shown in this photo.

Holding little Carol is their third child Linda.  She would be about eight years old in this photo.  The boy in the photo is my mom’s cousin Paul.  He was the only son out of those five children.  That’s just like what Grandma and Grandpa had.   I wonder if he and my Uncle Austin ever got together to complain about living in a household of mostly girls.  I grew up in a household that was evenly divided and it seems to me like the best situation.  I’m probably biased.

I wonder where all the other siblings are from these two families?  It doesn’t really matter.  It would have been too crowded with everyone in it.  This is a nice little grouping of cousins.  I’ve always liked the photo.  It is such a good photo of all of them and the background is pleasing.  I’m pretty sure it is at my grandparents’ property in Hathaway.

And now I’ve finally used the photo in a post.  I’ll try to make sure I remember that fact!