Category: Phenice

Grandma’s Bright Eyes

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I thought I would post something related to Thanksgiving this week.  My childhood memories for Thanksgiving are focused on my mom’s side of the family.  I don’t think we ever celebrated Thanksgiving with the Landry side of my family.  If we did, I’ll need a reminder.  Photos would be helpful.  Since my memories of Thanksgiving were associated with the Bucklin side of the family, I went in search of associated photos.

Fred Bucklin, Jodie Lou Landry, and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin in May of 1954. I think this was at my  great grandmother Addie Bucklin’s house in Hathaway, Louisiana.

This is what I found.  It doesn’t have anything to do with Thanksgiving, but it does have my Bucklin grandparents in it with my oldest sister Jodie.  How could I not choose this photo?  Actually, it chose me.  My grandmother’s eyes literally reached out and grabbed me. 

I spent some time last night cleaning up this scan so I could share it everyone.  Not only is it a great photo of my grandmother, but it is really good of Grandpa and Jodie.  For those of you who may not know, my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, and she was the daughter of this couple.  Fred D. Bucklin was born Oct. 2, 1907, in Roanoke, Louisiana, and Myrtle Sylvia Bucklin was born Dec. 19, 1906, in Hathaway.

The photo was taken May of 1954, which is seven months after Jodie was born.  Since Jodie was born when my dad was stationed in California with the Air Force, this is likely the first time Grandma and Grandpa got to see little Jodie Lou.  She wasn’t their first grandchild.  Mom’s older sister Sylvia already had two sons.  But Jodie was their first granddaughter.  She was their only granddaughter for less than a year.  Little Toni was already on her way – she’d be born that August.

A few years later our numbers would grow to twenty.  The Thanksgiving get-togethers out at Grandma and Grampa’s in Hathaway were great.  The food was always so good and plentiful – turkey with gravy, dressing, ham, potatoes, and other savory dishes.  But then there was dessert – pecan pie, brownies, toffee bars, and cakes.  The all time best, though, was Grandma’s divinity.   With all of that food, you’d think we’d be too full to move.  But we were kids, and that didn’t stop us.  We ran.  We played tag.  We had satsuma-eating contests.  We played chicken freeze tag.  I wish I could say ‘we’ played with fire out by the old bamboo stand, but somehow I always missed out on that activity.  I may have been too busy playing with the sock monkey.  I guess I can’t really complain.

So ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ to all of my Bucklin cousins!  I still think of you all fondly.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone else, as well.  May it be safe and joyful.

Eating Tacks in the Civil War

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Two years ago I wrote about my great great grandfather Samuel Charles Phenice’s Civil War experiences.  He was on my mom’s side of the family, and all of her ancestors were from the Northern USA, England, or Ireland.  The Phenice line was in Pennsylvania for a few generations and that is where Samuel joined the military in February 1864.  He fought and was injured in the Battle of the Wilderness a few months later.  He then was in the “Invalid Corps,” where he was stationed at Ford’s Theatre on the historic night of the Lincoln assassination.

Parts of pages 318 and 319 from the book “History of Mercer County.”

Since I wrote that post, I found out a few more details that I thought I’d add to his story.  One of the things I thought about his previous experiences was that he was a new recruit when he went into battle and was injured.  That could mean that he didn’t really know his fellow soldiers very well and might have felt very alone.  This first document I found eased a bit of that concern.  (Not that it would make any difference at this point anyway!)  I saw this document a few times before I noticed the important part.  While the names are in alphabetic order for the most part, it’s not strictly in order. 

The thing that I noticed was that Samuel’s brother William Henry Phenice was in the same Company F as he was.  As you see in the document, they spelled the name differently – Phenicy.  Samuel himself spelled his last name as Phenicie on some documents.  Our line of the family now consistently spell it as Phenice.  The descendants of William Henry spell it the same way.  There are a few of them who have taken DNA tests and they are strong matches to us.  I like this other connection that we have that our ancestor brothers fought together in the Civil War out of Mercer, Pennsylvania.

The other new information comes from an article I found in Nebraska last year when I visited Samuel and Cathrine Phenice’s graves.  I had already seen at least four articles that talked a little bit about Samuel’s Civil War and Lincoln Assassination experiences, so I wasn’t expecting to see more.  But I was wrong.   In Beaver City’s little library there was a binder with Phenice information in it.  A lot of the information was about the Civil War group called the Grand Army of the Republic or G.A.R.  It was for veterans of the Union army.  There was even a small square in the middle of town that had a monument for this group.  I can kick myself now for not walking across the street to see it.  It’s likely to have his name engraved on it, but I don’t know that for sure.  Maybe another cousin will visit one day and give a report.

1937 Newspaper article from Precept, Nebraska

But I did find this article.  What struck me most were the details about his time after getting injured in battle.  Soon after sustaining the injury, he was taken to a field hospital.  Unfortunately for young Samuel, the hospital was taken over by Confederate forces.  It did not stay in Confederate hands for long, but it was a difficult time nonetheless.  There was no fresh food supply for the patients, so they resorted to the emergency rations called hardtack.  They would heat it up a little to soften it, but it still was barely palatable.

But even worse was the medical situation.  The injury that he had sustained was not too severe when he first received it.  But due to lack of care and supplies, he suffered from gangrene.  They were finally able to make a compound to clean out the damaged tissue and he was able to heal more quickly.  The field hospital went back to Union hands and he was then transferred to the West Philadelphia Hospital.  I had seen records of his stay in Philadelphia as well as a stay in Pittsburg.

He reports that he was able to make a visit home between that time and the time he was assigned to Ford’s Theatre.  He talks about having worked at the Theatre for some time before the Assassination.  I had wondered about that.  All I knew before was that he was there that one night.  I didn’t know if it was a one time assignment or something else.  Obviously it was the something else.  He states that he was familiar with the layout of the stage and such. 

Previously I had been skeptical about all of the details that he seemed to remember from that night.  But if he was in familiar surroundings, it would have been easier to remember all of the things that went on at that historical event.  Yet, he says that several people died at the Theatre that night.  I’ve never seen that report anywhere else, so I doubt that it happened.   So I’ll leave it up to you to decide what parts of the article are true or not. 

I’ll clarify one item.  They didn’t really eat tacks.  Hardtack is a type of hard biscuit.

Mom’s Memories Page 8 – Learning to Sew

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When I was a kid, my mom used to make us clothes and such all the time.   I never really gave it much thought at the time.  I thought that’s what all moms did.  She always knew how to make clothes, so that’s what she did.  She made shirts and pants and dresses, as well as pajamas and quilts and furries. 

Page 8 from Mom’s Memories

But she didn’t always know how to sew, now did she?  Fortunately for us, my mom wrote a little blog about how she learned to sew.  Not really.  My mom never even tried to work a computer, much less a calculator.  My favorite memories about her skills with technology was when my brother got a calculator.  He tried to show her how to work it.  He instructed her to type in the first number, then he told her to push the + button.  At that, she exclaimed, “It ate my number!!!”  She gave up after that.  She stuck to pen or pencil and paper for both mathematical problems and writing her stories.

This post is based on the pages she wrote when she realized her memory was beginning to fail.  Now these pages are getting the treatment that they deserve – digital immortality.  I thought page 8 was a good one to go with, since she was such an avid seamstress.

It starts out with talking about how she would sneak to use the sewing machine at first to make doll clothes.  She had to be oh so careful so she wouldn’t break a needle and get in trouble.  Had she broken a needle and didn’t want to get in trouble again?  Or had she just known that breaking a needle would be trouble?    She must have shown some responsibility and promise, because Grandma let little Betty Lou make some sheets when she was around 8 or 9 years old.

Enhanced photo of Betty Lou Bucklin when she was at Hathaway High during the 1946-47 school year. She was around 13 years old in this photo.

She progressed to making overalls for her younger brother Austin, and by the time she was 13 she was making most of her own clothes.  Lots of those clothes were made from the infamous feed sacks that she picked out from the Farm Supply in Jennings.  (She went along with my Grandpa when he was buying feed.)  I thought I’d post a photo of young Betty Lou from that time. 

But there is more family history to this fascination with fabric.  Her mother was Myrtle Phenice Bucklin and she was a seamstress, too.  Hence the sewing machine in the house.  She herself had learned from her mother as well.  That would have been Daisy Keys Phenice.  Again, Daisy learned from her mother Martha Cook Keys.  Martha was born in England and had a special talent for sewing.  She actually learned her craft in an apprenticeship in London.  After that, in 1860, she went to Paris, France, to gain more knowledge of the field.  This led to her opening up a successful dressmaking shop in London.

Years later Martha got married and had five children, all the while continuing to run the shop.  Daisy was the oldest daughter and she would help out in the shop.  I wonder what tips and techniques that my mom learned from Daisy had been passed down from her own mother who learned them in London or Paris?  It makes me wish (somewhat) I had learned bit more of those skills when I was younger.  The best I do is replace buttons on shirts and pants.  I know just the other day my brother was hemming his daughter’s homecoming dress.  My sisters did learn how to sew, but I’m not sure that it really caught on with them. 

But nowadays everyone just buys their own clothes.  Who has time to make their own?  My mom grew up in the Depression.  It was a different time.  When she talked about making clothes out of feed sacks, it didn’t seem like she was trying to make us feel sorry for her.  (Though sometimes we thought she was: Gunnysack Dresses) She got a lot of satisfaction out of making something nice out of something that could have been discarded.

There’s something to be said about being satisfied with what you have.

HC and Daisy’s 50 Year Anniversary

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Daisy and Harry Phenice at their Golden Wedding anniversary in December 1950.

I could have sworn that I wrote about this before, but I find no evidence of it.  I know I posted a photo of Harry Clifton Phenice and his wife Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice at some point, but it must not have been on a Throwback Thursday.  The other photo is the one I think of in association with their celebration of their 50 years of marriage, but this one is the one that I’d rather think of from now on.

Isn’t this a great photo of that sweet old couple?  The other photo is a formal sitting at a studio and this one looks like a more casual photo taken in their home.  I’m pretty sure it was taken at the event celebrating their anniversary. 

For those of you who don’t know, Daisy and HC were my mom’s maternal grandparents.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Her mother was Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin, the daughter of this celebrated couple.

Newspaper article about the marriage of Daisy and H. C. that was in my mom’s collection of family heirlooms. I suppose it was her that drew the heart.

Daisy and Harry were married on December 27, 1900, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  A newspaper article about the event stated that it took place “in the parlors of the Walker House” in Lake Charles.  It was a local hotel that was used for marriages and such at the beginning of the 20th century.  The article says that the couple was held in high esteem.

The 1950 article about their Golden Anniversary doesn’t state that fact, but I’m sure it was still the case.  The photo for the article was taken on the same day as the first photo I posted, but is slightly different.  I wonder why they chose this one, because I think I prefer the first one.

I have to point out something I discovered through my years of researching my Phenice family line.  They all seemed to live rather long lives, and when they got married, they tended to stay together.  Daisy and HC were not the first ones to celebrate their 50th anniversary.  They weren’t even the second. 

From what I have found, they are at least the fourth couple in a row to celebrate 50 years together.  His parents Samuel and Kate celebrated 54 years together before she died in 1921.  His grandparents Daniel and Susan were in their 50th year of marriage when she died.  (Not sure of the date of her death.)  His great grandparents John and Margaret were married for around 58 years when he died.

More recently, my grandparents Myrtle and Fred Bucklin celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1980 at my parents’ home.  They lived another four years together until Grandpa’s death.  My parents have the record.  They were happily married for 64 years until they died five days apart in January 2017.  

One more thing before I go.  The other thing about the first photo I posted – Daisy’s dress reminds me of a dress that my mom liked to wear in the 70s.  The style is similar and I’m pretty sure they both had embroidery that was done by each of them.  (I was informed by my younger sister Jamie that the dress my mom had was made and stitched by my older sister Jodie.  Thanks Jamie!)  Daisy’s had a stylized flower design, while my mom’s had birds perched on branches.  I wonder if my mom ever thought of grandmother Daisy when she wore that dress.

I know that I’m going to think of great grandpa HC the next time I wear my pin wale corduroy shirt.  It’s actually one of my favorite shirts to wear in cool weather.  Doesn’t his shirt look warm and comfortable?

I could go on.  There are other things I’d like to say, but they can wait for another time.  You may commence to commenting now.

Sweet Myrtle With the Bucklins

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Myrtle and the gang circa 1927.

Isn’t this the cutest photo?  Such a great casual photo from over 90 years ago.  Not only was it taken before me or my siblings were born, it was taken before either of my parents were born as well.  And the best thing about it is that my maternal grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice is looking so sweet and cute front and center of the photo.  Then again, everyone else in the photo looks like they are having a good time.

I’ve seen and posted other photos taken at this same location, but most of the other ones were decidedly more formal than this one.  Most of those photos were of the Hine family standing in front of this house in the Hathaway/China area of Jefferson Davis Parish in southern Louisiana.  My grandfather was Fred Bucklin and his parents were Louis Bucklin and Addie Hine.  The house in the background was either their house, or the house of Addie’s parents George Hine and Susan Stanbrough.  George had died in 1919 and Grandma Sue was getting pretty elderly.

I estimated this photo to be from around 1927.  This is another photo that I got from my cousin Carla this summer.  Along with the photo I posted of my grandfather with a tennis racket, this photo was a photo that I had never seen before.  It has quickly become one of my favorite photos of Grandma.  Wait, I can’t refer to that cute young girl as Grandma!  I’ll have to call her Myrtle.  I usually don’t want to have the original photos of the ones I scan, but those two were exceptions.  The one of Fred with the tennis racket had a duplicate, so that was an easy call.  This photo was the only copy Carla had, but she was gracious enough to let me have it.  Thanks again, Carla!

The other great thing about it is that everyone in the photo is a family member.  I’m pretty sure that is her husband to be Fred next to her on the right in this photo.  It looks like him and who else would it be?  Sure, he has an identical twin brother Clarence, but it’s more likely to be Fred next to Myrtle.  The rest of the people in the photo are Fred’s siblings.  Let me tell you who is who.

On each end of the group are the twins Ruth and Roy Bucklin.  Ruth and Roy were fraternal twins born in 1915.  They were the youngest of the 12 children born to Lou and Addie.  In case you can’t figure out which one is which, Ruth is the girl on the far left and Roy is the boy on the far right.  Next to Ruth is an older Bucklin brother.  I’m thinking this is Robert, who was born in 1911 and would be about 16 in this photo.  To the right of him is Edna, the next older Bucklin sibling.  She was born in 1909 and she is the main reason we have this photo.  She had an early interest in photography.  She had a camera and took many of the photos of the family that are around today.  (No this is not a selfie!  They didn’t do selfies back then.  But if she had, you would have seen her arm!) 

Continuing on… Like I said, I think the boy to the right of Myrtle was Fred.  They both would have been around 20 years old.  In a couple of years they would be married and starting a family of their own.  The last unidentified boy in the photo is a little more questionable.  But I’m pretty sure this is Fred’s older brother Carl.  He was only a few years older than Fred and somehow developmentally delayed.  From other photos I’ve seen of him, I think it is him.  And again, who else would it be?  The photo shows the younger siblings of Fred.  He doesn’t look like Herbert Bucklin.  I’m open to any corrections or discussions.

Isn’t it great that we have this photo?  I’m sure all of my siblings, niblings, and cousins will really like it.  And with all of the other photos and postcards I scanned, there will be many more to come.

Finding Cathrine Foster’s Family

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Cathrine Foster Phenice circa 1910

Have I done it?!  I think I have.  The pieces all seem to add up.  I am very excited about it, since members of the family have been trying to find evidence of Cathrine Foster Phenice’s family for at least the last 50 years.  DNA was helpful in this case, but so was time spent looking.  Let me see if I can explain it for those who are interested.

My mother’s name was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Her mother was Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  Grandma’s father was Harry Clifton Phenice.  His parents were Samuel Charles Phenice (witness to the Lincoln Assassination) and Cathrine Jane Foster (died as a result of terrible burns).  We knew some of the ancestry of Samuel, but not of Kate.  The one thing we knew for certain was that she was born in 1848 in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. 

I wanted to find out more, so I decided to use my newest tool for researching.  I did a search on newspapers.com for Phenice and Kansas.  I had already done a search for Phenice and Nebraska.  I found some interesting items, but nothing led me in the direction of Kate’s Foster family.  I had to be open to the chance that her last name was not originally Foster.  It’s possible she could have been married before or possibly adopted.  There was rumor that the Foster name came about because she had grown up in a foster family.  If that had been the case, the title of this post would be “Finding Cathrine’s Foster Family” and it isn’t.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My search for Phenice and Kansas came up with one particularly juicy morsel.  It reads, “Mr. W. E. Phenice, of Trenton, Nebraska, who has been at Perry, Okla., is visiting at Chalk Mound at present.  Mr. Phenice is a nephew of A. E. Millison.”  (The Eskridge Tribune Star and Eskridge Independent, August 30, 1894)

I know who W. E. Phenice is.  Samuel and Kate had an older son named William Emory (b. 1871) and they homesteaded in Trenton, Nebraska, from 1886 to 1889.  So that part fits just right.  But neither Samuel nor Kate had a sibling by the name of A. E. Millison, because that’s the only way he could be a nephew. 

I didn’t really think about it much and then went to look at one of the sites that I have my DNA matches.  And can you guess what I found?  I found a DNA match with the last name Millison.  It really stood out since I had just seen this newspaper article with the same surname identified as a relative.  So I had to check it out a little.  I looked to see who else in the family was a DNA match to this Millison person.  My mom and both of her siblings matched him at the same point on Chromosome 9.  None of their first cousins were a match, but one of their second cousins were.  And…drumroll, please…it was our cousin Mona Q. who also descends from Samuel and Kate Phenice.  And it wasn’t just any other random DNA matching segment, it was the same exact spot on Chromosome 9. 

So I sent off a note to that DNA match to ask what he knows about the Millison name.  I was also wondering how he might be connected to this A. E. Millison.  And if he did know who he was, was either he or his wife from somewhere around Mercer County, Pennsylvania.

After I sent the note, I looked him up on 23andMe, which is where he tested.  On his profile he showed that his great grandparents lived in Council Grove, Kansas, which is the same area as Chalk Mound.  So he looked like he was from the same family.  Then I found an obituary for a Uba Millison at newspapers.com.  There was no information in that article, but the name is so unusual that I figured I could search for it on Find A Grave.  It worked!  I found Alexander E. Millison who died in Wabaunsee, Kansas, which is where William Emery Phenice lived in 1895.  But more importantly, I found out that A. E. Millison was born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, the same place that Cathrine Foster was born.

Of course A. E. Millison was married to someone and she could have been born in Mercer County, too.  Kate and Samuel were both born there.  Amazingly enough, I heard back right away from my Millison DNA match.  That’s practically unheard of.  He was able to provide a few quick links for some family information.  I was able to determine that A. E. Millison was married to Phoebe Cummings who had been born  in Quebec.  So the common DNA came through A. E. Millison.  The name is also spelled Milliron and Milleson.  The family originated in Germany.

I did some research on the family and wasn’t able to find a connection to Kate right away.  A. E. did have a daughter named Orra, which is the middle name of Kate’s daughter Emma (Mona’s grandmother).  He also had sisters by the name of Catherine and Susannah, both of which are family names in the Phenice line.  But the Catherine that was his sister had a well-documented family that did not match our Cathrine.  Where was the connection?

1850 Census record from Venango, Pennsylvania. The first complete household shows Moore, Ann Magdelene, James, Emory, Catharine, and Thos Foster.

I found another tree that had the Millison family documented on it.  I thought I would try a different approach.  I searched for the last name Foster to see if that was in the tree.  Sure enough it was.  And there it was – a Catherine Foster born in 1848.  I went to check out her page and saw that her mother was listed as Anne Magdeleen Milliron, born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.  She was the sister to A. E. Millison.  There was a brother of Cathrine with the name of Emery, another name to tie it all together.

When I saw that her father’s name was listed as Morris Foster, I thought it looked familiar.  In the beginning of 2018 I had come across a Census record from Venango, Pennsylvania, in 1850.   There was a two-year-old daughter in the household named Catharine.  She had a brother named Emory, a mom named Ann Magdelene, and a father named Moore Foster.  I had saved this but was never able to find any other information on this household.

Maybe if I had been searching for Morris Foster I would have had better luck.   The other problem is that Morris Foster died in 1852.  Ann Magdelene soon married George Rihel and the first of their nine children together was born in 1854.  So little Kate Foster grew up in a household of Rihels after that point.  She was a Foster child, but in name only. 

Catherine Foster in the Rihel household in 1860

So the relationship to A. E. Millison stated in the article was slightly inaccurate.  Kate was his niece (not his sister) and William Emory Phenice was his grand nephew.  They must have had a close family connection for them to visit like they did.   Yet that article was instrumental in making a great connection.  I am going to have to pay close attention to those old newspaper blurbs about family visiting family because you never know what little morsel of information can lead to a great discovery.

And a great discovery it is.  For Kate’s father’s side, I only have his name so far.  But for Anne Magdeleen, she is the first of four generations found.  The family was in Pennsylvania for a long time.  Most of them were from Germany, and one of our ancestors was born on the voyage to the US.  Another was a Revolutionary War soldier who died in the Battle of the Wabash at the age of 36.

Now that I’ve updated my family tree with these new names, I’ve been able to identify many DNA matches who also have these names.  I had suspected that they were connections through Cathrine Foster and now I have enough information to make the connection. 

Now that I have walked my way through all of this information, I’m starting to believe it a bit more. 

Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice family tree

The Bucklins in 1950: Color by Betty Lou

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Fred D. and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin family in 1950

This is the best photo of my mom and her family from when she was growing up.  I posted a family photo of them from 1948, but that one didn’t include her parents.  There were several photos taken on the day of this photo, with some of them looking like they were trying to be serious.  But inevitably, one of them was laughing or smiling.

This is the Fred and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin family in 1950.  Fred Bucklin married Myrtle Phenice on March 12, 1930, at the Raymond Methodist Church in Raymond, Louisiana.   The day before their first anniversary, they had their first daughter Sylvia Daisy Bucklin.  She is the dark haired beauty standing on the far left of the photo.  Their next daughter was my mom Betty Lou Bucklin, who was born on May 20, 1933.  She is standing on the far right of the photo.  Their next daughter was Alma Marie, who was born on November 10, 1935.  She is the blond standing next to my mom.  Their fourth and final daughter was Loris Janet, who was born August 31, 1937.  She is the brunette with the inquisitive look standing next to Sylvia.  Then, the day after their 12th wedding anniversary, a little boy finally showed up.  Austin Harry can be seen front and center in the photo.

This photo is actually a composite of two of the photos taken that day.  Most of the photo is from one original photo, but I swapped the part of my mom with another photo that I thought was better of her.  These photos are really difficult to work with.  They are textured and matte finish, which makes them look scaly when they are scanned.  I remember my mom liking the quality of the paper with that particular finish.  She said that it worked really well for tinting photos.  And that’s exactly what she did with one of them.

The colorful Fred and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin family in 1950. Color by Betty Lou.

This is the family photo that she tinted.  It was this photo that was on my mind this week when I was considering my blog post.  I recently joined a group on Facebook that provides free colorizing of old photos.  I submitted one of my dad’s father and it came out nicely. 

When I first started doing any type of photo editing, one of the things that I did was tinting black and white photos.  I later decided to focus on making the photos as clear as possible by removing blemishes and improving the contrast and lighting.

But I’ve seen some really good colorizing that has made me reconsider my view.  Maybe I’ll follow in my mom’s tinted footsteps and you’ll see a future post titled “Color by Van.”

 

Update Dec. 20, 2020 – replace photos with enhanced versions for more detail in the faces

Twins and Stilts

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I remember my mom telling me about her dad’s family when I was a child. I thought we were a pretty big family because I was one of six children. But my grandfather was from an even bigger family. He was one of twelve children! I was pretty impressed by that. It was like that book I read back then called “Cheaper By the Dozen.” But my great grandmother Addie Hine Bucklin cheated a little, because she had two sets of twins. So she only had ten pregnancies.

My grandfather Fred was in one set of twins. He had an identical brother named Clarence. They were born Oct. 2, 1907, and they were the seventh and eighth children of Louis and Addie Bucklin. I’m not sure who was born first. I wonder if anyone knows? After two other children were born (Edna and Robert), there was another set of twins in 1915. Obviously they were not identical, because the girl was named Ruth and the boy was named Roy.

Ruth Bucklin, Myrtle Phenice, Orville P., Clarence B., Myrtle Moon, Warren P., Roy B., Fred B., and Jack Jester circa 1927

Both of the sets of twins can be seen in this photo. Ruth is on the far left of the photo, while Roy is the one with the stilts on. I would say they look about 12 years old in this photo, which would put the year for this photo at 1927.

According to the IDs that I had on this photo from Joseph and Louise (ID’d by possibly Ruth and my mom), Clarence is the twin fourth from the left and Fred is the one second from the right. I really like this photo and really appreciate the IDs, but the original version of the photo that I got was rather poor. I was getting ready to inquire about a better version, but then I got this copy from my cousin Carla. And that’s why you’re seeing it today – I finally have that better version.

There aren’t any other twins in the photo, but there are some other similarities. If I got the date correct, Fred would later marry Myrtle Phenice and Clarence would later marry Myrtle Moon. Myrtle Phenice (or Grandma to us grandkids) is second from the left and Myrtle Moon is the center person in the photo. There are two other guys in the photo who kind of look alike, but they’re just regular brothers. Actually they are two of my grandmother’s younger brothers. Orville is to the right of Grandma, and Henry is to the right of the other Myrtle. That leaves just one more person in the photo. I thought of cropping him out of the photo, but didn’t have the heart. He’s not part of my family, but he is part of somebody’s. Maybe someone will know him. He is identified as Jack Jester. He must have been a friend of the family.

I like these photos of the two families – Phenice and Bucklin – together. With eleven children in the Bucklin group and eight in the Phenice group, there were a lot of opportunities for friendships. Two couples came out of the two groups – Sylvan P. married Mary B. in 1926 and Fred married Myrtle in 1930. I’m hopeful that there are more photos to be discovered and shared with everyone. I’m always on the lookout.

Old Phenice Memorabilia

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I can’t remember when I first saw this old letter and old copy of a photograph. I seem to recall seeing a Xerox copy of the photograph in my mom’s collection of Phenice family history many years ago. I’ve already shared a copy of the letter that my great great great grandmother Susan Jackson Phenice (wife of Daniel Phenice) wrote to her daughter-in-law Ida Fitzgerald Phenice (wife of Daniel Abraham Phenice). The letter I’m sharing this time was written much more recently. The older one was written in 1877 and the more recent one was written in 1975. Here is the first page of that 1975 letter.

1975 letter from Meredith Compton Gibson to Gerald Z. Phenice p. 1

The letter was written by Meredith Compton Gibson (1924-2002) to Gerald Z. Phenice (1909-2001). Their correspondence started in 1973 when Meredith found Gerald’s name in a Columbus, Ohio, phone book. Since his last name was the same as her grandmother’s maiden name (Maud Phenice Martin – the daughter of Ida and Abraham Phenice mentioned earlier), she wrote to him to find out what their connection was.

As it turned out, Gerald and Meredith’s father Harry Dale Compton were second cousins. They were both great grandsons of Daniel and Susan Jackson Phenice. So they corresponded for a while. I found this one really interesting because it identifies all of the family lines that Meredith, Gerald, and our family group descend from.

Meredith comes from the Daniel Abraham (1852-1900) line. His daughter Maud was the mother of Harry Dale Compton. Harry was the father of Meredith. A sad part of this story is that Maud had a sister named Gertrude that died as a teenager around 1900. This tragedy struck Abraham particularly hard and he ended up committing suicide shortly after her death.

Gerald comes from the William Henry (1840-1914) line. William Henry was the oldest son of Daniel and Susan Jackson. He had a son named Milroy Morton Phenice. Milroy was the father of Gerald. Gerald was actually the youngest of four children.

My family line comes from Samuel Charles Phenice (1844-1939). Samuel had the longest lifespan of all of his siblings. He lived to be 95 years old. Not bad for a Civil War soldier who was injured in battle. He was the father of my great grandfather Harry C. Phenice. HC was the father of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin. Myrtle was the mother of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

The other great thing about the letter is that it included the photo of Samuel and his family that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. For the longest time, I read that second line as “1st wife Catherine Jane Foster Phenice” and wondered if there was a 2nd wife that I hadn’t found. I recently realize it says ” lso wife C.J.F.P.” The A is missing in ‘Also’ because of a typo with the old typewriter she was using to type that letter! Long before SpellCheck!

As you can see, it is a poor quality image. It looks like a Xerox of a Xerox. She obviously had a better quality photo that she sent, because she encourages Gerald to look at the photo with a magnifying glass. A magnifying glass won’t help now. You might get a better view of those large Phenice ears that she talks about in the letter! If you look closely at the names, you can see that she wrote one of the daughter’s names as Myrtle and then tried to remove it all and replace it with May. I think she had it right the first time. I think this is Samuel and Catherine with their daughters Emma and Myrtle with some of their grandchildren. It’s hard to tell with the blurriness of the photo, but the man in the right of the photo could be their son Edd.

William Henry Phenice circa 1850. Brother of Daniel Phenice

The other subject that Meredith talks about is an old tintype photo that her grandmother had sent her previously. She spoke about it in another letter as well, saying that it was taken in the 1850s. Her grandmother said it was Meredith’s 3rd great uncle William Henry. Daniel’s son by the same name was born in1840 and would have been too young in 1850s for this individual. So this would be Daniel’s brother. Since I don’t have a photo of my great great great grandfather (yet!), this is the closest thing that I have. She also said that Samuel had whiskers like this at one point. I’d like to see that, too!

I’m always on the lookout for more photos – either improved quality or ones I haven’t seen before. I have been looking for the photo of Samuel and his family for a few years. I’ve gotten others that I didn’t know about along the way. (Thanks to those Quillen girls and other cousins!) Since the letter was from Meredith Gibson, I thought of tracking down her descendants. I think the old letter from Susan Phenice was in her possession, too. I’d really like to get better quality scans of both.

1975 letter from Meredith Compton Gibson to Gerald Z. Phenice p. 2

So you can imagine my excitement when one of Meredith’s children showed up as a DNA match to me a few months ago! I don’t want to come across as all “Grab, grab, grab” when I introduce myself, so I try to be subtle. But I also don’t want any old family photos or letters destroyed either. I have to check on these things. So I sent off a message of inquiry and sat back and waited patiently.

I didn’t have to wait long. And I was so excited when I first started reading the response. “My mother was an avid genealogist.” Yes, I knew that. It went on about “totes chocked full of family history…” Yee Haw! I was really getting excited and it continued with “…letters and photos…often dozens of photos…with careful notes on the back…” You can only imagine my excitement. And then…

“I have not even popped the lid of the Phenice tote… My daughter is keeper of the totes…” Where is he going with this? “I will happily look into the Phenice material, but unfortunately…” No! No unfortunately! Not now! They were seeming so close! “the totes are buried deep in storage…daughter building a home…inaccessible for 12 months or so…” A year!? or so!? Say it isn’t so!!!

So I sent back a letter of feigned understanding.

And I sat back.

And I wait…

The Wooden Leg

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There wasn’t any one photo or story that called out to me for my blog this week. So I went searching through my “Old Photos” folder on my computer to see what I’d come across. I kept coming back to this photo, so I decided to go with it.

Myrtle and Fred Bucklin were my grandparents.

This is a photo of my maternal grandparents. I am Van Landry. My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, and her parents were Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin. I had thought of posting this photo several times, but put it off for various reasons. I figured I’d end up posting it at some point. That point is now.

One of the reasons I didn’t post it was that I can never decide on a date for the photo. They seem pretty young in the photo. The Depression was going on during the 1930s, yet they seem to be dressed pretty nicely. Of course I used to think the family had no money at all, but then had to rethink that when I found out my grandfather used to summer at the spas in Arkansas.

She was born Dec. 19, 1906, and he was born less than a year later on Oct. 2, 1907. They both grew up in the same area and now that I think about it, I have no idea how they met. It’s not like my other grandparents who were cousins and probably knew each other all their lives. But they could have met when they were young since they were the same age and lived near each other. They got married March 12, 1930. So this photo could have been taken before then, or it could be fifteen years later. I just don’t know.

Either way, I think they make a handsome couple. My grandmother was never referred to as a beauty, but was said to be handsome. I wonder if that was said because she wasn’t dainty. I think she looks very striking in some photos. Like this one. She looks a bit stylish with that hat, coat, and handbag.

Grandpa looks nice in his suit, also. It may not have the same lines that are popular today, but he looks rather dapper. Of course when I was a child, I never thought such a thing. He was just an old man that liked to complain about his health. I never thought of him as this young man starting out his married life with his cherished bride. I do think I resemble him a bit, as did my cousins Keith and Dale. (Depending on the photo.)

The other thing that I didn’t like about this photo is that it looks like Grandma has a wooden leg. When I looked at this smallish photo when it was in a photo album, that’s what I’d see. It wasn’t until I scanned it and looked at it on my computer that it quit looking like that, so maybe you won’t see it at all. Maybe you’ll just see a handsome couple looking stylish as they smile for the camera.

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