A Smile From Pee Paw Circa 1920

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Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. circa 1920 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Earlier today, I was wondering what I would end up writing about tonight.  I didn’t really have anything in mind.  I wasn’t too concerned, because I usually find something to write about.  But really, after sharing around 400 photos on this blog, you would think that I’d run out of photos!  Not that 400 photos are that many photos.  Right now, I’ve got 1, 874 photos on my phone.  Not that they are all worthy of something to write about, but it’s still a lot more than 400.  And I clean out my photos somewhat regularly.  I’m sure there are people reading this who have photos numbering in the thousands on their phones.  Am I right?

When I was walking home from work, I thought that maybe I’d title my post “Photos of Dead People.”  While not everyone in my photos have died (myself included), many of the subjects in the old photos I post have.  And I was not planning on posting photos of people who were dead in the photo.  There is a history of people photographing the dead to preserve their memory.  That was back in the day when photographs were relatively rare.  But the tradition has carried on in my dad’s side of the family.  

My paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry died in 1973 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I remember going to Mee Maw’s funeral.  I have a few memories of that day.  My brother-in-law at the time gave me a piece of polished smoky quartz that I cherished for many years.  Not because of who gave it to me, but I have always liked rocks and minerals.  I haven’t seen that piece of quartz for a while now.  I also remember going to the restroom and my belt buckle fell off and fell into the toilet!  I wasn’t about to fish that thing out, and I hoped that no one would notice it was missing.  Nobody noticed and I think I’ve only told one person that story.  Now everyone knows the secret.

It was at Mee Maw’s funeral that I saw my dad crying for the first time that I recall.  For some reason that seemed like such a big thing to young pre-teen Van.  I don’t remember my grandmother or her coffin or that much of anything else.  But I do remember that afterwards, my dad was given or sent a photo of her in her coffin.  He kept it in the top dresser drawer in my parents’ bedroom.  I know that, because I remember looking through that drawer from time to time and looking at the photo.  I was just a little curious.  When my sister Jodie died in 1989, one of my cousins gave me a photo of her in the coffin.  I have the photo, but I never look at it.  After my parents died in 2017, similar photos were offered to me, but I politely declined.  

Because really, wouldn’t you prefer to have a picture like this one I’m sharing?  Of course, you would!  This is a photo of my paternal grandfather Rober Joseph Landry, Sr. from around 1920.  I always title posts about him using the name that his grandchildren called him – Pee Paw.  He went by Rob or Bob or Pappy.  But when I think of Rob Landry, I think of my brother.  And Bob Landry was my father, and all of his grandchildren called him Pappy.  So Pee Paw is the only name he went by that doesn’t confuse the issue for me.  He, of course, was married to my Mee Maw.  They actually got married around the time that this photo was taken.

I estimated that this photo was taken in 1920.  Rob Landry married Erie Patureau on November 21, 1921.  He was 28 years old at the time and she was 26.  That’s a little older than I would have thought, because they ended up having 8 children together.  That was over a period of 14 years, so Mee Maw was 40 years old when she had her last child.  My mom had her last child when she was 29.  It’s interesting how our idea of ‘normal’ is what we grew up with.  Though that is not always true.

And some of you are probably happy about that.  Because, like I said, I grew up in a family that takes pictures of dead people.  And while I do share photos of people who are no longer with us, they were very much alive when the photos were taken.  Just like this photo of Pee Paw with a big smile on his face.  You can’t do that with a dead person, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone try.

When H. C. Was a Miner

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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 Landry Family in 1975

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The Landry family on July 24, 1975, in College Station, Texas

This photo has been calling to me for a while now.  I really like the photo, but it is just another photo of my family from the 1970s.  I almost used this photo as the theme of last week’s post, but I thought I was being lazy.  It doesn’t take much research to write about something from you own life.  Yet this photo is from almost fifty years ago and I’m not exactly sure of where it was taken.  But it still calls to me, so I’m not ignoring it.  

I got this photo from my brother Rob about five years ago.  I wasn’t familiar with it at the time.  Of course, I had to crop it, clean it up a little, and sharpen it some.  I didn’t really have to, but I thought it would look better with a freshening up.  I suppose Rob told me the date on the photo, because I wouldn’t put a specific date unless I remembered it or had it written down.  The date July 24 is my brother Al’s birthday.  That may be why the date is known.

I’ve pretty much convinced myself that this was taken in College Station, Texas.  The date and the place bring back a lot of memories for me.  My oldest sister Jodie was married to Dennis Franklin and it was around this time that they moved from Lake Charles, Louisiana, to College Station.  They had met at McNeese when they were in college.  When Dennis graduated from McNeese, he was accepted into the graduate program in botany at Texas A&M University.  So that was their impetus to move.  It also explains why Jodie did not perform with the family much when we started singing at Shakey’s the following year.  She was living in Texas.

And once they were living in Texas, the rest of the family had to go see what it was all about!  I remember riding around the campus and looking at the scenes.  We went into the School of Botany (or Plant Biology?) and saw some of the experiments taking place in the lab.  After that, we stopped to look at the golf course.  (My dad was driving.  He was a golf fan.)  While we were watching, a guy shot a hole in one!  That’s the only time I’ve ever seen that in person.  It was such a surprise.  I’d like to say that I remember the family celebrating Al’s birthday, but I don’t.  Maybe he can remind me of something that happened.  We’ll see.

One of the things we did was to take this photo.  My ex-brother-in-law (yes, her first marriage did not last.)  Dennis took the photo.  Not that I remember that.  It’s just that there is another photo that shows Jodie and Dennis together in it.  So he was there that day and he’s not in this photo.  If someone else had been there to take the photo, he would have been in it, too.  So let me identify those of us who are in the photo.  Starting on the left, you see my father Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr.  He was 46 years old at the time.  He was so young!  At the time I didn’t think that.  He seemed so old to me.  Now it’s me that’s so old!

Standing in the front are my sisters Jodie, Karen, and Jamie.  Jodie was 21 years old at the time.  Karen had just graduated from Jennings High Schol that May of ’75.  She would be starting college at McNeese in a few months.  Jamie was in junior high school and would be starting the 8th grade. The day before this, Jamie was 13, I was 14, and Al was 15.  Our ages are consecutive like that for only a few weeks a year.   Standing behind the girls and next to my dad is my mom.  Betty Lou Bucklin Landry was 42 years old in this photo.  Parents really do grow up with their children.  Particularly so when they get married and have children at a young age.  My mom had six children by the time she was 29.  

Standing in the back are the boys.  The birthday boy Al is the tallest one.  It was his 16th birthday that day.  All four of his children are older than that now.  Time is zooming by!  The next person is 14-year-old Van.  I think I look kinda cute in this photo.  That’s kinda funny because the absolute worst photo of me was taken earlier this same month.  I have no plans of ever posting that photo.  I’m pretty sure it will never call to me!  On the far right is my brother Rob.  He was getting ready for his third year of college at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  One of his interests in college was photography.  Since the photo came from him, it was probably taken with his old Minolta camera.

So we can thank Rob for the photo.  I hope you all like it.

 

Three Quarter View Portrait of Ferdinand Patureau

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Ferdinand Pierre Patureau circa 1867

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.

Another (Possible) Irish Connection

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Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin was born in Ireland and immigrated to Palmer, Massachusetts, around1850 with her family.

I know, I know.  It doesn’t sound like I am sure of this new connection, but tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day and I don’t want to neglect my Irish lines.  Growing up, I never really felt a connection to any Irish ancestry.  I didn’t really hear anything about it.  I knew that my great great grandmother was Mary Ann McGrath and that always sounded like an Irish name.  But for some reason, some Census records show that she was born in England.  So I thought that maybe it was a very distant Irish connection.  It happens.  Families moved about from England, Ireland, and Scotland quite regularly historically. 

So when I heard about the Great Irish Potato Famine, which occurred from 1845-1852, I didn’t associate it with any of my family.  I felt a lot of sympathy for the people who went through the events and the situations of The Great Hunger, but I didn’t feel a personal connection.

But then in 2015 or so, a DNA match helped me to figure out my family’s direct connection to that tragic event.  He had a great grandparent who had written down some family history information about our McGrath family line.  In that information, it talked about a Mary Ann McGrath who married a Bucklin man and moved to southern Louisiana.  Those were my great great grandparents Mary Ann McGrath and James Bucklin!

Mary Ann’s youngest sibling was born in Ireland in 1838, and Mary Ann married James in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1854.  So sometimes between those dates, the whole McGrath family group moved to Palmer, Massachusetts.  That means that my family was directly involved with the Great Irish Potato Famine.  I wish I knew some of the particulars of what they went through during that historic time.  I’m sure it had a great impact on all of their lives.  Mary Ann and James and their children moved down to Louisiana in 1884.  There are still family members in that area today.  Even though I grew up in Jennings, Louisiana, which is where Mary Ann died, I didn’t realize all of those connections.  She did die 60 years before I was born, so that’s understandable.

I just recently discovered an even older connection to Ireland in my family.  Again, it is through my mom’s side of the family.  I’m a Landry, and my dad’s side of the family is almost exclusively French.  Most of his ancestry is from the Acadian connection.  Those were mainly French peoples who settled in the 1600s in the area where Nova Scotia is in Canada.  There are a few other lines who came directly from France and intermarried with the Acadian people who were Exiled from Acadie and eventually made their way to Louisiana.

Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice circa 1890 in Nebraska.

But the other Irish connection is through my great great grandmother Cathrine Foster.  She was married to Samuel Phenice, the Civil War veteran and witness to the Lincoln Assassination.  A few years ago, I discovered that her father’s name was Morris or Moore Foster.  He died when Cathrine was young, so it was difficult to find information about him for a while.

The family was from Mercer County in Pennsylvania.  Any time I have a DNA match that has ancestors from Mercer County, I can be pretty sure that the connection is from Cathrine or Samuel.  Cathrine’s mother was Anne Magdaleen Milliron.  She was from German roots, and I’ve seen plenty of DNA connections to that family line.  They had lots of big families.

But I have started to get DNA matches to Cathrine’s father’s family line as well.  The father of Morris Foster was James Foster.  His whole life was lived in Pennsylvania.  James was actually the oldest child in his family.  He was the son of Hugh Foster and Mary Elizabeth McCullough.  I’m pretty sure Mary Elizabeth lived all of her life in Pennsylvania, but her name sounds very Irish.  I’ll have to look into that name a bit more.

Hugh Foster, on the other hand, is said to have been born in Derry, Ireland.  So there it is, another Irish connection.  When I add people to my tree, I like to have good information about the connection to their children.  You’ve got to prove one generation to the next.  But I always like to see DNA pointing to the same connection as well.  It makes it seem more real to me.  Earlier this week I had a DNA connection that showed the common ancestors to be Hugh Foster and Mary Elizabeth McCullough.  A few other matches had hinted at that connection as well.

When I was deciding on what I’d write this week, I looked a bit at that Hugh Foster connection.  I saw the name of another descendant of him.  That person showed that they had taken a DNA test.  So I decided that her test would be the deciding factor on what I wrote tonight.  If she was a DNA match to my mom, I would write about our connection to Hugh Foster.  If she didn’t match, you wouldn’t have heard about him.  I suppose you know what the outcome was.

Erin go bragh.

My family tree showing Irish lines in green for both of my maternal grandparents.

 

Keys Reunion 1976

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My grandparents Myrtle and Fred Bucklin at the Keys Family Reunion in 1976.

I thought I would share a few photos from the 1976 Keys Family Reunion.  The event was held on Saturday July 10, 1976.  I’m not sure where it was held.  It was definitely in southern Louisiana.  It was probably in Jennings, Hathaway, Kinder, or someplace like that.  I shared a photo from the event back in June of 2018.  It was a photo of my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin and her Keys cousins.  Her mother was Daisy Keys Phenice, an English immigrant.

This photo is of Grandma and Grandpa.  Grandpa would be Myrtle Phenice Bucklin’s husband Fred D. Bucklin.  They were married in 1930 and my mom Betty Lou was their second child.  Actually, you can see my mom in the background of this photo in the pinkish-looking top.  I think it was actually a red checkered print.  She is talking to her cousin Kathleen Phenice Montgomery.  Behind Grandma is Tommy Campbell.  He is married to Julie, another of my mom’s first cousins.  There are other cousins in the background that I don’t recognize.

The summer of 1976 was an eventful summer.  The whole country was celebrating the Bicentennial that year.  Back then I wrote a few posts on my blog.  One of the posts was about marching in the Bicentennial parade.  Of course I was in the band: my father was a band director!  And since we all sang and played musical instruments, we had a family band.  And it was in June of 1976 that we started playing our most notable gig at the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I blogged about that back then as well.  I even mentioned a picnic I went on with the Catholic Youth group and another outing with the Baptist group.

The Keys Family Band (AKA The Landry Family Band) sang at the 1976 Keys Reunion. We were joined by some of our musical kinfolk.

But I didn’t mention this family reunion for the Keys family!  I skipped right over it.  You would think I would mention it.  My blog posts now are all about family history.  And as you can see from this other photo, our family sang at the reunion as well.  I’m thinking that we went to the reunion and sang, then later that night we went to Shakey’s to perform our regular Saturday night appearance.  Would we skip Shakey’s to go to a family reunion?  I wish I could remember.  And it’s a shame that young Van was foolish and overlooked writing about it back then.

In the photo from left to right:  Karen, Jamie, and I were sitting at a picnic table.  I never really liked this photo of myself.  I had such terrible posture back then!  I probably still do.  I know I slouch in my chair at work all of the time.  But I don’t have groovy bell-bottomed pants anymore!  Those didn’t make it through the 70s. 

The next thing in the photo is my trombone.  It looks so shiny.  I think this was probably right after we had it relacquered.  It was my dad’s before I got it, and I think he had it back in the early 1950s.  The top of the trombone is blocked by the elbow of Tommy Campbell.  Blocking Tommy’s face is Cousin Kathleen.  Next is Kathleen’s daughter Gwynne Montgomery.  It looks like the cousins are discussing musical choices with Al on the guitar, mom with the microphone, and my dad – Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry – on the electric bass.

The entertainment at the 1976 Keys Family Reunion

The last photo is another one of the entertainers.  That is Kathleen, Tommy, Gwynne, Al, Mama, and Daddy.  Al is playing the guitar that my dad had for many years.  It was always hanging on the wall of our den at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana.  Except when someone was playing it. 

My mom is holding a microphone, but not HER microphone.  She didn’t like the way she sounded on the one she’s holding in this photo.  That’s the one my dad usually used.  My mom thought her voice sounded too shrill with that mic.  That’s why she’s holding it like it’s a snake!

If you look closely, you can see the banjo in the background between mom and dad.  My dad got that one after his uncle Vincent Patureau died in 1956.  I have it now.  My dad is holding a black electric bass.  I have nothing interesting to say about that.  I do have something to say about that little brown box sitting on top of the Fender amplifier.  That is Sticks.  He was the drummer for the Landry Family Band. 

That’s right, we had a drum machine to accompany us on our songs.  It was a newfangled thing at the time, and it had a wide variety of settings.  We had the perfect setting for each song that we played that was written on the top corner of the page.  It was the best that we could do, since none of us played the drums.  Besides, we wouldn’t have had room for a set of drums on that Shakey’s stage.  Sticks didn’t take up much space.

Who Is Maria Francisca Ovispo?

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Joseph Auguste Leveque circa 1885, probably in Lake Charles, Louisiana. (This is a photo edited by Van Landry.)

I can’t believe I haven’t posted this photo more than once.  This is a photo of my great great grandfather Joseph Auguste Leveque.  I shared this photo on Christmas Eve in 2015.  That was when I was first started sharing photos and I only wrote a short little caption with the photos.  Through the years, the number of words per post has increased significantly.  That’s a good thing, right?  I also have access to tools to enhance old photos and I’ve never shared this edited photo before.

J. A. Leveque was the father of Marie Celeste Leveque.  I shared a new photo of her last week.  It was a photo of her with two sets of twins who were her great grandchildren.  Even though I am her great grandchild, too, I was born 30 years later than they were.  When I write a post about a family line, I usually move on to another line the next week.  But earlier this week I saw something about the Leveque line that really intrigued me.

That’s why I had to write about Maria Francisca Ovispo.  You may ask, “What does this Ovispo chick have to do with the Leveque family?”  That’s what I was wondering when I saw the name associated with the profile of a Leveque ancestor.  If you were a linguist, you may not have wondered, particularly if you specialize in Romantic languages.

I saw the name on WikiTree.  It is a website that is striving to connect everyone with one single tree.  You don’t have your own family tree; you enter your parents and previous generations until you find ancestors who are already on the tree.  So everyone adds what they know to anybody in the tree.  It has its benefits and drawbacks.  This week I definitely benefited from it.  Someone entered the baptism/birth record for Maria Francisca Ovispo onto the profile for Joseph Auguste Leveque’s older sister Marie Francoise Leveque.  In the biography, the person said that the baptism entry from the Diocese of Baton Rouge (DOBR) church records for Marie Francoise Leveque used her family name Ovispo.

“Ovispo?” I thought.  “That’s not right!  Her maiden name was Leveque.”  Then it donged on me that it might be a translation.  From dealing with French records, I’ve seen the word leveque in many church records.  Not because there were a lot of Leveque family in France.  I’m sure there were some, but it is usually in reference to a church official.  LeVeque means ‘the bishop’ in French.  So I did a search for the word ovispo (or obispo), and sure enough it is the Spanish word for bishop.  Louisiana was under Spanish rule in the late 1700s and many of the records show names using Spanish versions.  

I’ve never thought to look for records of the Leveque family by anything but Leveque and Levesque.  I’ve seen the name spelled both ways and I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced the same way.  Our family usually spells it without the ‘s’ in the middle of it.  I usually see that with families in Canada.  

Headstone for Marie Francoise Leveque is located in the St. Joseph Cemetery in Brusly, Louisiana.

So Marie Francoise Leveque was Maria Francisca Ovispo.  She wasn’t just my great grandmother’s aunt; she was also my 4x great grandmother and she was married to Joseph Sylvestre Bujol.  The great thing about the DOBR baptism record is that it lists both or her parents and all of her grandparents.  It lists her father as Agustin Ovispo.  That would be our Henry Augustin Leveque.  His parents are listed as Mauricio Ovispo and Julia Verto.  That would be our Maurice Henry Leveque and Marie Julie Berteau.  Marie Francoise’s mother is listed as Margarita Prevo.  I think of her as Marguerite Justine Prevot.  Her parents are listed as Pablo Prevo and Felisa Viso.  I show them as Paul Prevost and Felicite Perpetua Bujol.  

Even though the names are a bit different, it still refers to the same people.  It’s nice to see a record that confirms all of those names.  I won’t get into the different birth dates that we have for her.  The baptism record states that she was born November 15, 1796.  The headstone shows it as November 17, 1797.

Marie Francoise died in 1875.  I’ve never seen a photo of her, even though she lived well into the age of photography.  If anybody knows of one, please let me know.  Who knows? One could be out there.  My godmother has her wedding band.  I’m sure that if she had a photo of her, she would have shared it with me.  She’s generous like that.  She’ll probably share a photo of the ring if we ask sweetly.

Grandma Celeste and the Kids

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Grandma Celeste and the kids circa 1930, likely in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Here is a photo I discovered recently.  I’ve had the photo for a few years now.  I got several photos from some of my Cazes cousins when I went to visit them in Brusly in 2017.  Now I don’t have any Cazes ancestors, but some of the Cazes family lines share a lot of common ancestors.  That’s why I’m never surprised to see a Cazes individual show up as a DNA match to me at any of the testing sites.  Some of my cousins may be familiar with this connection that comes through my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry.  He is one of my ancestors who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  There are a few books about him written by his descendants.

In the genealogy book written by Trasimond’s grandson Tommy Landry, he mentions that Llewellyn Cazes (another grandson of Trasimond) had one of the biggest collections of information about Trasimond.  The Cazes line descends from Trasimond and his first wife Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol through their son Moses Joseph “Uncle Mose” Landry.  Tommy descends from their son Thomas Belisaire or Tommy Landry, and I descend from their oldest child Marie Therese.  We’ll talk about another line of their offspring later.  

Claire Landry, Rosey Hebert Landry, Henry, Myrtle (daughter of Mose & Claire), and Mose Landry circa 1930s in Brusly, Louisiana

Uncle Mose brings in a little bit of confusion, because he married another Landry.  It wasn’t a close Landry cousin like some of the other family members connected with, but it was still a Landry marrying a Landry.  He married Claire Landry from Brusly.  She was the daughter of Justin Landry and Rosey Hebert Landry.  They are somewhat distant Landry cousins, but some of their daughters married into closer Landry lines.  The Cazes family had stories about Rosey, but they weren’t too pleasant.  It was said that she wasn’t a particularly nice person.

I know that isn’t true for all of the members of this family line, because my dear friend and coworker Marisa descends from Rosey through her daughter Justine.  Justine married John Peter Landry.  Both of John Peter’s parents were Landrys as well.  I like to tease Marisa about that.  I always say that even though my ancestors married their cousins, at least they didn’t have the same last name!  Like that makes any difference at all!  Rosey doesn’t look all that mean in the photo that she’s in.  My great grandmother Addie has some sour looks in her photos, but she was a sweet lady.  Never judge a book by its cover!  Or by their ancestors!  We’ll talk about another one of Rosey’s daughters later.

We have to talk about another Landry family because I still haven’t gotten to the main topic.  The other important Landry family is the family of Trasimond’s brother Alcide.  Of course I think it’s important since I descend from him as well.  Alcide was married to Marie Celeste Leveque, who we all know as Grandma Celeste.  I descend from them through their youngest child Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry.  Rob married Erie Patureau, the daughter of Trasimond and Belite’s daughter Marie Therese.  Rob may have married his first cousin’s daughter, but their last names were different.  One of his older brothers – Joseph Alcide or “Uncle Joe” – married a Landry.  Her name was Azema and she was a daughter of Rosey.  She was known as Aunt Zim.

So I got the photo of Grandma Celeste and the kids from descendants of Uncle Mose.  But that wasn’t how the photo was labeled.  It was labeled as “Louis, Roberta, and Unknowns.”  I don’t know for sure who Louis and Roberta are, but when I saw the photo the other day, I knew it was Grandma Celeste right away.  It looks just like her.  When I got the photo all those years ago from the Cazes family, I got a huge number of photos.  I thought I had skimmed through all of the folders on my computer.  Either I didn’t look through them all, or I didn’t recognize her the first time I saw it.

And who are Louis and Roberta?  Uncle Mose and his first wife had a son named Louis in 1904.  He later had a wife name Roberta, but I doubt that they knew each other as children.  I don’t think they’re related.  Imagine that!  I also think the photo was taken around 1930.  For some reason the photo puts me in mind of another Landry-Landry connection.  Trasimond and Belite’s youngest child Marie Manette married Alcide and Celeste’s son Sebastien.  Marie Manette and Uncle Seb had one child together, and Marie Manette died shortly after that.  Their daughter – also name Manette- was raised by Uncle Seb and Grandma Celeste.  Grandma Celeste was like her mother.  When Manette grew up and had children of her own, Grandma Celeste was very close to them.  

Manette and Bibb Bouquet had a set of twins in 1926 named Roberta and Robert.  When I showed it to some Bouquet cousins on Facebook, one of them verified that it was Roberta and Robert on the right in this photo.  She suggested checking into Uncle Louis.  Louis was another brother of Rob, Joe, and Sebastian.  He was married to Clemence Babin, a daughter of Belite by her second marriage after Trasimond died.  They had a son named Thornwell, who later had a set of twins of his own in 1928.  The twin sons were named Thornwell, Jr. and Louis.  That would fit perfectly with the ages of the two children to the left of Grandma Celeste in the first photo.  So I think this is a photo of my great grandmother Celeste Leveque Landry with two sets of twin great grandchildren.  Interestingly, her father had a twin brother.

I’m glad the Cazes family kept this old photo of an unknown woman with some kids.  Come to find out, it was their Aunt Celeste.  Or maybe it was their cousin Celeste?  Or cousin-in-law?  With these three Landry families connecting in so many ways, it’s difficult to determine all of the relationships between any two people.  It doesn’t really matter; I’ve got another photo of my great grandmother thanks to some generous cousins who were willing to share.  With the help of other cousins, I was able to figure out all of the identities of the children in the photo.  I like that.

Addie and Her Dog

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Addie and her dog circa 1950 in Hathaway, Louisiana

Here is a photo of my mom’s paternal grandmother Addie Hine Bucklin with one of the dogs she had during her life.  I’ve posted a story about Addie and her dog Sammy.  In that post, I shared an old voice recording of Addie talking about how her dog Sammy got run over by a truck.  But don’t worry, he commenced to getting better shortly after the incident took place.  When I wrote that story, I was mainly talking about how wonderful it was to have a recording of her voice from around 1942.  Since she died shortly after I was born, I wasn’t familiar with her voice.

When I first heard the recording, I didn’t know who was telling the story.  I had to get my mom and my aunt to identify the speakers in it.  Since I was used to seeing photos of Addie with a scowl on her face, I assumed her voice was the more shrill one.  I was so glad that I was wrong.  Addie is the one telling the sweet, warm story about her little dog that made it through a scary incident.  I have listened to it many times over the past seven years because it helps me to ‘see’ her as the caring person that she must have been.  She obviously liked children, because she gave birth to a dozen of them!

One of her children was Fred Bucklin.  My cousins and I knew him as Grandpa.  He and Grandma (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin) were the parents of five children, including my mom, Betty Lou.  My grandparents had considered naming my mom after her grandparents.  Addie was married to Louis Bucklin, so the proposed name for my mom was Addie Lou.  When Addie heard that, she nixed the idea.  She thought Addie was a too old-fashioned name.  So instead, my mom was named Betty Lou.  The name fit her.  I think my mom looked up to her Grandma Addie.  When she was young, she wanted to grow up and have a dozen children herself.  Actually, she wanted to have thirteen.  My mom was a little competitive, so she thought she could outdo her grandmother by having one more than she had.  In the end, though, she “only” had half as many as Addie had.  Lax, lax, lax.

The other thing I realized about Grandma Addie was that she was fond of animals.  After I wrote the post about her and Sammy, cousin Joseph shared a photo of Addie with a dog.  I also noticed that one of the early photos of the Hine family in 1892 shows a dog with the family.  Then I found the photo I’m posting today.  Again she is posing with a little dog.  It’s possible that this little dog or the one in the other photo could be Sammy.  Even though she took photos with her pets, nobody ever bothered to give the name of the pets.  And it wasn’t just dogs she was fond of, there are a few photos of her with a cat.  I also have a picture of her with some cows, but I don’t know if she considered them pets.  Even though the cows were a business venture, some people do get attached to those animals.

My mom did not share that affection for animals that her grandmother had.  We had pets when we were growing up, but Mama was not too fond of them.  If we ever found a stray animal, she would insist on cleaning it with Lysol before she let it hang around for any length of time.  I remember her doing this with dogs, cats, and a turtle.  I don’t know how she got away with doing that to a cat.  Most cats fight their selves away from any kind of smelly water.  I would think Lysol water would be particularly unappealing to cats.  Maybe my mom wanted them to run away!  After we had cleaned them, she would let us keep them.  But she mostly just tolerated them as long as they stayed outside.  It was only our little black dog Mitsy that was allowed inside.  She must have been fond of him.

Bob & Betty at Kerosene Flats in 1953

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Newlyweds Bob and Betty Landry in their first home in California

Last year I wrote about the events that led up to the marriage of my parents in 1952.  I like to commemorate important anniversaries, and 70 years is notable.  I thought I would continue that a bit more with a couple of photos from their first year together as a married couple.  The photos come from a photo album that was always in our house when we were growing up.  I always thought of the photo album being something that my mom put together.  But when I look at it now, I notice that the writing is definitely my dad’s.

Thinking back to how I thought when I was a kid, that photo album was the be all end all of our family history.  Any curiosity about my family’s past was found in that album.  I mean really, it went back a whole fifteen years when I was an eight-year-old.  World War II ended just over seven years before my parents’ wedding, and I remember thinking that that was ancient history.  Our perception of time definitely changes as we get older.

This first photo was on the first page of that old photo album.  It is a photo of my parents in front of their first home in January 1953.  How do I know that?  Because it’s written on the page of the album below the photo.  I had to include that in the photo.  I also included their names – Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  My dad was in the Air Force at the time and he was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, California.  It is on the edge of the Mojave Desert and near Joshua Tree National Park.  The housing for married service members was called Wherry Housing, but it was also known as Kerosene Flats.

My mom would talk about her days in the desert.  She was not familiar with the dry climate.  She said that the clothes dried on the line so much quicker than in Louisiana.  She said that by the time she finished hanging all of the clothes, the first things she had hung up were already dry.  One time in the wintertime she hung them up, but instead of drying the clothes quickly, they froze.  She didn’t realize how cold it was.  

Betty and Bob Landry in California at their first home. Note Betty’s newest painting on the table behind them.

But her favorite thing to talk about was the fact that the stoves at Kerosene Flats actually used kerosene to cook.  This was fine for young newlywed Betty Lou, because she had grown up using kerosene.  But all of the other wives in Wherry Housing were not familiar with it.  So my mom helped them all out and taught them the basics of cooking with kerosene.  There were some benefits to growing up in the small Louisiana hamlet of Hathaway.

This second photo of my parents was taken a few months later.  It was taken in the spring of 1953.  It’s a great photo of the two of them.  They even had an enlargement of it made back then.  It’s hanging on the wall behind me right now.  My mom had just finished the painting that you see in the background. 

They sure do look happy!

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