More Early American Immigrants – Smith & Chickering

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At Thanksgiving I wrote a post about some of my Bucklin family’s early American Immigrants.  They are part of a group of immigrants that came to America in the early to mid 1600s for religious freedom.  Some people have called it the Puritan Great Migration and it includes people who immigrated from 1621-1640.  I talked about the family names of Bucklin, Bosworth, Yeales, Whipple, Allen, and Frye.  As I was writing it, I realized that there were more immigrants in those lines than I had thought.  I wrote the post, but figured I’d end up doing a follow-up to that.

I ended up doing a spreadsheet to list all of the different family lines and keep track of them.  I’m not a spreadsheet fanatic, but I do use them from time to time.  With all of the names that I come across in my research, it might be more helpful to use them more often.  But that would be too much like work.  I rely on my tree-building software to keep track of most of it.  Those are indispensable.  I can just add as many details as I want.  

So while looking into the immigrants in my family, I came across an interesting group.  That group is the group of ancestors of Sarah Smith, my 7x great grandmother who lived her life in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  She was born there in 1670.  She married Jathniel Peck there in 1688.  She had all of her twelve children there from 1689 to 1712.  She died there in 1717.  Kinda sad that she died at only 46 years of age when her youngest child was only five years old.  I’ve mentioned Sarah in a previous post – not because she had a dozen children, but because of her connection to the Bucklin family.

Sarah was not an immigrant, but her family was.  Her father was Daniel Smith and he was born in 1634 in Hingham, England.  His parents were Henry Smith (1593-1647) and Judith Ray (1596-1650).  In 1638 Henry and Judith decided to bring their five children, three men servants, and two maid servants to the New World.  They arrived on the Diligent and originally settled in Hingham, Massachusetts.  In 1643 they moved to Rehoboth and spent the rest of their lives there.

Daniel grew up and married Esther Chickering.  Esther’s family immigrated earlier than Daniel’s and she was born in 1643, so she wasn’t an immigrant.  She was born in Dedham, Massachusetts.  Her parents were Francis Chickering (1606-1658) and Anne Fiske (1610-1649).  They were from Suffolk, England.  They were married around 1630 and had one child by the year 1637, which is the year that they immigrated.  Both Francis and Anne had widowed mothers.  Francis’s mother was Mary Austin Chickering.  Anne’s mother was Anne Lawter Fiske.  (Her husband John Fiske had been her second cousin.)  So when Francis and Anne decided to head off to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with their young daughter, both of their mothers decided to join them on their journey.

This was a great undertaking back then.  These were new settlements with none of the luxuries that we have become accustomed to.  You know, luxuries like running water, sewerage management, electricity, and air conditioning.  So the decision to go was not taken lightly.  I’m sure they had high hopes, though.  They had a strong belief that things would be better in this new place they were relocating to.  It would have been exciting to reach the shores of America after their long journey.  But a sad occurrence happened along the way.  The oldest member of the group – Anne Lawter Fiske – died during the voyage.  She was only 52 years old at the time.  She was likely buried at sea.

The rest of the family settled in Dedham, Massachusetts, which is where Esther Chickering was born.  Even though her family lived in Dedham, she somehow met Daniel Smith.  They were married in Rehoboth in 1659.  As I said earlier, their daughter was Sarah Smith, who married Jathniel Peck.  They had a son named Jathniel, Jr.  He was the father of Mary Peck, who married to James Bucklin (1709-1780).  Oh, no!  We’re still back in the 1700s and I want to bring this to the present.  Let me get going with a bunch of begetting.  James (1709) begat John Bucklin (1747-1795).  John (1747) begat John Bucklin (1792-1850).  John (1792) begat James Bucklin (1821-1890).  James begat Louis Charles Bucklin (1873-1927).  Louis begat Fred Bucklin (1907-1984).  Fred begat Betty Lou Bucklin, who was my mom.

Whew!  There, it’s done.  That’s my connection to the Smith and Chickering immigrants.

Family tree of my 7x great grandmother Sarah Smith

 

 

Ferdinand Pierre Patureau Circa 1860

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Ferdinand Patureau circa 1860

Here is a new photo of Ferdinand Patureau.  I guess I can’t really call it new when it was taken around 1860 or so.  I first saw it in the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas, on November 15, 2021.  I’ve never seen it anywhere else, either.  It’s nice to discover an old photo like that.  It was a bonus treat when I went searching for photos at that collection.  The collection was not disappointing, since it had great versions of photos that I had been aware of previously. 

So in case you don’t know, Ferdinand Patureau was my great great grandfather.  He emigrated from France in 1840 with his parents and siblings.  My father was Bob Landry, the famed band director of Jennings, Louisiana.  HIs mother was Erie Patureau Landry, my link to the Patureau family.  Erie was the daughter of Vincent Maximilian Patureau, one of the sons of Ferdinand Patureau.

Ferdinand was born on October 27, 1826, in LaRoche, Chalais, France.  His birth certificate called him Pierre Patureau, the son of Pierre Patureau, boulanger. aged 26 and Anne Machet.  Even though the father and the son were named Pierre in older documents, they are consistently known as Pierre Ferdinand Patureau and Ferdinand Pierre Patureau.  Instead of calling one a Sr. and the other a Jr., it was decided that the father would be Pierre Ferdinand and the son would be Ferdinand Pierre.  It worked for them.  It works for me.

Ferdinand spent his childhood in France.  Then, in 1840, the family decided to immigrate to the United States.  Ferdinand was only 14 years old when the family arrived in Louisiana and settled in Opelousas.  Ferdinand must not have been too happy with this move, because he took off on his own to go back to France.  For six to eight months the rest of the family didn’t know where he was.  According to the collection in Beaumont, Ferdinand spent some of that time working at a sugar plantation in Cuba to make money.  One report said that there was a document to support that claim, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Ferdinand didn’t stay in France for too long.  He came back to Louisiana after a year and a half or so.  I’m not sure of the motivation.  Perhaps he missed his family.  Sadly his mother Anne Machet and his younger sister Elisa both died in 1842 in Opelousas during a cholera epidemic.  Maybe that was motivation to move back, or he was already back before they died.  The details are not that clear.

A few years after returning to Louisiana he met Louisiana native Marie Emma Landry.  Three sets of her great grandparents were Exiles from Acadie (with names like Landry, Dupuy, Braud, Hebert, and LeBlanc), while the other set were French immigrants (Serrette and Sigur).  They were all French speakers.  When Ferdinand married Emma in 1847, he was 20 years old and she was only 17.

It didn’t take long for the family to start growing.  The first two years brought two daughters – Zulma and Aline.  I think they were born in Brusly, Louisiana.  In 1850 the family was living in Baton Rouge.  A few more years brought Louis Leobon and Marie Valentine.  After that the family was in Plaquemine with Pierre Patureau living with the family there.

So when this picture was taken, Ferdinand was a young father of several children.  I’m not exactly sure when the photo was taken, so it’s hard to know the exact number.  With births and deaths through those years, the number was changing often.  It was also in 1860 that Pierre died, leaving 33-year-old Ferdinand as the Patureau patriarch in Louisiana.  So it’s nice to have this “new” photo of Ferdinand from this particular part of his life.

Enjoy it.

Was Daisy Feeling a Little Unwell?

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My dear sweet English great grandmother Daisy Keys Phenice circa 1950, bless her.

I have been sick all week.  Sick, sick, sick.  And I’m sick of it!  My head feels like it’s in a fog most of the time and I don’t have much energy.  But I still wanted to do my family history blog post, right?  I can’t miss that.  It would let down my peeps.  With what I have planned for tonight, I still may disappoint some.

I was starting to look for something to post, and I thought about something musical.  Maybe I have another little ditty by Great Grandpa H. C. on his fiddle?  So I went searching for those recordings I got a few years ago.  I always think I’m so organized, but I find myself frustrated more often than I like when I’m looking for something specific.  Having a foggy head today wasn’t a help.  I finally found “Soldier’s Joy” and “The Irish Washerwoman.”  But I didn’t see another fiddly jig.  But then something else entered my foggy brain.

In my semi-demented stated, I thought of just the song recording that would represent how I’ve been feeling this week.  It’s a song from the same group of recordings as those others, but it wasn’t something that resonated with me until today.  Anytime I’m asked a question this week, I don’t want to answer with much effort.  It can set off coughing.  You also know I’m from a musical family.  I tend to relate things around me to certain songs, which I will start singing at random.  But with a scratchy throat and not much energy, I don’t really try for the correct pitch, and I really don’t care.  Like I said:  I’m sick, sick, sick!

So this is a recording of my mom’s maternal grandparents Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys.  Daisy is singing and playing the piano, while H. C. is accompanying her on his fiddle.  It’s a bit discordant.  It’s bit off key.  It’s exactly how I felt inside my head this week.  I wonder if Daisy was a bit unwell back then?  Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.

My Parents Were Bob and Betty

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This week marked the seventh anniversary of the end of an era.  The era of Bob and Betty Landry started in the early 1950s and continued until the third week of January in 2017.  It was a long run.  It was a good run.  My siblings and I were pretty sure that when one of them died, the other would be following along not long after.  Yet, we were taken off guard when they both died in the same week.  Having both of your parents die at the same time and having a joint funeral made for a difficult time.  But it was appropriate that their close-knit relationship would end at the same time.  They were happily married for 64 years.

Betty Bucklin Landry and Bob Landry on April 8, 1966. Easter in Lafayette, Louisiana.

So, when I was thinking about them all week, I knew I’d be writing about them tonight.  But I didn’t know exactly what I’d say or what photo I would use.  I surely couldn’t use a photo I used before!  (I hope I haven’t used this one before!)  That’s no problem, because I have lots of photos of my parents through the years.

I considered using the photo from their second wedding anniversary, but then thought I’d use it later this year around their wedding date.  I also thought about using a photo that they posed for while singing together at some function.  I do like photos of them showing them doing what they loved to do.  We had a very musical family.

When I went looking for a photo, this one caught my attention right away.  I had already edited it previously, so it just took a little more tweaking for it to be ready for publishing.  It’s also another one of those photos that is very calming to me.  They just look so content with each other.  This is what my parents looked like when we were kids.

This picture was taken at the Bucklin family Easter get together for 1966.  It was held by my mom’s older sister Sylvia Bucklin Pilcher and her husband Ronald Pilcher.  The Pilcher family lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Leonpacher Rd.  One of my most memorable events from one of those times we got together was when my mom’s younger brother Austin’s family moved back to Louisiana after being in Australia.  He had gotten married and had three children at that point, and they were introduced to the family.  So when someone told my cousin John that all of the other kids were his cousins, he pointed at me and said, “I don’t want that one!” in a cute little Australian accent.  That story has always made me laugh.

Back to the photo.  My dad’s name was Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. and my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Most people knew them as Bob and Betty.  My dad’s family may have said Bobbie and Betty, while my mom’s side would say Betty Lou and Bob.  They were in their 30s when this photo was taken.  I remember thinking that they were old back then.  I would look at old photos of them and was so surprised that they still looked similar.  What was I thinking?  They had only been together for 15 years.  

Look how cute they were.  And they were not pretentious in the least.  They were just happy to be together raising their kids in Southern Louisiana.  What could be better than that?

Cajuns By the Dozens

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Jeanne Zerbine Dupuis Landry Comeaux circa 1864 in Southern Louisiana.

Last week I wrote about my maternal great grandmother Addie May who gave birth to a dozen children.  When I think about that, I remember enjoying the story “Cheaper by the Dozen” when I was young. That’s what inspired the title for today’s blog. But what inspired the post itself was a notice I got in an email.   Over the weekend I got a notice about a Marguerite Babin.  That would be a name from my dad’s side of the family.  His heritage is Cajun and French, and Babin is one of the surnames that came from Acadie.

The link led to Marguerite Babin (born 1690), who was married to Antoine Dupuis (born 1688).  When I looked at information on Marguerite, I saw that she was one of a dozen children born to Charles Babin and Madeleine Elizabeth Richard.  I descend from Charles and Madeleine, who were from families of a dozen children as well.  So she must have had a lot of cousins.  I’m not going to count them.  That’s too much trouble.  Once I get an AI assistant, I may have that information at my fingertips.

When I look at Antoine Dupuis’ family, I see that he was from a family of thirteen children.  His parents were Martin Dupuis and Marie Landry.  They were both from families with more than a dozen children.  Big families were very common in Acadie back then.  And what is surprising is that the survival rate was pretty high.  Most of the time.  (As you read that last sentence, imagine somber music beginning to play.)

1712 marriage record for Antoine Dupuis & Marguerite Babin

Marguerite Babin and Antoine Dupuis were married on July 4, 1712, in Grand Pre, Acadie.  As you can see from this 1895 transcript of a rare document from that time, it names Antoine and Marguerite and both sets of parents that I talked about earlier.  So Marguerite and Antoine were married in 1712 and started their married life.  But unlike the two generations before them, no children came.  One year, then two years.  People must have started to wonder.  Most couples back then had a child almost every year for the first few years.

Maybe they wanted to have children, but things went wrong.  They were together for seven years, and there is no record of any birth.  Then around 1718 or so, Marguerite died.  Perhaps she was finally able to carry a child to term, yet they both died during childbirth.  No records are available.  We just know that Antoine remarried around 1719 to Marie Josephe Dugas.  She, too, was from a family of a dozen children.  Cajuns by the Dozen!  Antoine and Marie Josephe had their first (of a dozen) child in 1720.

So I didn’t descend from that Marguerite Babin who was born in 1690.  But I did descend from her aunt that she was named for.  Her father Charles had a younger sister named Marguerite who was born in 1670.  I descend from her and her husband Antoine Breau.  Guess how many children they had!  If you guessed a dozen, you’re wrong.  They only had eleven.  How shameful!

The photo I’m sharing is of the most recent Dupuis ancestor that I have – Jeanne Zerbine Dupuis.  Let me tell you how she connects to Antoine Dupuis and Marie Josephe Dugas.  They had a son named Joseph whose life was greatly affected by the Grand Derangement.  After a dozen years of struggle with family members dying around him, he made his way to Louisiana.  He ended up serving in the militia out of St. Gabriel with Bernardo de Galvez.  This was an effort that aided the newly independent United States during the Revolutionary War.  We descend from a Revolutionary War hero!  Joseph married Anne Marie Hebert.  They had a son named Magloire Dupuy, who was married to Henriette Serrette.  Magloire and Henriette had Zerbine in 1807.  

Zerbine was married to Elie Onesime Landry and their daughter Emma Landry married Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, a French immigrant.  They had more than a dozen children and many of those families continued that tradition.  So, to suffice it to say, I have hundreds of dozens of cousins.  That’s a lot.

Here is the path from me to Joseph Dupuis.  Also, Pierre Breaux (shown fifth from the top on the far right) was the son of Antoine Breau (1666) and Marguerite Babin (1670).

Addie and Her Youngest

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Addie Hine Bucklin with her youngest children Ruth and Roy circa 1925 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Here is a photo of my great grandmother with the youngest of her 12 children.  That’s right!  She had a dozen children over a 17-year period at the beginning of the 1900s.  The photo is from almost a hundred years ago, but I’ve only known about it for 4 years or so.  I got it from my mom’s cousin who reminds me so much of her.  Their fathers were identical twins from that same group of 12 children.  DNA has proven that the older set of twins were identical.  It was not needed in the case of the youngest two.  Their DNA was obviously not identical because one was a boy, and the other was a girl.

Let me give you some details.  My name is Van Landry and I am the fifth child of Betty Lou Bucklin.  Betty Lou was the second child of Fred D. Bucklin.  Fred was born on October 2, 1907, in Roanoke, Louisiana.  Also born on that day was his twin Clarence Johnathan “CJ” Bucklin. I never knew him, so I don’t know if he preferred to be called Uncle Clarence or Uncle CJ.  They were the 7th and 8th children born to Addie May and her husband Louis Charles Bucklin.  I know that he preferred to be called Lou or Louie, because I’ve seen letters he wrote or received showing as much.  When the twins were born, there were only five older siblings alive – Leo, Mary, Ralph, Carl, and Herbert.  An older brother Paul was born in 1903 and died in 1904.  

Between the two sets of twins were born two more children – Edna and Robert.  The youngest set of twins were named Ruth and Roy and they were born in 1915.  I don’t know the birth order for either set of twins in relation to each other.  Somebody else in the family may know that morsel of information, but not me.  I do know that all of the children were born in Louisiana, most likely in Jefferson Davis Parish.  They were the first generation to be born in the South. 

Louis Bucklin came to Louisiana with his Bucklin family in 1884.  Lou was 11 years old at the time and he had lived those first years of his life in the state of Iowa.  His father James Bucklin’s family had been in Massachusetts for six generations.  His mother Mary Ann McGrath had immigrated from Ireland when she was a young woman.  She met and married James in 1854.  She came down to Louisiana with her family in 1884 and ended up dying in Jennings, Louisiana, in 1900.  She lived long enough to meet the first of Lou and Addie’s children.

George Henry Hine circa 1900

Addie Hine came to Louisiana with her Hine family in 1894.  She was a young adult at the time and the first part of her life was spent in Indiana.  Her parents George Henry Hine and Susan Stanbrough were both born in Indiana as well.  I am greeted by Grampa George every morning.  I recently had a canvas print made of a photo of him that I edited nicely.  His face is so angular, and his eyes follow you as you walk by him.  George and Sue lived long enough to know all of their Bucklin grandchildren.

 

 

The Landry Kids and Aint Zita

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Last week I had a hard time deciding on a photo to talk about, while this week this photo just reached out and grabbed me unawares!  It’s not a photo that I’m real familiar with.  I got it from Cousin Sis a few years ago when we got together to share photos and information.  And for some reason, today it looks particularly charming.  It reminds me of other photos I’ve posted.  In 2016 I posted a photo of Aunt Marie and Uncle A. J. in a washtub like you see in the photo.  It was from around 1925.  In 2019 I posted a photo that included Aunt Zita (more often pronounced as Aint by my dad and his cousins) when she visited the Landry family in 1939.

Marie, Germaine, A. J. and Bobbie Landry with their aunt Zita Patureau circa 1929 in southern Louisiana.

This is a photo of Aunt Zita with my dad and some of his siblings in 1929.  My dad’s name was Bob Landry.  His parents were Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie Patureau.  Back then they were known as Mama and Papa.  On January 31, 1929, Erie Patureau Landry gave birth to their fifth child who they called Bobbie.  And that’s what the family called him for the rest of his life.

Marie (Marie Therese) was my dad’s oldest sister.  She was the firstborn child, and she was born in 1923.  She is the child standing up in the middle of the photo.  She had cousins on both sides of her family, but on the Landry side they were much older.  Rob Landry was the youngest of ten children.  Marie did have cousins closer to her age on the Patureau side.  Therese Wynhoven was two years older than her, and Mona Mell was just a few months older.

Marie was an only child for just 14 months, then along came Alcide Joseph.  He was always known as A. J. to the family, though some people did refer to him as Al.  He is the little boy standing in the middle of the photo.  He had some cute little curls on his head.  The next sibling to come along was Hubert, who was born in 1925.  For some reason he is not in the photo.  Too bad.  After Hubert came Germaine, who was born in 1927.  Germaine is the little girl sitting in the tin washtub.  She isn’t really paying attention to anybody else around her.  My dad seems to be paying attention to her.  He’s the baby being held by the woman in the photo.  And he seems to be fascinated by his older sister in the washtub.

By now you must realize that the woman in the photo is Aunt Zita.  If you don’t know the connection, it is through my grandmother Erie Patureau Landry.  Zita was Erie’s younger sister.  There is two years difference in their ages, but still enough room for another sister – Lorena – to be born between them.  My grandmother didn’t waste time having those kids, and neither did her mother.  Zita was 32 years old at the time of the photo and she wasn’t married.  She didn’t get married for another ten years.  Then after their sister Marie Therese or “Bee” died, Zita married Bee’s husband and helped to raise Bee and Clarence’s two young girls.  

I’m not really sure where this photo is taken.  I don’t recognize it as being the house that my grandparents had when my dad was growing up in Lake Charles.  Of course, I’m probably not familiar with all of the views of the house.  In 1929 Zita lived on Lee Avenue in Lafayette, Louisiana, with her father Max Patureau (Grampa Max) and other siblings.  I am not familiar with that house at all.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen photos of it.  Maybe this is one.

It’s not that important, though.  The main focus to me are those little Landry children.  Particularly the young one being held by his aunt.  He is why I’m here.

Myrtle and Fred – A Photo I Want

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I had a hard time deciding on a topic for today.  I couldn’t decide on any of my good photos that I have.  I looked and looked to find a photo that inspired me or talked to me.  I usually like to show off a great photo that I’ve come across and fixed up to look wonderful.  Hopefully some other family members like it enough to copy it to their own growing collection of family images.  How else will those old family photos survive through the generations?  You can’t just let them rot away in an old drawer or attic.

Myrtle Phenice and Fred Bucklin

When I was hopelessly looking for an amazingly inspirational image, I came across this one.  I got this from my mom’s cousin on the Phenice side of the family.  (Thanks, Shelly!)  It was in a booklet that my grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin’s sister Marguerite Phenice Hill had written that was called “Marge’s Memories.”  I’ve shared some of that information in a previous post.  At the end of the booklet, there were old family photos.  This is the one that really caught my attention.

It looks like a great photo of my grandparents when they were young.  Maybe not real young, but younger than they were when my siblings, and cousins, and I knew them.  Obviously, it was a nice photo of them that they shared with family members.  This is the only version I’ve seen of it.  I could work on this to clean it up, but it would be working with such a bad version from the start.  It’s a Xerox copy and the lighting is really bad.

Surely there is a good copy of this photo somewhere, right?  And if so, I hope that whoever has access to that photo would be willing to scan it or take a photo of it to share with me.  Such a simple little thing.  It’s a photo of my grandparents Myrtle Phenice and Fred Bucklin.  They were my mom’s parents.  Now if you happen to come across an even better photo of them that I haven’t seen before, I’d be willing to take that instead. 

Do I sound greedy?  I definitely want as many old photos as I can get, but I only want a digital copy.  You can keep what you have.  You would just be duplicating it.  There would be more for everyone!

Family Christmas 100 Years Ago

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When I was thinking about what I’d write about today, I kept being pulled toward posting our family recording of “The Carol of the Star” that I shared three years ago.  But when I sat down to write, I had to find a photo to share as well.  It wasn’t long before I saw the photos of the Christmas of 1923.  I couldn’t pass up on a 100-year anniversary story!  I’ve shared a few photos from that memorable Christmas previously, but I haven’t shared all of them.  So that settled that.

Grandma Amelie + the men who spent her last Christmas with her in 1923

The first photo I remember seeing from the Christmas of 1923 was a slide that came from my dad’s collection.  Someone had written on the cardboard frame of the slide and it said, “Grandma Amelie + women who spent the last Christmas with her 1923.”  I figured it was my great great grandmother Amelie Bujol, who had been married to Trasimond Landry.  He was a Civil War hero from Brusly and the two of them married after the Civil War.  I think there are some letters that she wrote to him during the war.  I really need to look into that more.  I have not put forth enough effort in finding out what is out there.  Amelie, or Belite as I like to call her, and Trasimond’s first child was Marie Therese Landry and I descend from her and her husband Vincent Maximilian Patureau. One of the seven daughters of Marie Therese and Max was Germaine Erie Patureau.  She was my paternal grandmother.  She was married to Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. and their son Robert Joseph Jr. was my dad.  I knew them as Mee Maw, Pee Paw, and Daddy.

Back to the photo of Grandma Amelie + women.  When I read that label, for some reason I thought it was a photo of Grandma Belite with some women she went on a retreat with.  But really, what 80-year-old woman goes on a retreat the month before she dies?  Of course, she didn’t know she was going to die the next month, but you know what I mean.  I later found more photos of the event and identification of the people in the photos.  They are all family members on my dad’s side of the family who are closely connected to Grandma Belite.  It was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Maybe if I had seen the photo of Amelie + the men, I might have realized right away that she was posing with family members.  I think I would have known Grampa Max back then.  I’m much more familiar with these faces now, aren’t you?  Surely you noticed Grampa Max on the far left of this photo!

Grandpa Max was married to Grandma Belite’s oldest daughter, but besides that, he was biologically related to her as well.  Max Patureau’s mother was Marie Emma Landry, the daughter of Elie Onesime Landry.  Belite Bujol’s mother was Anna Adele Landry, the daughter of Joseph Emmanuel Landry.  Onesime and Emmanuel were half-brothers, so that makes Max and Belite half second cousins through Joseph Ignatius Landry.  I’ve said before that they were related, but didn’t explain how.  So now you know!

Also in the photo is Vincent Patureau, who is standing between his father Max and his grandmother Belite. Behind Vincent and Belite is Anthony Joseph “Toby” Mouton.  He’s not related to Belite, but he was married to her oldest granddaughter Emma Patureau.  The other tall man in the back is Belite’s son-in-law Louis Joseph Peter Landry.  He was married to Belite’s daughter from her second husband Pierre Magloire Babin – Clemence Babin.  They were known as Uncle Louie and Aunt Clem.  Uncle Louie was one of Pee Paw’s older brothers.  The three boys on the right of the photo are the sons of Louie and Clem.  Their names are Ethelbert “Bert”, Henry Louis “H.L.”, and Thornwell Fay “Fay”.

I really like those old photos from that Christmas 100 years ago.  And even though Mee Maw was not in the photos, she cherished them and took care of them.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have them to look at now.  That’s because these are the people who made her Christmas memories special from her early years.  It’s all about family.

Merry Christmas for the new ’23.

My First Christmases

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Van Landry in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at Christmas 1960.

It has become a tradition on my blog to write two Christmas posts every year.  So I’m following through with it this year.  Our company Christmas party is tonight, so I was thinking about Christmas parties of the past.  That led me to think of my first Christmases.  Not that this family history blog is all about me.  But I am the one talking about the history of my ancestors.  I also write about some of my own family history.  So maybe it is all about me!  I am the one writing all of the words for you to read.

I might as well make the first photo be all about me.  This is a photo of me under my first Christmas tree.  I look pretty happy despite having a gun pointing at my head!  Ignorance is bliss.  I was only about two months old and have no memory of this event.  I do know that the photo was taken at 1317 Clover Drive in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  That’s where the family lived for the first two years of my life.

I’ve shared a photo of this Christmas on Facebook before, because I remember people commenting about me being in a laundry basket.  I have two photos of me at Christmas that year, and both times I was in the basket.  The other picture includes my siblings and my dad, though.  I am the center of attention in this photo.  When you are the fifth child in a family, you don’t get many of those.  It’s mostly group photos with all of the siblings.  I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

(1 of 3) 1961 Landry Christmas party in Lake Charles, Louisiana

I have a photo of the following year and it shows a lot more people in it.  But best of all, they let me out of the basket!  I’m still sitting near it.  Maybe it was like a security blanket for me.  I don’t know.  The basket is still in the center of the photo at the bottom, and I am the little boy sitting next to it.  I can’t really tell what I’m doing.  It is the first picture of me at a Christmas party.  This was the Landry family get together that we had every year on Christmas Eve.

(2 of 3) Christmas 1961 with the Landry family.  Mee Maw was the hostess.

The family got together at my paternal grandmother’s house.  It was better known as Mee Maw’s house, and it was at 509 Nichols Street in Lake Charles.  Mee Maw’s name given to her at birth was Germaine Erie Patureau.  She later went by Erie Landry when she married Robert Joseph Landry in 1921.  He was known as Rob Landry, but the grandkids knew him as Pee Paw.  I never knew him because he died in 1957.  

As you can tell from photo 1 of 1961 Christmas, there were lots of family members around.  Look at all of those presents in the background!  My dad had seven siblings and they were all married by that time.  With my grandmother, her children, and their spouses, that’s nineteen people right there.  There were an additional twenty-one people – my siblings and first cousins.  It was a large family and it was still growing.  My mom was pregnant for my younger sister at the time.  Starting with me at the bottom and going counterclockwise, you can see my dad (Bob Landry), my aunt Margie Harrington Landry, my aunt Germaine Landry Winn, two cousins (I think) sitting down, and my cousin and godmother Shirley Landry standing up.  It looks like she may be handing a present to Uncle A.J.  I think the three kids in front of the TV are my siblings Rob, Jodie, and Karen.  Looking toward the camera is cousin Tricia Duffy, who is looking past cousin Dennis Landry’s head.  I see a head between Tricia and Dennis and a face along the far-right edge, but I can’t tell who they are.  I’m also not sure of the identity of the little girl sitting in the middle of the room.

(3 of 3) Christmas 1961 with the Landry family in Lake Charles, Louisiana

I can’t stop without sharing a photo of the hostess of the party.  That would be my dear sweet Mee Maw who is seen in photo 2 of 1961 Christmas.  She definitely loved her children and grandchildren.  We all wanted to be her favorite, and many of us still claim that title.  No fighting is involved.  Mee Maw would not approve of that!  It looks like my aunt Frances Landry Raley is giving her a gift.  To the right of her is uncle Norman Duffy. Watching from the other side is my aunt Mildred Sutherlin Landry.

I wouldn’t want to talk about all my cousins without sharing this photo from that Christmas that shows most of them.  They were all so cute.  Most of them still are!  In the back row we have Douglas Winn holding Lauren Duffy, Phyllis Winn, Jodie Landry, Mark Reeves, Daphne Winn, Shirley Landry holding Jeanne Raley, and Tricia Duffy.  In the front row are Karen Landry, Scott Raley, Stephen Duffy, Gene Duffy, Rob Landry holding little brother Al, and Dennis Landry.

I probably got a name or two wrong.  I’m sure some of my older cousins will correct me.  Did I tell you that my godmother Shirley was The First?  We can’t forget to give her the respect that she deserves.  She helped to make those early Christmas parties memorable for me.  I always looked forward to the opening of the gifts.  I knew that I’d get at least three!  One from Mee Maw.  (How did she afford to buy all of us something that was just perfect for us?  Sorry, Jamie, I could not resist!)  One from my godfather or parrain.  (The first French word that I remember learning.)  And one from my wonderful godmother.  She was just a teenager at the time.  Thanks for helping to make little Van a happy boy at Christmas.

I have to admit that those Christmas parties are my most cherished.  I will go to my company party later and I’ll have a good time visiting with my coworkers.  I really do appreciate them.  But it doesn’t compare to family.  And even though the company likes to talk about themselves as if they were family, they aren’t.  If you grew up in a big loving family, you know what the real thing is.

These photos are of the real thing.

 

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