My Irish Roots in My Hometown

5 comments

Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin was my great great grandmother. I estimated this photo was taken in the 1880s. This photo has been edited.

I’ve been thinking about my Irish roots this week, because yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day.  One of my classmates put a post on Facebook saying, “I’m actually part Irish from my dad’s mom!”  So I responded to her by saying, “I’m actually part Irish from my mom’s dad!!”  – which is true.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin, and her dad was Fred Bucklin.  Fred’s father was Louis Charles Bucklin and his mother was Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin.  When I looked back at my previous posts, I realized that I’ve been negligent of my Irish roots.  It’s been three years since I wrote anything about it.  I’ve been hoping to find the exact year of when they immigrated.  I was thinking that I would find that important morsel of information and write a nice post about it.  It hasn’t happened, but I shouldn’t let that keep me from writing about my Irish peeps.

When I responded to my classmate, I also realized that I usually overlook Mary Ann and talk about being a great great great grandson of Maria Ettadosia Mooney McGrath.  I just love saying that name.  But I want to talk a little about Mary Ann and what she did.  I’ve mentioned her in two other posts, but only in relation to her son Joe who had such a tragic life.  In those posts, her death is just one of the tragedies in his life.  I’m sharing a photo of her that I’ve shared before.  Even when I posted that photo of her before, it was in relation to finding out who Maria Ettadosia was.  So let’s explore Mary Ann’s life.

Mary Ann was born in 1834 in Roscommon, Ireland.  She was the fourth of seven children of Edward and Maria Ettadosia McGrath.  The youngest sibling was born in 1838 in Ireland.  In Ireland at the time, potatoes were a large staple in the diet of the Irish people.  They would have some version of it for almost every meal.  So it’s hard to imagine the massive impact that a potato blight had on the population.  The Irish Potato Famine was in full force in 1845, when Mary Ann was not yet a teenager.  I talk about the tragedies that her son Joe had to endure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mary Ann endured even more.  From 1845 to 1855 about a million Irish people died from starvation.  And just because the family survived, doesn’t mean that it was an easy time.  I wish I knew more about what they experienced. 

Besides the deaths from lack of food, almost two million people left Ireland in hopes of finding a better situation.  The McGrath family was included in this group.  They left Ireland and settled in Palmer, Massachusetts.  Like I said at the beginning, I haven’t been able to find out when they arrived in the US.  I know they were here by 1854, because that was the year that Mary Ann married James Bucklin in Springfield, Massachusetts.  It was the second marriage for James.  He was married to a woman named Rhoda Maria Gove and they had two children together – James and Mary.  Sadly, Rhoda died at the age of 26 in 1849.

So Mary Ann was 20 years old when she married 33-year-old single father of two James Bucklin on Sept. 21, 1854.  A year later they had a daughter named Jennie.  In 1861 Joseph was born.  At some point in the next few years the family moved from Massachusetts to Iowa.  They were there at least by 1864, because Edd Bucklin was born in Sand Springs, Iowa, that year.  Sand Springs is in Delaware County and the family stayed in this area for another 10 years.  My great grandfather Louis Charles Bucklin was born April 11, 1873, in Masonville, which is in Delaware County.

When the family moved south to Louisiana in 1884, Mary Ann was a 50-year-old mother of four and step-mother of two.  And she was a grandmother!  Jennie gave birth to a son named Clarence Kenyon in 1879.  She was married to another man named Ben Taylor by 1884, and they came down to Louisiana with the family.  Jennie had a daughter named Vera shortly after arriving in the south.  So Mary Ann had two grandchildren in 1884, but there were more to come through the years.

But now that I’ve got her down to Louisiana, I wanted to tell about her influence in my hometown of Jennings, Louisiana.  When we were kids, we used to go to the big library on Cary Avenue.  It is a public library and it is named the Jennings Carnegie Public Library.  I always liked that old, cool library when I was young.  It had such a soothing smell of old paper.  I wasn’t aware of its connection to my ancestor until I was older.  So when I went to my 40 year High School Reunion in 2019, I decided to look into the connection that I had heard about.  I arrived in Jennings a little earlier so I could go to that old library and see if there was any family history information available.

Newspaper article about the Jennings Carnegie Public Library mentions my great great grandmother Mary A. Bucklin.

Sure enough, there was.  I found a letter that was written to my great grandfather Louis Bucklin.  But more importantly, I found a newspaper article that talked about the founding of the library I had always been fond of.  It spoke about the Organization of the library, “The library society grew out of a society for mutual aid, social and intellectual improvement formed by the following ladies…” and the second person listed is none other than Mary A. Bucklin, my great great grandmother.

It looks like she was present at the first meeting which was held on January 24, 1885.  This is less than a year after the family moved down to Louisiana.  This must have been something important to her, because they didn’t live in Jennings proper.  They were homesteading north of Jennings around the Hathaway area.  She would have been taking a wagon into town and meeting with those other ladies to discuss ways to improve the area. 

I don’t know much more about her involvement, but I like the fact that she is linked to the beginnings of that old library I know so well.  She was also involved in the lives of her children and grandchildren who lived in the area.  Her son Joe lived in Jennings with his wife and two daughters.  But then his wife died in 1899 after giving birth to a son.  At the end of that year his 6-year-old daughter died as well.  Joe must have been having a hard time taking care of his infant son and other daughter, because Mary Ann went to live with them to help him out.  (James had died in 1890.)  

She was only able to help out for a few months, then she came down with the flu.  She ended up dying from that on April 10, 1900, in Jennings at the age of 66.  She is buried in an unmarked grave at the Jennings Greenwood cemetery.  That is another fact I  was unaware of when growing up in Jennings.  I’m glad to know about her connections to Jennings and I’m proud to be the great great grandson of Mary Ann McGrath Bucklin.  Erin go bragh.

 

Grandma Belite and Family

Leave a comment

Almost two years ago I wrote the post “Christmas 1923 With Grandma Amelie” and it included a photo from Grandma Belite’s last Christmas with some of the women in her family.  It was the first photo from that family gathering in Lafayette, Louisiana, that I had seen.  I assumed that it must have been a gathering of women, since that’s the only people in the photo.  But then I found more photos from the same event and they showed that it was a much larger gathering than I initially thought.  I’m posting two more photos from that long ago Christmas day.  They were shared with me by the Tin Can Collection keeper, my cousin Tricia.  I also got versions from my dad’s first cousin Sis and she had some of them labeled.  She has everyone in the photo labeled, which is really nice.  It looks like the photos have the same people in it.  We’ll discover that as we go along.  Right now, I don’t know.  But I should know by the time I finish this post.

Grandma Belite (on far left) with her family at Christmas in 1923. This was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana, at the home of Louis and Clemence Babin Landry on South College Road.

When I got this photo from Sis, she had all the names of the people in the photo on the back of it.  So let me tell you who everyone is and say a little bit about them.

First off we have Grandma Belite (Grandma Babin to some family members) on the left side.  She was my great great grandmother.  My dad was Bob Landry.  His mother was Erie Patureau Landry (my Mee Maw).  Erie was the daughter of Marie Therese Landry Patureau, who was the daughter of Belite.  She was born Marie Amelie Bujol in 1843 in Brusly, Louisiana, during the time of slavery.

She was known as one of the beautiful daughters of the Veuve Bujol during Civil War times.  But that was long ago even when this photo was taken and Belite was an elderly woman of 80 years old.  I wish I had a photo of her when she was a young woman.  I may have to try out some of those age-regression photo apps to see what comes out.  But unless a photo of young Belite shows up, we’ll never know just how beautiful she might have been.  This was her last Christmas.  She passed away just over a month later.

Next to Grandma Belite in the front is her granddaughter Hazel Landry.  She was the 7-year-old daughter of Belite’s daughter Clemence Babin Landry.  She was the youngest of six children.  When she grew up, she changed her name to Roberta.  That’s because she became a nun and took on the saint’s name of Robert.  So she was known as Sister Roberta.  I think I went to her Golden Jubilee or something like that many years ago.  She died in 1988.

The next two people in the photo are Emma Patureau Mouton and her daughter Therese Wynhoven.  We knew them as Aunt Emma and Tez.  Emma was my Mee Maw’s sister.  They lived in Duson, Louisiana, where Emma was the organist at the Catholic Church for many years.  She also wrote poetry.  Tez was my dad’s first cousin.  If we got confused as children and called her “Aunt Tez,” he was quick to correct us.  And I don’t think it was just for the sake of genealogical correctness.  She was a link that brought many family members together.  As the saying goes, “Misery loves company.”  And a visit from Tez could sometimes bring misery.  Though she’s been gone almost twenty years, the stories of her visits are legendary.

The last two people in the front are two of Hazel’s older siblings.  The boy next to Tez is Henry Louis Landry.  I saw his grave a few months ago when I visited Belite’s grave in Lafayette.  Just recently I had a DNA match show up on Ancestry who is a great granddaughter of Henry.  I sent her a note to let her know about photos like this that I have of her family.  Maybe she’ll be interested.  Next to Henry is his sister Wana Clemence Landry.  She never got married.  She used to have family gatherings at her home.  She is buried along with her parents and grandparents in Lafayette.

On the back row we begin with Belite’s granddaughter Marie Therese Patureau.  She was another of my Mee Maw’s sisters.  She was known as Aunt Bee, like the character on The Andy Griffith Show.  She was a young woman in this photo and almost ten years later she would marry Clarence Schafer.  She was the mother of Sis and Syl.  For the sake of clarity for this picture, I’ll call her Patureau Sis.  She is the one who provided the names for all these people.

Next to Bee is Belite’s daughter Clemence.  She was the mother of Henry, Hazel, and Wana C.  She was the half-sister of my great grandmother Marie Therese Landry Patureau.  Her father was Magloire Babin, the second husband of Belite.  She had an older full sister named Amelie who died as a child.  She also had a younger sister named Albine who died in 1903 at the age of 18.  So Clemence was the only one of Belite and Magloire’s daughters to have children of her own.  And since Clemence (Aunt Clem) married Pee Paw’s brother Louis Joseph Peter Landry (Uncle Louie), they are double kin to us.  This photo was taken at their home in Lafayette on South College Road.

After Clemence comes three family members in my line of the family.  Vincent Maximilian Patureau was married to Belite’s daughter Marie Therese, who I have identified as my great grandmother.  So he was my great grandfather, but I always refer to him as Grampa Max.  He is standing next to his daughter Lydwin Patureau who is holding his granddaughter Mona Mel Mouton.  Lydwin or Aunt Win also never married and did not have any offspring.  She is holding her sister Emma’s youngest daughter (at the time) Mona Mel who was born earlier that year.  Mona Mel did get married, but she did not have any children of her own.

The next group are the three older children of Clemence and Louis.  Ethelbert was the third child and he went by Bert.  I don’t know much about him.  Call it the middle child syndrome.  Next to Bert is Naomi Landry and for the sake of this post I’ll call her the Landry Sis.  So my dad had two first cousins that were called Sis and both of them were interested in family history and have been helpful to me.  My dad made a video where he talked with Landry Sis about all of the cousins and their families.  She also identified some family photos.  Patureau Sis is much younger and is still around to help out with family history information and photos. 

Back to the photo.  After Landry Sis is Thornwell Fay Landry.  He was the oldest child of the family of six children.  I just realized that they had three boys and three girls, just like the family I grew up in.  They had about the same spacing in ages that we had, too.  I wonder if they enjoyed it as much as I did?  After Thornwell is Mee Maw’s younger sister Sylvia.  A few years later she would marry Son Marionneaux.  Like Mee Maw she would have a large family of four sons and four daughters.

The tall man in the back on the right in this photo is Anthony Joseph Mouton.  He was married to Mee Maw’s sister Emma and was known as Uncle Toby.  He lived in Duson, Louisiana, and died in 1969.  I don’t have any memories of him, but my brother Rob and my older cousins do.  He must have been a pleasant fellow, because everyone seems to speak of him fondly.  The last person on the right in this photo is Mee Maw’s brother Vincent.  He lived in Baton Rouge like I do.  One of my favorite family heirlooms is a banjo that belonged to him.

Landry family in 1923 at Christmas

Now to look at this other photo from the same day.  I decided to post it with the other one because I actually prefer it to the other one.  But the other one had the names provided, so I went with that one first.  It wasn’t until I got to Uncle Toby in my descriptions that I realized that the tall guy in the back right of this photo isn’t Uncle Toby.  He’s in the same location in the photo and he’s even posing the same way, but Uncle Toby is in the front holding Tez in this one.

The new person in this photo to the far right is Louis Joseph Peter Landry.  He was an older brother of my Pee Paw and he’s the father of six of Belite’s grandchildren in the photos.  He was the son-in-law of Belite.  But beside that, Louis’s mother Marie Celeste Leveque was Belite’s first cousin.  That puts a whole new spin on the relationships I talked about in these photos.

But all you really need to know is that they were family getting together to make sure that their cherished Grandma Babin (or Grandma Belite) had a wonderful final Christmas.

Animating Old Photos

Leave a comment

 

A month or so ago I ran across something that I thought was fascinating, amazing, and a little bit disturbing.  It was a short clip in a genealogy group that showed an old photograph.  What was so different was that the person in the image blinked and turned their head slightly.  It was just a short little two- or three-second clip.  It looked like it was an ad for a website or for someone who had some type of software to create the short clips.  I wondered what it would be like to see some of my own images of my ancestors with animation.  Would it be eerie?  Would it show their personality in a way that a photograph can’t?  Would it help me connect with them by making them seem more real?  I really didn’t pursue it much, but when I looked at some of my photos, I wondered how they would look animated.  I even thought about looking to see what the cost of it might be.  It was intriguing.

Then last weekend there was a genealogy conference online and it was free.  How could I pass that up?  So I signed up and went looking to see what I might learn from other people who are obsessed with their family history.  I got distracted by a feature they had that showed you all of your relatives who had signed up for the programming.  I had cousins from all the lines in my family.  People who had Patureau, Phenice, Landry, Bucklin, Leveque, Hine, Keys, Stanbrough, McGrath, or other names in common with me.

As I was trying to get going with some of the programs available, I decided to look at my emails.  I had gotten several reminders for the event with suggestions of “must watch” videos.  Instead of finding that, I found a notice of a new feature on the website MyHeritage.  They were announcing that they had acquired a program for animating photos.  I had already paid for a year-long membership because of their feature for enhancing photos. (That and a deal of only paying 1/3 of the regular prices!)  I’ve mentioned that feature before, because I have posted photos that have been enhanced.   So now, in addition to enhancing (and/or coloring) photos, I can also animate them.  Who needs a conference?   I had some animating to do!

So that’s what I did all weekend.  I have a lot of old photos.  It’s really amazing to see some of those old photos come to life.  The people in them can look sweet, pensive, or concerned with just a blink of an eye or a slight turn of the head.  Like the first example I posted above.   That one is of my great great grandmother Cathrine Jane “Kate” Foster Phenice.  I grew up seeing one photo of her that my mother had.  In that photo Kate was an older woman and she always reminded me of Grandpa Munster.  I got this photo of Kate taken in 1890 from a cousin (thanks again, Mona!) a few years ago.  It’s one of the first photos that I used with the enhancement feature and I was amazed with the results.  It’s one of my favorites for the animation feature, too.  Now when I think of my great great grandmother, I think of that impish smile from this video.  I think that if I had known her, I would have been able to get her to grin like that.  This is much better than thinking of her as a Grandpa Munster lookalike!

But how realistic is it?  While I do find some really amazing looking animations, I go through so many more that I discard.  I posted some of the better ones last weekend on Facebook.  One of them was of me from the 2nd grade.  I had originally discarded the first results it showed.  It showed me looking up to the side and my eyes were badly crossed.  That’s not how I looked back then.  (Most of the time.  I didn’t cross them often because my mom warned me they could get stuck like that!)  When I found out that there were 10 options for each photo, I went back to my 2nd grade photo again and found an acceptable option.  Yet even with the best results, I still get comments about the animations being “creepy” or “freaky” or “robotic.”

And they are right.  Here is an animation of Kate’s granddaughter Myrtle Phenice.  She was my maternal grandmother.  We all called her Grandma.  This was made from my favorite photo of Grandma.  I was able to get a good version of the photo because of the enhancement feature I talked about.  Yet, when I use the animation feature on it, I can’t get a good result.  I can get something better than this one, but I’m using this as an example.  It doesn’t leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling like the first one.  It’s the same exact process, but the results are more on the disturbing side.

While it is easy to accept the sweet, impish grin of Kate and to reject the distorted face of Myrtle, neither one of them could actually represent what the person was really like.  While it may help you notice some features of someone that you might have overlooked, take it with a grain of salt.  But I still think that I could have gotten Grandma Kate to smile like she does in the animation!

Photo of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin taken circa 1930. This is the photo used for the animation above.

Harry Clifton Phenice in 1938

Leave a comment

Grandpa HC in 1938 in Elton, Louisiana

Here is a nice old photo of my mom’s maternal grandfather Harry Clifton Phenice.  Mama always referred to him as Grandpa Phenice or Grandpa H. C.  I’m not sure if most people knew him as H. C. or as Harry.  I’m rather fond of the Grandpa HC moniker.  He always looks like a kind person.  Maybe I’m biased because my mom always had good things to say about the only grandfather that she knew.  Her Bucklin grandfather died before she was born.

HC was born on May 24, 1874, in Butler County, Pennsylvania.  His parents (Samuel Charles Phenice and Cathrine Jane “Kate” Foster) were also born in Pennsylvania.  Charles and Kate lived in Pennsylvania for a few years after their marriage in 1866.  Their first child Chauncey was born in 1868.  Later that year they moved to Tennessee, which is where Anna May was born in 1869.  They moved back to Pennsylvania in 1970, where they had three sons in succession – William Emory in 1871, James Edmund “Edd” in 1872, and HC in 1874.

I don’t know why they moved back to Pennsylvania.  Maybe it was to be with family.  Cathrine’s mother Anne Magdaleen Milliron Foster Richael died in 1873 (her father Morris Foster had died in 1852) in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. Charles’ parents were still alive, but that didn’t stop Charles and Kate from moving their family to Milford, Nebraska, to start homesteading that same year.   Charles’ mother Susan Jackson Phenice died in 1877 in Butler County.  That left Charles’s father Daniel Phenice as their only living parent.  He must have been willing to relocate, because he showed up in his son’s household in Nebraska in the 1880 Census. 

In Milford Charles and Kate had another daughter named Mollie in 1881, but she died as an infant.  Daniel Phenice died at some point before the 1885 Nebraska Census in Milford.  Then after 12 years of living in Milford, the family moved to Hitchcock County and applied for a homestead there in November of 1885.   That is where Lola Myrtle was born in 1886 and Emma was born in 1889.  I don’t know what life was like as a family homesteading in Nebraska in the 1890s.  There was no electricity, no radio, no TV, and no cars or tractors.  It must have been a much quieter place than our modern world.  We were out of our comfort zone recently because of cold weather causing us to be without electricity for a few days.  They never had electricity and I’m sure the winters of Nebraska were colder than the ones down here in Louisiana!  But somehow they survived.  That’s probably why HC learned to play the fiddle.  The family needed entertainment during those long cold winters.

Those cold winters may have been the driving force in HC relocating to southern Louisiana when he was a young man.  Even though his family moved around when he was growing up, once HC got married to Daisy, they stayed in one place.  Well, not really.  They did stay in the Hathaway area, but they lived in several different houses through the years.  There’s a long list of places.  I think I’ve mentioned that before.  Since they did stay in the same area, my mom got to know her grandfather pretty well.  And like I said, she always had good things to say about him.

He looks like a man with a pleasant disposition – like he would welcome any of his little grandchildren with open arms and a warm smile.  In the photo I also notice a few men sitting on a porch behind him.  It looks like they could be waiting for him.  It was traditional at their family get togethers to play a few games of dominoes.  This looks like a family gathering after Sunday church.  (Why else would he be wearing shoes?)  He was at his brother-in-law’s house in Elton, Louisiana.  So after posing for a few family photos, he may have been ready to shuffle a few dominoes. 

Pee Paw Worked at Gulf States

Leave a comment

Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. (on the left) receiving his 40 year service award pin from Gulf States Utilities. “President Nelson” is giving him a congratulatory handshake.

I thought I may have posted this photo before, but I could find no evidence of it.  It’s hard to remember which photos I’ve actually posted on here after I’ve shared over 250 photos and/or stories.  There are hundreds of other photos that I’ve considered posting and sometimes I think I’ve actually used them when I haven’t. 

I got this photo from Uncle A. J. a few years ago.  It didn’t have any identifying information written on it, but that was okay.  I already had the information about the photo.  It was published in a Gulf States Utilities May 1957 newsletter called ‘Plain Talks’ and it was captioned, “R. J. Landry  received his 40-year pin at the banquet held in Lake Charles this month.”  He was the only one receiving the 40 year pin that year.  That’s why he is alone in the photo.  There were 10-year, 20-year, and 30-year pins given out, as well.  Those were given out in groups.  Pee Paw was the top of the heap with his 40 years of service!

The other man in this photo was in all of the photos.  I didn’t know who he was, but then I noticed he was in another photo honoring two members from Beaumont who also received 40-year pins.  In that photo he is identified as President Nelson.  He must have been the president of Gulf States Utilities at the time.

Reddy Kilowatt service pin

Forty years is a long time to work for one company.  And all they got was a little pin?  I say that now, but my dad had a few Reddy Kilowatt pins in his chest of drawers when we were kids.  I always thought it was kinda cool.  “Who is Reddy Kilowatt?” you asked.  He was the cartoon spokesman for Gulf States back in the day.  His body was made up of red lightning bolts.  And my grandfather knew him personally!  At least he got a few pins from his years of service at that company.  Of course he was probably paid pretty well and most of those companies had a good retirement plan for their dedicated employees.

Page from 1957 Gulf States Utilities newsletter.

Pee Paw did not benefit from that retirement plan.  Ironically, in that same May 1957 newsletter, there was an article that warned about the signs of a heart attack.  On the opposite side of another photo of Pee Paw showing the 40 year employees, the article was titled “Have a Heart to Heart Talk With Yourself.”  I wonder if recently-turned 64-year-old  Rob Landry had a heart to heart talk with himself?  If he did, it doesn’t seem to have helped.  He died from a heart attack on August 28, 1957.

So this is one of the last photos of my paternal grandfather.  It’s nice that they recognized his dedication to their company.  I don’t even know if he retired.  I’ve always heard about people who retire and then die shortly afterwards, but I don’t recall that being the case for my grandfather.  I’m sure one of my older cousins will help me out with that piece of information. (I was right, cousin Kenny said that he died just as he was about to retire.)  They might even share a photo of a Reddy Kilowatt pin.  (My sister Jamie shared the photo of a pin she has.)  Pee Paw died before I was born, so I was never able to ask him any questions about his life.  I think I missed out on knowing a good man.

James Bucklin and His Forebears

Leave a comment

James Bucklin circa 1880s.

This is a photo of my great great grandfather James Bucklin.  He was born on Feb. 21, 1821, in Palmer, Massachusetts,  and died on May 15, 1890, in Elton, Louisiana.  So that means that the photo was taken before 1890.  The photo looks like it was taken in Kokomo, Indiana, which is confusing.  James lived in Massachusetts until 1864, when he moved his family to Iowa.  They lived in Iowa for 20 years until they moved to Louisiana in 1884.  So I don’t know when he would have been in Indiana.  I’m thinking it was before he moved to the South.

I recently edited this photo after getting a better quality scan from Joseph a while back.  I had been wanting to get a good image to share with everyone for a long time.  Now that there are more improvements in photo editing, I figured it was time to do it.  I’m kind of surprised at how little time it took to make a version that I’m satisfied with.  Some of my other photos took much longer. 

Besides sharing a photo of James, I thought I’d talk about the Bucklin line in America.  My connection is through my mother who was born Betty Lou Bucklin in 1933.  Her father was Fred D. Bucklin, who was the first generation Bucklin born in Louisiana.  He was born on October 2, 1907, in Roanoke.  His father was Louis Charles Bucklin, who was born April 11, 1873, when the family lived in Iowa.  He was the youngest child of James Bucklin and his second wife Mary Ann McGrath, an Irish immigrant.

Talking about James and his Bucklin ancestors gets a little confusing.  Mainly because there are three more Marys, two more James, two Josephs, two Isaacs, and two Sarahs.  The other confusing factor is that James’ grandfather and grandmother were second cousins once removed through the Bucklin family lines.  And here you thought it was only my Landry and Cajun ancestors that married their cousins!  It was a more common occurrence in the past than most people realize.

A cropped version of the same photo of James Bucklin.

So let’s go back further in the past than James (1821).  He was the son of John Bucklin (1792-1850) and Mary Crowell Robbins (1797-1871).  They were both born in Barnstable, Massachusetts.  John (1792)  was the youngest child of at least nine children born to John Bucklin (1747-1795) and Amey Arnold (1752-1823).  John (1747) and Amey (1752) were the Bucklin cousins who married each other.  Let me tell you about their two different paths to their common ancestor Joseph Bucklin (1633-1718).

John (1747) was the son of James Bucklin (1709-1780) and Mary Peck (1721-1770) of Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  The Bucklin family lived there for a few generations and still has relatives that live there.  James (1709) was the son of James Bucklin (1669-1738) and Mary Yields (1674-1725).  James (1669) was the son of Joseph Bucklin (1633-1718) and Deborah Allen (1637-1720).    So that shows you John (1747)’s connection to Joseph (1633).  Let’s look at Amey (1752)’s connection.

Amey Arnold (1752) was the daughter of Joshua Arnold (1729-1818) and Amey Bucklin (1722-1800).  Did I forget to mention there were two Ameys as well?  Yes, I did.  So now you know!  Amey (1722) was the daughter of Isaac Bucklin (1699-1764) and Sarah Whipple (1701-1763).  Like their cousins, they were born and lived in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  Isaac (1699) was the son of Isaac Bucklin (1672-1758) and Sarah Marsh (1678-1728).  Not only did Isaac (1699) have the same name as his father, but he also married a woman with the same first name.  Hey, if James and Mary could do it, they could do it, too!  The parents of Isaac (1672) was Joseph (1633) and Deborah (1637).   So now you can see their connection and we can continue the line from Joseph (1633).

But first I need to talk about what happened between the births of Joseph (1633) and Deborah (1637).  Joseph was born in Weymouth, England, and Deborah was born in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.    The Bucklin family left England in 1634 and arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts, in early 1635.  Joseph was the son of William Bucklin (1609-1683) and Mary Bosworth (1611-1687).  I have for the most part ignored the wives of the Bucklins, mainly because I was following the Bucklin name.  It is easier to follow the male line most of the time because their names do not change. 

But I wanted to mention the parents of Mary Bosworth.  Her parents were Edward and Mary Bosworth.  She is an example of the name change leading to a dead end.  She was born in England and was married there, so when she came to America she was Mary Bosworth.  Her maiden name unfortunately is not known.  Edward brought his family to the New World in 1634, but he died when they reached Boston Harbor.  That bit of information helps researchers to determine that the family came over on the ship Elizabeth Dorcas.  His death did not help his family in settling in their new environment.  It must have been a difficult time for the newly widowed mother and her four children.

William (1609) was the Bucklin that brought our Bucklin line to America.  He was born to John Bucklin and Katherine Kerslake of England.  Most of the information known about him is from the time after he arrived in Massachusetts.  He was one of the early settlers.  I think it is interesting that lines on both my mom’s and dad’s family lines arrived so early in America.  Several of my dad’s Cajun/Acadian lines were in North America in the early 1600s.  I think this is the earliest ancestor of my mom’s to arrive in North America.  That’s almost 400 years.  That’s a long time.

Mee Maw and Her Leveque kin

Leave a comment

Marie Celeste Leveque Landry, Amanda Leveque, Marie Therese Landry, Germaine Erie Patureau Landry, and Landry child in Lake Charles, Louisiana, circa 1927.

Here is a sweet looking family group photo from my dad’s side of the family.  It was taken around 1930, give or take a couple of years.  I got the photo in 2019 when some cousins met up to share their treasures.  This is one that came from the Secret Collection.  I have shared two other photos that look like they were taken on the same day.  The other photos didn’t have as many people in it. 

My dad’s name was Bob Landry.  At least that’s what most people called him.  But he was also known as Pluto by quite a few people.  His family mostly called him Bobbie or Uncle Bobbie.  He was born in January of 1929.  So it’s possible that the youngest child in this photo could be him.  Or it could be one of his older siblings.  Like me, he had two older brothers and two older sisters when he was born.  I wish these photos had been identified with the date.

My dad’s parents were Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie Patureau.  They were known as Rob and Erie.  He was also known as Pappy, and I think that he got that nickname when he was playing semi-professional baseball in the 1910s.  Us grandchildren knew them as Pee Paw and Mee Maw.  Mee Maw is the young mother with her two children in this photo.  Marie is in the middle of the photo and she is the oldest of her children.  Now that I say that, I’m thinking that Marie can’t be older than 3 or 4 and she was born in 1923.  So that would mean that this is not a photo of my dad.  The child in Mee Maw’s lap was probably one of her older sons A.J. or Hubert. 

On the left in this photo is Pee Paw’s mother Marie Celeste Leveque Landry.  These grandchildren are her youngest grandchildren.  In fact her oldest grandchild Manette Landry Bouquet was starting her own equally large family around the same time as her Uncle Rob.  The two families have been close until this day.  So even though they were all the same ages, my dad’s family was from a different generation.  That’s because Rob was Grandma Celeste’s youngest child.

Since I called this post “Mee Maw and Her Leveque Kin,” I have to tell you of their Leveque connection.  Because not only is Grandma Celeste Erie’s mother-in-law, they were also related by blood.  Celeste was the daughter of Josephe Auguste Leveque.  Joseph had a sister named Marie Francoise Leveque.  Francoise was the great great grandmother of Erie.  That would make Erie the first cousin three times removed of Celeste. 

The other person in this photo is also a Leveque.  Her name is Amanda Leveque and she was the daughter of Celeste’s sister Evalina.  So Amanda was Pee Paw’s first cousin and Mee Maw’s second cousin twice removed.  She was born in New Orleans in 1866 and was living there until at least 1910 according to the Census.  Grandma Celeste was living in Lafayette at the time.  So Amanda must have met up with her Aunt Celeste and came to visit some family in Lake Charles.  It looks like they were having a nice visit.  I’m glad they decided to take a few photos to commemorate the visit.

Myrtle Circa 1927 Colorized

2 comments

This is going to be a short one today.  Short and sweet.  I went back to work today after being off for close to eight months.  I didn’t realize how long it was until I went to write this post!  I don’t have nearly as much time to write these posts as I have had during my time off.  Plus, I had to go to safety training this afternoon.  If you have never done such a thing, it is brutal.  You have to sit and listen to a recording of some man talking about safety concerns when going into a plant.  And you need to pay attention closely, because you get tested on it and have to make a certain score.  But you can’t worry about that, because you have to pay attention to what he is saying as you try to keep your eyes open and follow along.  It made it a long day with a real-l-l-ly long afternoon.  I’m living the dream!  And it’s a safe one!

My maternal grandmother was Myrtle Sylvia Phenice when this photo was taken circa 1927. She is the one on the left holding the purse. This photo has been colorized.

But this post has nothing to do with all of that.  Last weekend I shared a photo of my paternal grandfather that I had colorized.  I used that as an update to a previous post because I had shared the black and white photo originally in my Man In Black post.  This time I’m posting a brand new photo.  It’s an old photo, but it’s a new one to me.  It was shared with me by my mom’s first cousin Julie.  Thanks, Julie, for sharing a photo of my Grandma Myrtle that I had never seen before.

I just happened to get this photo when I was in the middle of experimenting with the colorization feature I’ve been using lately.  So I thought I would go ahead and try it on Myrtle and her friends.  I like the way it came out.  It still looks like an old timey photo, just with a bit of color added to it.  It gives it a bit more life.  Of course, I edited it a little to fix some things I didn’t like about it.  It wants to put purplish/pink on people and it almost looks like bruising.

I was tempted to put some ‘normal’ looking hair on the boy in the photo, but I refrained.  I’m not sure what’s going on with that.  But my grandmother must have been fond of him.  She is leaning on him in a decidedly friendly way.  I don’t know who the identity of the other girl standing next to the boy.  She doesn’t look familiar to me.  But I’m almost certain that the girl on the far right is Edna Bucklin.  Edna was the younger sister of Fred Bucklin who would later marry Myrtle in 1930.  It seems that the Bucklin and Phenice families were pretty friendly with each other through the years.  They were in the same small community, and both of them had relatively large families.  I’ve shared several photos with individuals from both families in them.

I’m sure there are more.  But that will have to be at a later date.  I hope you enjoy this one now.

Four Years Gone

Leave a comment

Betty, Jodie, and Bob Landry in January of 1955.

It has now been four years since the week that both of my parents died five days apart.  The anniversary of my mom’s death was two days ago and the anniversary of my dad’s death will be in three days.  Losing your parents in such a short time was rough.  It did seem appropriate that they had a joint funeral, since they had been happily married for 64 years.  Some people back then would say things like, “That’s kinda romantic, though.”  I have to say that at the time, there was nothing romantic about it to me.

They had been living in Assisted Living in Lake Charles, Louisiana, for two years and had grown very dependent on each other.  The main reason that they moved into Assisted Living is that my dad couldn’t keep up with my mom.  She was physically strong, but her memory was fading.  She could easily take a week’s worth of her medications on the same day and not realize it.  He was slowing down physically and finally took our advice to move out of their home.  We all thought it was for the best.

Three months before they died, my mom had a fall and broke her shoulder and her hip.  At the same time my dad became very weak with a few medical problems.  My mom’s physical problems got better, but my dad’s did not.  He had no energy and was extremely weak.  On that January 18th I got a call that he could be dying at any time.  Then later that night I got another call about my mom falling and hitting her head.  What actually happened is that she had a stroke and died the next morning.  My dad got progressively worse and died five days later.  Does that sound romantic?

The Landry family in December of 1983 in Jennings, LA.

But now, I have to admit, the sting of it all has eased up a bit.  If I’m not thinking too much about it, I can agree that it was somewhat romantic.  Anybody that knew them knew that they loved each other.  It was pretty obvious.  My mom told me years ago that that was the most important thing for children to know – that their parents loved each other.  Since that’s what she believed to be important, I figure I’d post a few photos to show how that love expanded through the years.

The first photo is from January of 1955.  By this time, they had already welcomed little Jodie into their circle of love.  Don’t they look like a sweet little family?  Yes, you’re right!  They need more.  My brother Rob would be joining them in a few months.  But as I once said in a song I wrote for their 50th wedding anniversary, “Two would never do.”  They had Jodie in California and Rob was born in April 1955 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  I don’t know when they moved there, so the photo was taken either in California or New Mexico.  The rest of us kids – Karen, Al, Van, and Jamie – were born in Lake Charles.

You can see all of us kids in the second photo, which was taken in 1983.  From left to right is Jamie, Bob, Karen, Rob, Betty, Al, and Jodie.  This was taken at their house at 758 Lucy Street.  The family is definitely growing, as you can see.  Jodie gave them their first grandchild Chris in 1981.  And Karen had little James just a few months before this photo was taken.  My parents certainly enjoyed their roles as grandparent.  They taught them to sing, to paint, to play ping pong, to make Pappy biscuits, to make liver pie sandwiches – the list goes on.  Chris and James were the first two of twelve grandchildren that they would get to know and love over the years.  We would lose Jodie in 1989.  Those who are greatly loved are greatly missed.

Four generations in 2008 – Bob and Betty with daughter Karen, grandson James, and great granddaughter Kelcie.

The last photo was taken on November 27, 2008.  It was also taken at 758 Lucy Street.  But this time little James in that last photo is now a father himself.  So now Bob and Betty were great grandparents and they still had enough love to share with that little one!  Great grandson Hudson showed up in 2013 and Henry showed up on my mom’s last birthday in 2016.  Two more little ones to love.  My mom was losing her memory by this point.  She loved those kids – when she was reminded of who they were.

And all of this came about because a little Hathaway country girl met a slightly older boy from the big city of Lake Charles and they fell in love.  That’s sounds a little more romantic.

Grandma Addie With a Big Ol’ Smile

One comment

Addie May Hine Bucklin and Winnifred Talbott Welton in Elton, Louisiana, circa March 11, 1952. It was a birthday celebration for “Mrs. Weldon.”  (Photo has been edited.)

When I was thinking about what I would post today, I looked over the last few posts that I’ve written to see whose turn it is for the spotlight.  It was definitely my mom’s side of the family that was up for a turn.  And since the last one I did for my mom’s side was about the Keys family, I figured it was time for the Bucklin side.  And the Bucklin side includes my Grandpa Fred Bucklin’s mother Addie Hine Bucklin.

You all remember her, right?  She’s the one that I’ve made fun of on several occasions because she usually has a scowl on her face. (See here and here.)  It was lighthearted fun, of course.  Even though she looked very stern and a bit tough, I’ve only heard sweet stories about her.  Don’t judge a book by its cover.  So I like seeing this photo of my great grandmother having a good laugh with what looks like an old friend.

I actually worked on this photo this week for a completely different reason.  I was looking at Find a Grave and noticed there wasn’t a memorial (profile) for Selma Edessa Welton Havenar, who is the daughter of Winnifred.  We’re not related to the Havenar and Welton families, but we have some shared history.

I knew I had taken photos of her grave a few years ago and set up some memorials for other family members like her husband Guy Havenar.  Somehow I overlooked making one for Edessa Welton Havenar.  So I made one and started looking at the family a little more.  I noticed that she married Guy Havenar, whose mother was a Welton.  So I jumped into the rabbit hole of finding out how they were related.  Along the way I remembered these two photos and some of the writing on the back of them.  I figured out who they were talking about by looking at another tree on Ancestry.  I noticed the tree belonged to the great grandson of Winnifred.  So I decided to work on the photo and post it online for everyone to see.

Besides the shared history of both families living in Jefferson Davis Parish in southern Louisiana, there was a tradition of celebrating birthdays together with the two families. (See here, here, and here.)  Addie’s mother was Susan Stanbrough Hine and she was born on October 3, 1851.  We call her Grandma Sue.  The other person that shared Grandma Sue’s October 3 birth date was Winnifred’s sister-in-law Edessa Jane “Jennie” Welton Havenar.  In the old newspaper clippings that I’ve shared, they always just say something like, “Mrs. Hine and Mrs. Havenar are Celebrating Another Birthday.”  They started celebrating their birthdays with a joint celebration in 1906 and continued for at least 20 years.

Winnifred must have been fond of her sister-in-law, because it looks like her daughter was named after her.  And what makes it even more complicated is that both Edessa Jane “Jennie” Welton and Selma Edessa Welton both married a Havenar.  So to make it easier to tell who they were talking about, Edessa Jane was called Jennie and from what I figured out from the backs of these photos Selma Edessa was called Eddie.  But nothing stops the confusion when you see that Eddie married Jennie’s son Guy.  That’s right, she married her first cousin.  So her aunt became her mother-in-law.

Unedited photo of Addie May Hine Bucklin and Winnifred Agnes Talbott Welton at her daughter Selma Edessa “Eddie” Welton Havenar’s (married to Guy Havenar) home in Elton, Louisiana, on March 11, 1952. They were celebrating Winnifred’s 80th birthday.

It explains what was written on the backs of the photos.  Here’s a hint from me – never label someone on the back of the photo as “Mrs. Weldon.”  Use their full name.  Call her Winnifred Agnes Welton Havenar.  When I read “Eddie Havenar’s mother” when they talked about “Mrs. Weldon,” I tried to find a son named Edward for a Mrs. Weldon.  Seeing “Guy Havenar’s home” on the second one helped because I knew that Selma Edessa Welton was his wife.  So I figured Selma Edessa must be Eddie.  It also says that they were celebrating Mrs. Weldon’s birthday.  I was wondering why there were those nice pink carnations on the table.  Did I say pink?  Yes, I did.  It’s actually a color photo of Grandma Addie!  I don’t have many of those.

So the two families were celebrating a birthday again after almost fifty years of doing so.  The celebration was on June 16, 1952.  Or maybe the film was developed on that day.  Or maybe this reprint was made on that day.  This was long before our camera or phone automatically dates the photos we take.  I found that Winnifred’s birthday was on March 11 and that she lived in Minnesota.  I’m going to assume that she was down in Louisiana on her birthday, so these photos were taken on March 11, 1952, which was her 80th birthday!  It was definitely a day to celebrate with friends and flowers.

1 … 27 28 29 30 31 … 65