The Swimming Pool Part 2

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My maternal grandparents Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice out on the beach with family in southern Louisiana circa 1929.

I’m excited about this photo.  It’s not an enhanced photo and it’s not a photo that I’ve shared before.  I’ve shared another photo from the same day before.  That was the original The Swimming Pool post from over four years ago.

I got this photo from my cousin Carla last year.  I’ve shared a few others that she shared with me and there are more to come in the future.  I was excited to get this one and a few others that were taken on the same day as the original photo I posted.  I wasn’t expecting that.  But it wasn’t until today when I was looking for something to post, that I realized that my grandmother (Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, mother of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) is in the photo. 

In the other photo it looked like the Bucklin brothers were fighting over a girl.  The girl was in the middle of that photo and she is in the middle of this one also.  She’s facing the camera.  I think she could be Grandma Myrtle’s older sister Grace.  Myrtle was in that original photo too, but she was off to the side looking a bit dejected.  But not in this one.

You can see her in front to the left.  She is facing away from the camera.  I recognized her because of her feminine shoulders and the straps of her swimsuit.  Even from this side view, you can recognize her strong high cheekbones.  Her hair matches the other photo as well.  Maybe she had it pinned up.  And even though you can’t see her face, it seems to me that she is having a better time. 

Did I hear someone say, “Hogwash!”  Well I’ll explain why I say that.  She is reclining on the beach between the cute Bucklin twins (Fred Bucklin was my grandfather and Clarence was the father of cousin Carla).  It looks like she may be sharing a secret behind a large hat with one of them, while the other one is behind her and reaching for her playfully.  I still can’t tell them apart in photos.  That happens when the photo is almost 100 years old and the two that I’m talking about were identical twins.

I’m still not exactly sure what is going on in this photo.  But now that I realize that my grandmother Myrtle is in it, I’m liking it much more.  It looks like they’re having a relaxing and fun time on the beach.

Crop of photo

Do NOT Try This at Home!

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Enhanced photo of Alcide Landry circa 1890.

I had decided that I was not going to post this photo this week.  It’s one of the only things I was sure of as far as my blog goes.  I try to plan things out a little, but I’m usually not sure what I’ll exactly say from week to week.  I have been looking for something about my great grandfather Simon Alcide Landry to write about.  He was the husband of Marie Celeste from two weeks ago, but I really didn’t say much about him.  I have lots of photos of Marie Celeste through her years, but only one of Alcide.  I thought I would save this enhanced photo of him for later.  It’s the only photo I have of him.

So that was it.  I was not going to post this photo of him this week.  What I was doing this week was re-reading the book “Tirailleurs” by my 3rd cousin Thomas H. Richey.  It had been a while since I had read it and I thought I might find something regarding family history in it.  It’s mainly about Alcide’s older brother Trasimond’s experiences in the Civil War. 

But sometimes it mentions baby brother Alcide.  I was reading along, minding my own business, when I got to page 123.  It recounted a story about Alcide that I didn’t remember.  I read the book before, but I must have just overlooked it somehow.  I didn’t this time.  I decided then and there that I was going to write my blog this week about the story that was told.  It’s time for something a bit lighthearted.

It was the summer of 1863 in Brusly Landing in southern Louisiana.  On the plantation of Narcisse Landry, his son Alcide Landry was aching to join in on the fighting in the War.  But he wasn’t old enough yet.  He wouldn’t be turning 18 until August 16.  In June they were growing their corn crop, but didn’t dare to harvest it yet because the Yankees would just confiscate it.  There were some skirmishes going on at Port Hudson, so there were many Union soldiers about.

Port Hudson fell to the Union, so things settled down a bit.  Older brother Belisaire decided it was safe to harvest the corn.  Part of that work fell to young Alcide, who was not the least bit thrilled.  His 18th birthday couldn’t come soon enough and it was still a month away.  So he set to work picking up the corn as he rode in his corn wagon.

Don’t ask me what a corn wagon was, because all I can say is that it was probably a wagon for gathering corn!  And all I know about this one is that it had a bench in the front of it, just behind the horse that was pulling it.  Nothing automated in those days!  On this particular corn wagon on July 29, 1863, young 17-year 11-month 13-day-old Alcide Landry was sitting on the bench behind an old mare horse.  It had been a long, hot southern Louisiana day and Alcide was making his way back to the barn.

As they were riding along, Alcide was preoccupied with thoughts of the army.  He would grab an ear of corn, shuck it, and throw the grains of corn on the mare’s back and watch them fall.  Then he’d grab another ear.  As he was going through his repetitive process, he was pulled out of his reverie by a pungent explosion.  That old mare had lifted her tail and let out a stream of obnoxious fumes practically right in his face!  I’m surprised it didn’t knock him off of his bench.  I’m sure he had a few choice words for his horsey friend!

They continued on their way, and as they were approaching the barn, Alcide picked up another ear of corn to shuck.  At this moment, the mare lifted up her tail for another surprise.  Before he realized what he was doing, Alcide has used the ear of corn in his hand to stop up the source of the foul gift.  And before the mare realized what she was doing, she was bucking up her back legs and kicking at the source of whatever it was that was hindering her gassy relief.  “Tonnerre m’ecrase!”

All Alcide could see was the belly of the mare as her back legs rose up and kicked the corn wagon and his ribs.  Fortunately for Alcide it was an old mare after a long day’s work.  Unfortunately for Alcide she was still a pretty powerful animal.  So now, not only did he have to wait until he turned 18, he also had to wait for his ribs to heal.  I’m sure during his time of waiting he must have shaken his head a few times wondering how he could have done such a thing.

What a story!  I wonder if that was a story passed down to some of his children or grandchildren?  I’d never heard it that I recall.  And the French phrase in there means something like, “Thunder crushes me!”  It sounds like an explosive situation all the way around. 

I’m glad I know this story.  I hope you enjoyed it.

 

 

Keys Sisters Revisited

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Crops taken from the enhanced copy of an old 1894 photo of Ruth, Daisy, and Mabel Keys

My first Keys Sisters post was in December of 2015.  That was a photo of the sisters Daisy, Ruth, and Mabel Keys in around 1894 when they were but young girls.  This was only seven years after the family had immigrated from England.  The Keys Sisters- Part 2 was posted a year and a half later.  That photo was taken around 1951 when the sisters were much more mature.  Fifty-seven years can do that to a person!

Enhanced photo from 1951 of the Keys sisters. From left to right are Ruth Keys Bryan, Daisy Keys Phenice, and Mabel Keys Miller

The connection to me is that Daisy is my great grandmother – my mother’s mother’s mother.  She is the source of my mitochondrial DNA.  Most of my maternal cousins have the same mtDNA since my mom has more sisters than brothers.  Actually it was only one brother, so his children have their mother’s mitochondrial DNA.  She’s from England, so we all have mtDNA straight from across the pond.

Three years have now passed since Part 2, so it’s time for another look at the sisters.  I hope they realize how fortunate they were to have each other for so long.  After recently losing the second of my three sisters, it makes me a little jealous of what they had.  But I won’t dwell on that, I’ll continue to celebrate with them for what they had.  Too bad I don’t have a new photo to share with you.  Like I said in the title, I’m just revisiting.

Enhanced photo from 1894 with Ruth, Daisy, and Mabel Keys

“Here he goes with those enhanced photos again,” you may be saying with frustration.  I agree.  I like to see new photos.  I haven’t found any new photos of the sisters together, but I have improved the ones I have.

The 1894 photo was a really good photo, considering it was just a photo of the original photo sent to me from Aunt Loris.  All three of the faces have enough details that the enhanced photo looks like the person it’s supposed to.  It helps that none of them are smiling with their teeth showing.  The enhancer always seems to give everyone perfect teeth! 

The 1951 photo was very blurry, so I wasn’t sure that it would work well for that photo.  It worked much better than I thought it would, even though there are some blurry parts near the edges of the photo.  It also doesn’t seem to figure out that if one side of a person’s face looks like they’re wearing glasses, the other side should have glasses, too.  Daisy’s teeth were a little too perfect at first.  So I looked at several photos of her and edited the photo to make it look more realistic.  I think it is a good improvement over the original.

Maybe we’ll have another part to this Keys Sisters series.  If so, it will have to be a different photo of the sisters that I don’t know about yet.  Wouldn’t that be grand!

Marie Celeste in Color

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I posted a story a while back about a family photo of my mom’s family.  It was a black and white photo that my mom had hand tinted.  I talked about a group on Facebook that provides coloring services for free for black and white photos.  Some of them are really good, but I’m not really much a fan of it.

Then there’s the MyHeritage.com site that I’ve been using a lot to enhance photos.  I’ve shared some of them already.  They also have a coloring feature for the photos, but I don’t usually like the results from that either.  It never really looks realistic or flattering.  I’ve been enhancing a lot of my old photos lately, and occasionally I’ll try the coloring feature just to see what it might look like.

Marie Celeste Leveque circa 1868 (colorized)

When I tried it on this photo on my dad’s maternal grandmother Marie Celeste Leveque Landry, I was pretty excited.  I really liked the colors that it provided.  The shading was a little too severe, but I knew I could fix that.  So that’s what I did.  I think it really brings the photo to life.  What do you think?

I posted the black and white version of the photo of Grandma Celeste almost five years ago.  It is the photo that is on her headstone at her grave in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  But this photo was taken long before then.  It was taken some time around 1868.

I figure it was probably taken around then based on her age in the photo and the fact that she married Simon Alcide Joseph Landry on November 24, 1868, at the age of 21.  The photo looks like an engagement or wedding photo, but I’m not sure if that was done back then.  It’s a nice photo that shows what she looked like as a young adult.  I thought I would give some other details about her life at the time as well.

The best thing to show some detail about her life is the 1870 Census of West Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  This is the first Census after the Civil War and things were decidedly different for Celeste and her family.  The families in the South were having to figure out a new way of doing things.  They were no longer able to use enslaved individuals to do their hard work for their benefit.  And rightfully so!

1870 Census showing Celeste and Alcide’s household in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana

So in 1870 Alcide is shown as a farmer on his piece of land valued at $1000 and Celeste is ‘Keeping house.’  They are also the new parents of 5-month-old Carmelite.  That would be Marie Marguerite Carmelite Landry, who would later be called Lily.

Directly below their household is listed the household of Celeste’s first cousin Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry.  She was married to Alcide’s brother Trasimond.  Trasimond and Belite were married on November 30, 1867, and they had two children in 1870.  Their oldest daughter Therese was my great grandmother, but she was only two years old at this time.  They also have a 6-month-old daughter named Catherine.  She would be known as Kate.  Also in the household is 75-year-old Narcisse Landry, the father of Trasimond and Alcide.

Like I said, Celeste and Belite were first cousins.  Actually their mothers were sisters with the Landry maiden name.  Their grandfather was Joseph Emanuel Landry, the half-brother of Narcisse.  This means that Celeste and Belite’s children were 1st cousins through their fathers, 2nd cousins through their mothers, and half second cousins since their parents were related.

Yet the two families did not always remain neighbors.  Celeste and Alcide would move to the western part of the state, where their youngest child Rob was born in 1893 in Westlake.  Two-year-old Therese would grow up and marry Max Patureau from Plaquemine.  His mother was Emma Landry, first cousin to Trasimond and Alcide and the Landry sisters who gave birth to Celeste (by Basalite) and Belite (by Adele).  Therese and Max’s daughter Erie was born in Plaquemine in 1895.  Nevertheless, that didn’t stop Erie and Rob from getting together and eventually becoming my grandmother and grandfather.  Even though they were also our first cousin three times removed and second cousin once removed, we just called them Mee Maw and Pee Paw.

Myrtle’s Childhood

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Myrtle Sylvia Phenice circa 1930.

A couple of weeks ago I gave everyone a teaser about this photo.  I was so pleased with the look of this photo that I thought it deserved a bit of expectancy.  Now that the time has come, I hope that the photo has lived up to my hype and your expectation.  Or maybe you didn’t know about it and had no expectation at all. 

This is a photo of my maternal grandmother from about 1930.  My mom had this photo in a small frame on her piano for as long as I can remember.  The frame actually held two photos.  One of my grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice and the other of her husband, my grandfather Fred D. Bucklin.  I always thought the photos were from before they were married.  Like they were engagement photos. 

Photos of my grandparents that were on my mom’s piano when I was growing up.

This is what they looked like.  They were small photos and they were a little blurry.  I always hoped that I would find a larger copy of the photo of my grandmother, because I could tell it was a nice photo.  But then I got access to this photo software that enhances and enlarges the photo scans that I have.  Problem solved.  And I love it.

Since it is a photo from before she was married, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about her childhood.  She was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, to Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys on December 19, 1906.  She was their third child and second daughter.  Nine months before she was born, her parents went to Nebraska to celebrate the marriage of Harry Clifton’s (HC) younger sister Myrtle.  It was a productive celebration and my grandmother was named after her recently married aunt.

My great grandmother Daisy had immigrated to the United States from England when she was 11 years old.  I suppose she must have had somewhat of an English accent.  Her mother had been a seamstress and she learned to sew at a young age.  She was also thrifty and made a lot of clothes from feed sacks and such.  These skills have been passed down through the generations.  Why just this week I heard about one of her granddaughters making outfits for her own grandchildren out of bedsheets.

Besides learning to sew at a young age, my grandmother also learned how to sing and play the piano.  Her father HC played the fiddle and the family liked to entertain themselves by playing and singing songs in the evenings. He would also play for the community dances along with other friends and neighbors on the fiddle and banjo.  There would be square dancing and just good old clean fun.  They would have these events a couple of times a month.

June 23, 1916 clipping from the Rice Belt Journal in Welsh, Louisiana

Daisy was a member of the temperance group of the Methodist Church – The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.)  Daisy would work at their regular meetings and the children got involved, too.  In this 1916 clipping you can see that Myrtle competed in the singing contest and her older sister Grace competed in the recitation.  They were both winners!  Myrtle was 9 years old and sang “My Temperance Dolly.”

Myrtle’s certification of winning the WCTU contest. This had a very big impact on her life. It inspired her to continue singing, which she did for the rest of her life. This is evidenced by her saving this little memento of her victory and it was mentioned on her memorial at her funeral service.

Myrtle would have started school by this point.  She and her friend Emily Brown would ride the horse and buggy to school some mornings and her brothers would accompany them on horseback.  It was a different time.  They went to school in the Hathaway area.  Many days Myrtle would pack a lunch of an egg sandwich.  And of course it was homemade bread with eggs from the chickens they raised.

When she got home from school, her mom would have a treat for her and her siblings.  Sometimes it was roasted peanuts and other times popcorn or cookies.  On special occasions it would be popcorn balls or bread baked with jelly inside of it.

Grandma went to high school in Hathaway her first two years.  At the beginning of her third year, she went to school in Kinder.  But during the second half of the year, she started attending Jennings High School.  That is where she graduated on May 29, 1925.

After high school she went to Southwestern Louisiana Institute (S.L.I.) to study education.  After two years of study she received her teaching certificate which was good for life.  She taught for two years in the Calcasieu Parish school system.  It was during the end of this time that her relationship with Fred Bucklin became serious.  She decided to quit teaching in the public school system and get married.

So she went to a photographer to document that moment in time.  And that’s what we’re looking at today.

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 8 – Hernandez/Babin

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Diego Hernandez and Theotiste Babin are listed under Pierre Paul Hebert and Marguerite LeBlanc. Their children born in Louisiana (Marie Marthe Hernandez and Simon Hebert) would later be married to each other.

This new installment introduces a new surname to the series while it repeats a few others.  The new surname is Hernandez.  While the name looks and sounds Hispanic, I’m pretty sure that it’s not.  Daddy always had him listed in his book as Jacques Diego Hernandez.  I’ve seen him listed with the first name of Denis or Dique and the last name of Arnandez or Arnaudese.  Since he settled in Louisiana while it was under Spanish rule, his name was more consistently written as Hernandez.

The  surname that I’ve written about previously belongs to Diego’s wife Judith Theotiste Babin.  Theotiste was actually a first cousin of Anne Forest from the previous installment.  Theotiste’s father Joseph Babin was the brother of Anne’s mother Madeleine Babin.  Theotiste was also connected to the Landry family from the first installment.  Her mother was Anne Marie Landry, who was the sister of Augustin Landry.  In addition, Augustin’s wife Magdelena Babin was the niece of Joseph Babin.

There are other connections to families that I discussed previously in this series, but I won’t get into all of that.  It is way too confusing.  Acadie was an isolated area for quite a while with a large population growth, so they inevitably had many cousins marrying cousins.  It has happened in many places all over the world.  Speaking of Acadie, let’s go back there to the time before the Grand Derangement and introduce you to the Babin and Landry families.

In 1687 Vincent Joseph Babin married Anne Theriot in Pisiquit, Acadie.  Their first child in 1689 was a boy they named Jean.  Jean would later have a daughter named Magdelena who would marry Augustin Landry.  Vincent and Ann would then have six daughters.  One of them was Madeleine, who would later be the mother of Anne Forest. In 1713 Joseph Babin was born to Vincent and Anne.

While Joseph Babin was one of the younger children of his parents, Anne Marie was one of the older children of hers.  Her parents were Pierre Landry and Marguerite Forest and they were married in 1712.  They lived in Pisiquit, in the parish of La Sainte Famille.   Their first child was a daughter named Marie who was born in 1714.  In 1715 Anne Marie was born.  Augustin was next in line and he was born in 1719.  Pierre and Marguerite also had two more boys and two more girls.

So Joseph Babin and Anne Marie Landry grew up, met, and were married around 1736.  Their first child Dorothee was born around 1737 or 1738.  She was born before the first son Joseph born in 1739.  They then had a daughter named Elizabeth in 1743.  Their next daughter was either Anne or Judith Theotiste who was born in 1744.  The couple would then have two more sons named Etienne and Cyprien.  The last child was born in 1751, just a few years before the Great Upheaval.

On August 10, 1755, the English began rounding up the Acadians so they could be deported from their homeland.  It was the beginning of a great tragedy for many of the Acadian people.  The biggest positive about it is that Joseph and Anne Marie’s family were placed on board the Dolphin along with other family members of the extended Landry and Babin families.  They were Exiled from the land of their birth on October 27 and they reached Upper Marlboro, Mayland, in early December of that year.  This is where they were to spend the next twelve years of their life.  If they survived.

Page 2 of the list of French Neutrals living in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in July of 1763.

According to the Belle Ile en Mer declaration of Anne Marie’s nephew by her older sister Marie, Anne Marie went into exile with her family.  But she did not live much longer.  She had passed away by the time of the Census of French Neutrals in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in July of 1763.  Joseph is listed and identified by the French word veuf – which means widower.  Dorothee, Pierre, and Joseph are not listed because they were adults at this point.  The others listed in the household with Joseph are Elizabeth, Etienne, and Cyprien.

Theotiste is not in the household, but she is listed just below them with her husband Diego Hernandez.  His name is specified as Dique Landre in this document.  “Scholars” think that Dique Landre is none other than our Diego Hernandez.  It seems to fit with all the other documents that I’ve seen, such as Baton Rouge Diocese records, St. Gabriel land holdings, and Iberville Parish court archives.  They must have married while in Exile in Maryland.  Yet I don’t know where Diego comes from.  He’s listed in this Census along with Exiled Acadians.  I just realized that both the given names I have for him – Diego and Jacques – are versions of the name James.  So I could be looking for a James or Jacques with the last name of Hernandez, Arnaudese, or Landre/Landry.  I guess I’ll just be on the lookout for a Jacko Landry!

Joseph Babin is listed with his children Elizabeth, Etienne, and Cyprien on the Wall of Acadian Exiles in Louisiana. The Wall is in St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Not much is known about their time in Maryland, as far as personal details about their lives.  We just know that they weren’t really wanted there and were never really part of the community.  Though a few of them did decide to stay in Maryland and they were able to become a part of the society.  None of my ancestors did that.  Joseph, Elizabeth, Etienne, Cyprien, Theotiste, and Diego were part of the Acadians who settled in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.  They arrived in New Orleans on the ship The Virgin on July 12, 1767, and made their way to Fort St. Gabriel.  There was an additional member of the family when they arrived.  Theotiste gave birth to a daughter that they named Marguerite during the voyage.

Map of St. Gabriel showing the location of the Acadians who settled there in 1767.

When they arrived in Louisiana, they were given land grants by the Spanish Crown.  As you can see in the photo, Theotiste and Diego were on a plot next to her father Joseph (listed as Diego Arnanz).  On the other side of Joseph is his brother-in-law Augustin Landry.  Two plots down from him is Joseph Dupuis.  I’ll be talking about him in my next installment.  Past him are Pierre Paul Hebert and Paul Gaston Hebert.  We talked about them in the 4th installment. 

This is an early map of St. Gabriel, so it doesn’t show all of the families that I descend from who settled there.  The Antoine Breau family were Exiled in Port Tobacco, Maryland, and they had a two year diversion to Fort Natchez before they made it to St. Gabriel in 1769 or so.  The Honore Braud family spent a much longer time in Exile in France, but they eventually made it to St. Gabriel in 1785.  They were just in time for their eligible daughter Olive Elizabeth to get together with recently widowed Joseph Ignatius Landry, son of Augustin. 

Joseph Ignatius and Olive had a son named Narcisse.  Narcisse would get married to Marie Carmelite Hebert, the daughter of Marie Marthe Hernandez and Simon Hebert.  They would have a son named Trasimond who would marry Belite Bujol.  Belite would bring in the Bujol and Bourg lines that were discussed in previous installments.  Trasimond and Belite had a daughter named Marie Therese who would marry Max Patureau.  Max would bring the Dupuis line into the mix.  He was a descendant of the Joseph Dupuy who was one of those early Acadians who settled in St. Gabriel next to our other ancestors.

Max and Therese had a daughter named Erie.  She would marry Rob Landry.  Rob Landry would not bring any other lines to the mix.  Everyone that was related to Rob was related to Erie.  But these two would bring about someone very special.  That would be their daughter Germaine Erie Landry.  She was a very sweet person and she was my aunt.  She was born on April 6, 1927, and she died yesterday (July 15, 2020) at 6:40 pm.  She was a good older sister to my father.  She was the loving wife of Ross Winn.  She was the caring mother to her three children.  She was a devoted Catholic all her life.  She was a dedicated nurse for many years.

She was such a good person.  She will be missed.

Landry Reunion on June 11, 2016. Here I am with my aunts Frances Landry Raley and Germaine Landry Winn. Frances died in February 2020 and now Germaine has died.

For other installments of the “From Acadian to Cajun” series, click on the following links:

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 1 – Landry/Babin

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 2 – Breau/Trahan

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 3 – Braud/LeBlanc/Gauterot/Aucoin

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 4 – Hebert/Melanson

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 5 – Bourg/Granger

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 6 – Bujol/LeBlanc

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 7 – Foret/Bujol

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 9 – Dupuis/Dugas

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 10 – Bourg/Babin/Landry in a short story called “Finding Home”

From Acadian to Cajun: Part 11 – The Ones That Didn’t Make It

Four Generations of the Hine Family

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Addie May Hine Bucklin with some of her descendants in 1959.

This is an unusual title for this photo, considering that no one in the photo was going by the name Hine at the time it was taken.  I could have used the Bucklin name instead, but the matriarch (Addie May Hine Bucklin) in this photo was only married into the Bucklin family. 

I could just as easily have called it the Stanbrough Family since Addie’s mother was Susan G. Stanbrough Hine – you know her – Grandma Sue.  But then I could go ahead and use other names in Addie’s line like Cox, Vestal, Mills, Brown, Hester, or Miller.  Technically I’d be correct, since there are four generations of family members from those lines.  But all of those lines came together to bring us Addie Hine, so it’s her maiden name that I went with.

It’s kind of surprising that I’m using such a blurry photo for this week’s post.  I’ve been working with that new photo-enhancing feature that I mentioned three weeks ago.  It has some limitations, but I’ve gotten some really good results with some old photos.  It helped me to come up with an amazing photo – and I mean amazing – of my grandmother Bucklin (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin).  If you happen to stop by my house, I would be willing to give you a preview.  But in the meantime, all I can say is, “Wait for it…”

The photo I’m sharing today was taken around the last quarter of 1959.  The youngest person in the photo is my brother Al and he was born on July 24, 1959.  He doesn’t look very old in this photo.  The oldest person in the photo is my great grandmother Addie and she died on November 25, 1960.  The next oldest person in the photo is her son Fred, who was my maternal grandfather – you know – Grandpa.  On the far left is his daughter Betty Lou, better known to me as Mama.  She’s got Al in her lap.  Next to them is little Karen Jean.  She’s kinda sitting on Grandpa’s lap.  On the other side of Grandpa and Addie is Jodie Lou.  She was the oldest of us kids and she was about six years old in this photo.  Next to her is my oldest brother Rob and our dad Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr.

So there they are – the four generations of the Hine family.  I sure wish she had lived just a little while longer so I could have had a photo of myself with a four generation span.  Oh, well.  At least I have this photo of my siblings with her.  Though recently I have seen a glimpse of another photo that possibly includes everyone in this photo. 

Photo of Addie Hine Bucklin and her family possibly on her birthday celebration on September 23, 1959.

I took these photos on my phone while watching an old video that my dad made at the birthday of Grandpa’s siblings Ruth and Roy in the late 1980s.  My dad included some shots of old photos and this one caught my eye.  I can make out Addie sitting down in front of everyone and my siblings and dad to the right of the photo.  Now that I look at them together, it looks like it could be from the same day.  This group photo showing everyone around Addie makes me think it could have been a birthday celebration for Addie.  Her birthday was September 23, so that would fit within the time frame I gave for the first photo I discussed. 

If anyone has the original photo, I would love love love to have a good copy or scan of it.  I guess it’s my turn to “wait for it…”

July 10, 2020 – I realized that I had another 4 generation family photo for the Hine family.  It has Addie in it, but it continues on a different line than mine.  It goes through her son Ralph, his daughter Helen Bucklin Taylor, and her son Ronnie.  It also includes Addie’s youngest brother Ollie.  It was taken at an earlier birthday for Addie in 1948.

Four generations of the Hine family in 1948.

 

Summertime Fun 1963

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I thought it was time for something more recent.  And when I say recent, that is a relative term.  After writing about events 100 and 200 years ago about ancestors of mine, I thought I’d share a photo that included me and my siblings. 

So I went looking for a photo.  I was hoping I could find something in color, so I first looked in my folder of photos from the 1970s.  I was also looking at some of the enhanced photos I did, but none of them struck me.  I liked some of them, but mostly they are from Christmases past.  I can’t post a photo of Christmas when it’s 100 degrees outside.  That’s just wrong.

Summertime fun with the Landry family in 1963.

I thought I’d try to find something a little earlier.  When I saw this photo, I knew it was the one.  It’s got all of my siblings in it, plus the addition of my dad.  It’s in color.  Imagine that!  I think it is from an old slide that was taken in August of 1963.  I edited it a bit to clean it up.  But mainly I chose it because it screams, “Summertime!”

When I think of family summer vacations, I always think of Six Flags and Astroworld.  Those were our usual go-to places every summer.  But this photo is from before that era.  We were living in a two story house on LA-26 just north of the I-10 in Jennings.  The house was directly south of a canal that runs through that area.  At night, we could see the spotlight from the Jennings airport from our bedroom on the second floor.

I don’t remember going anywhere else for vacations during this time.  Of course I was a bit young in the photo.  My older brothers might remember more.  Because of this photo, I do know that we went for a swim back then in our trusty plastic pool!  Doesn’t it look delightful?  We all look like we were having fun!  That’s what matters.

Let me identify everyone in the photo.  On the far left is my brother Al.  My dad (Robert Joseph “Bob” or “Pluto” Landry, Jr.) is next and he is holding me.  Then there are Karen, Rob, Jamie, and Jodie.  Mama (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) must have taken the photo.  It certainly is a blast from the past.

Max Patureau Family Circa 1953

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Max Patureau family in Duson in June 1953

This photo was taken in June of 1953 in Duson, Louisiana.  My Mee Maw is in the photo.  Can you find her?  She was my paternal grandmother and her name was Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  She was born in Crescent (Plaquemine), Louisiana, to Vincent Maximilian “Max” Patureau and Marie Therese Landry on August 6, 1895.  So she was almost 58 years old in this photo.  Younger than I am now.

I call it the Max Patureau family because that’s what they were referred as in newspaper articles thru the years.  Marie Therese died at the age of 41 in 1909 and I don’t have a lot of information about her.  She wasn’t in a lot of photos and didn’t talk about her activities to newspaper journalists like her husband seems to have done.  She spent a lot of time rearing her nine surviving children (she lost 6 in infancy) in Plaquemine, Louisiana.

But at the time of this photo only seven of those children were still alive.  Like I said, Marie Therese died in 1909.  Then in 1935 Max died.  Two years later Romuald Patureau and Marie Therese “Bee” Patureau Schafer passed away as well.  I don’t know why I never noticed before tonight that Mee Maw had lost two siblings in the same year.  It must have been a hard year for her, though she was quite busy taking care of her own eight young children.

This photo was taken when the family got together for a celebration in honor of Mee Maw’s oldest sibling Emma was honored for writing a book about the history of Duson.  Mee Maw and all of her surviving siblings are in the photo, as well as some of their children.  My dad wasn’t there because he and my mom were in California living on the Air Force base and getting ready to have their first child a few months later.

In the front row from left to right we have Syl Schafer, Therese “Tez” Mouton, Therese “Sis” Schafer (Syl and Sis were the daughters of Marie Therese “Bee” Patureau Schafer and were raised by their Aunt Zita), Dolores Mouton, Sylvie Patureau Marionneaux, and Effie Clements Patureau (wife of Vincent Patureau, Jr.).

In the back row from left to right are Toby Mouton (husband of Emma and father of Tez, Mona Mel, and Dolores), Zita Patureau Schafer, Lydwin “Win” Patureau, Emma Patureau Mouton, Mona Mel Mouton, Lorena Patureau Cary, Mee Maw (Erie Patureau Landry), and Vincent Patureau, Jr. 

A Clearer View of Kate

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My inspiration for the post this week came from a website that I use for exploring DNA matches.  The name of the website is MyHeritage.com and it came out with something new recently.  This new thing has nothing to do with DNA.  It really doesn’t even have anything to do with genealogy.  They came out with a photo editing feature.

And you can call me amazed!!!  I don’t normally use three exclamation points at a time, but this time it was appropriate.  I saw a little ad for the feature.  It showed a before and after for an old photo.  I didn’t believe it.  I was like, “There is no way possible for that to be true.  They took a clear photo and blurred it to make it a ‘before’ photo.  Then they used the original photo for the ‘after’ photo.”  I was not believing it.

But I thought I’d try it.  Why not?  I had tried their colorizing feature on some photos, but I didn’t really like the results.  But it was a free trial offer.  So I went on their website and tried it on a few photos.  It’s like magic!!  Even after seeing the results, I find it hard to believe.  It puts back details like strands of hair, eyelashes, and lip texture that look authentic.

Photo that was edited using MyHeritage.com’s Photo Enhancer to clear up the image of my great great grandmother Kate Phenice and her daughter Emma from 1890.

My favorite one is this old photo of my maternal grandmother’s paternal grandmother. (I am the son of Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, who was the daughter of Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin, who was the daughter of Harry Clifton Phenice, who was the son of Cathrine Jane Foster Phenice.)  So Cathrine or Kate was my great great grandmother.  The photo was taken in 1890 in Hitchcock County, Nebraska.  I estimated this date because her 8th and youngest child Emma Orra is in the photo with her, and she was born June 20, 1889.

Look how much better their faces look!  It really brings the photos to life.  I’ve already spent way too long looking at this photo.  I just can’t get over the details that were recovered.  I thought I’d do the same with the information about Kate’s life.  The details of her life were a mystery for a long time, but last year I figured out who her parents were.  I’ve discovered a few more details in the meantime.

Cathrine Jane Foster was born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 16, 1848.  We have had that information for quite a while.  Some of it was on her headstone and other parts were in a newspaper article about her death.  There were lots of other details, as well, but nothing was said about parents or siblings.

I now know that she was the daughter of Morris or Moore Foster and Anne Magdaleen Milliron.  When she was born, Morris and Anne had been married for 5 years.  They were married on Aug. 30, 1843.  It was most likely in Mercer County, because that’s where they both were born.  I don’t know much more about Morris’s family, but I do know that the Milliron family had been in Pennsylvania for about 100 years.

Morris and Anne had their first son in 1845 and his name was James.  Their second son was born in 1846 and they called him Emory.  Cathrine was their first daughter and the next to be born.  I’m not sure when she started going by the name Kate, but that seems to be what she was known by most of her life. 

The next source of information for Kate’s life was the 1850 Census.  There are six people living in the household in Cherrytree, Venango, Pennsylvania.  There are 29-year-old Moore Foster, 24-year-old Ann Magdelene Foster, 19-year-old Thomas Foster, 6-year-old James, 4-year-old Emory, and 2-year-old Catharine.  This is a Census, so the names are spelled according to the Census taker.  I’m not sure who Thomas is, but it is likely a family member, such as a brother or nephew of Moore.

The main thing that is different is where they are living.  I have Cherrytree as the birth place for James and Emory.  I’m thinking that Kate must have been born in Cherrytree as well, because in 1852 her younger sister Hannah is born in Cherrytree.  I doubt that the family was moving back and forth from Mercer.  They are about 110 miles apart.  So at some point Moore and Anne moved to Cherrytree and started having children.

Tragedy struck a few months after the birth of Hannah in 1852.  Moore Foster died at the age of 35.  I don’t know how he died, but I’m sure it was a traumatic event in the life of little 4-year-old Kate.  Anne moved her family back to Mercer County.  I suppose she did this to be closer to her Milliron family members.

About a year later Anne Magdaleen Milliron Foster married George Richael.  Over the next five years, Anne and George had three sons.  Their third son Elias was born in 1858 and he only lived for two days.  This was likely another point of sadness in 9-year-old Kate’s life.  Anne and George had two daughters following this.  Then in 1864 they had a son that they named George, Jr.  Sadly, George, Jr. died a couple of days after his first birthday.

So in 1865 the family consisted of her mother Anne and step-father George, as well as her brothers James and Emory and sister Hannah.  There were also two step-brothers and two step-sisters.  It’s hard to know if that was a happy situation or not.  There was no mention of other family members in the article about her death, and some of those step siblings were still alive.  I’m thinking it wasn’t the best situation, since it doesn’t seem like it was talked about.  Otherwise her family wouldn’t have been such a mystery.  Or maybe it was just the forgetfulness of family through the years.

Either way, 17-year-old Kate was not sticking around!  She must have met Samuel Phenice around this time.  He was 21 at this time and had fantastic tales to tell about his soldiering time in the Civil War and his eyewitness testimony for the Lincoln Assassination.  They were married Sept. 27, 1866, in Hendersonville, Pennsylvania.

And the rest, they say, is another post.

Edited version with just Kate in the photo.

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