H. C. and Daisy With the Kids

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The Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice family circa 1934.

Here’s an interesting photo of the Phenice family in the mid 1930s.  At least that’s my estimate of the date that it was taken.  The photo is not the best photo as far as clarity and balance is concerned, but it is almost ninety years old.  The person whose face is the hardest to make out is my grandmother’s, who you can see second from the right in this photo.

When my grandmother was born in 1906, her parents H. C. and Daisy gave her the name Myrtle Sylvia.  In 1930 she married her sweetheart Fred and acquired the last name Bucklin.  If this photo was taken when I estimated, she and Fred would be parents already.  Their first daughter Sylvia Daisy was born in 1931, and in 1933 their second daughter Betty Lou, my mom, was born.  (They would later have Alma, Loris, and Austin.) Now that you know how I connect to this photo, let’s see who everyone else is.

In front and center are my great grandparents Daisy Keys and Harry Clifton Phenice.  Daisy was born in 1876 in Hackney, London, Middlesex, England.  She came to Louisiana with her mom and siblings in 1887.  Harry was born in Butler County in Pennsylvania in 1874.  By the time he was six, his family had moved to Nebraska to homestead.  So Harry grew up on a farm in Nebraska.  When he reached the age of 24, he struck out on his own and arrived in Louisiana in 1898.  He married Daisy in 1900 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and started a farm and family of his own.

Sylvan Austin was their first child and he was born 11 months after they were married.  You can see him on the far left in the photo.  He  married Mary Bucklin in 1926.  They never had any children.  The next child born to HC and Daisy was Grace Leona, who was born in 1903.  She can be seen standing next to her father.  She had married Ray Sowder in 1929 and they did not have any children at the time of this photo.  They would later have two daughters by the names of Patricia and Flora.

The next child of HC and Daisy was my grandmother Myrtle, who we have already discussed.  My good old Grandma!  After Myrtle came Henry Charles, who was born in 1909.  He was the middle child and he can be seen standing next to his mother.  He was married to Irma Hetzel in November 1934.  They later were the parents of Wayne, Charles, and Diane.  After Henry Charles came Bernard Orville, who was born in 1911.  Orville can be seen second from the left in the photo.  He got married to Elta Whitman in the same year that Henry and Irma were married, but they were married in January of 1934.  They had five children together: Marilyn, Kathleen, Linda, Paul, and Carol.

That leaves two more children of HC and Daisy.  Their youngest son was named Warren Algernon and he was born in 1916.  He is the son in the middle of the photo standing between his parents.  He would get married to Wilma Hylton in 1939 and they had four children.  Their two sons were named Terrell and Kevin, while their daughters were named Julie and Lisa.  The last child of HC and Daisy was Martha Marguerite, who was born in 1918.  She can be seen on the far right.  She was a just a single young adult at the time of this photo.  She would marry Thomas Hill in 1943.  Their children’s names are Shelly, Darla, and Warren.

As I was writing this, I realized that I have a lot of memories of my grandmother’s siblings. I remember seeing Uncle Sylvan, Uncle Henry, Uncle Warren, and Uncle Orville from time to time.  I remember lots of laughs at Grandma’s house when Aunt Grace and Aunt Marguerite would come around.  But I don’t have many memories of Grandpa’s siblings.  I remember hearing about them occasionally, but we didn’t see them much.  My dad’s parents were about a decade older than Grandma and Grandpa, and that made a big difference.  Pee Paw and all of his siblings died before I was even born.  Mee Maw and a few of her siblings were alive when I was a kid.  I have just one memory of any of them.

So I think of the children in this photo as my extra aunts and uncles.  That’s what we called them.  There was no “Great Aunt Marguerite” or “Grand Uncle Orville” when we saw them.  Even though we already had 22 ‘real’ aunts and uncles, I appreciated those extra ones.  I appreciate them even more now that they’re gone.

Times Of Change

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Landry Family Band performing at Shakey’s in 1978.

Today is the second anniversary of my dad’s death, so I thought I would write something in his honor.  I was thinking about it this week, and one evening I came across this photo.  It was from a slide that I took on December 23, 1978, at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I posted a photo from this same evening a while back.  The other photo is a photo of my mom and dad along with me and all of my siblings.  It wasn’t often that all of us were there together, so it’s a special photo.  Any time I mention to someone that my family used to sing together at Shakey’s in the late 70s, I’ll invariably show them that photo.

But this photo is different.  It shows the family members who are no longer with us.  Jodie died in 1989.  It’s hard to believe that it will be 30 years this year.  Then my mom and dad died two years ago within five days of each other from natural causes.  As far as performing at Shakey’s, Mama and Daddy were there more often than the rest of us.  Jodie or Rob were probably there the least.  You can also see my dad’s brother Hubert Landry in the yellow shirt and his wife Mildred Sutherlin Landry next to him.  Uncle Hubert would play the harmonica with us pretty often.  Uncle Hubert and Aunt Mildred are no longer with us as well.  Aunt Mildred died in 1990, less than a year after Jodie, and Uncle Hubert died in 2006.

All of those changes happened after our time at Shakey’s.  We started playing there in June of 1976 and finished up five years later in August of 1981.  Those were times of big changes in the Robert Joseph Landry, Jr./Betty Lou Bucklin Landry family.  In 1976 there were still five of us living at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings.  There was Mama, Daddy, Al, me (Van), and Jamie.  We were the youngest three of the six children and the following school year was the only time that there were three Landry children in high school at the same time.  Al was going to be a senior, I was going to be a sophomore, and Jamie was going to be a freshman.

Also at that time, Jodie was married to her first husband.  They were in Lake Charles at McNeese when they first got married, but later moved to Texas to go to Texas A & M.  They must have moved by this time, otherwise we would have seen them more often at Shakey’s.  Rob was single and in school at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  Karen was single also, but she was at McNeese.  She was able to be at Shakey’s frequently, too.  In fact she got a job there and worked there during the week as well.

By the time 1981 came around, Mom and Dad had become empty nesters.  Al graduated in 1977 and followed Rob up to Tech.  I graduated in 1979 and went to McNeese.  How could I give up performing at Shakey’s on the weekends?  Jamie graduated in 1980 and also went to McNeese.  I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it.  My mom didn’t work outside of the home and my dad was a band director living on a school teacher’s salary.  I seem to recall there being five of us in college at the same time at one point.  Performing at Shakey’s was a way to make ends meet.  I always just thought of it as fun.

A big change for the family during that time was that Jodie went through a divorce.  In some ways that doesn’t sound like a huge thing.  You see it all of the time.  But it wasn’t something that happened in OUR family.  That’s what other people did.  It wasn’t something Jodie wanted for herself, but it happened.  I know she had a bit of anxiety breaking the news to Mom and Dad.  This photo and the photos from that same evening remind me of that situation.  Seeing how Jodie went through that helped me and probably other siblings in breaking troubling news to our parents.

Rob’s first marriage was in 1980.  (He improved that situation a few years later.)  Karen and Jamie met their future spouses during that time as well.  And eventually, so did Jodie.   She even got married during that time.  Al and I were in college.  I actually missed the last month or so of the family performing at Shakey’s.  I was working at AstroWorld in Houston during the summer of 1981.  I’m not sorry I missed it, because I got to see Jodie more often and see her going through her last few months of pregnancy.  I was going to be an uncle!

So the years 1976 through 1981 saw my mom and dad through the last years with children in the house and then on to empty nesters.  Then the following month they became grandparents when little Christopher Rhodes made his grand entrance into the world.  He was the first of the twelve grandchildren enjoyed by Grammie and Pappy.  It was a start to the last era in their lives.  They had some good years.

Mom’s Memories P. 1 aka “I Hated That Haircut!”

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Mom’s memories, page 1 begins with the beginning.

Since the second anniversary of my mom’s death is in two days, I thought I would write a little about her.  I decided that I’d write about my mom’s earliest memory.  My mom had a really good memory for most all of her life.  She remembered what it felt like to be a little kid, so she could sympathize with them easily.  Maybe that’s because her earliest memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

According to the little booklet she wrote in during her later years when her memories were starting to be inaccessible, her first memory concerned a haircut she hated.  There are a few photos of her during this time, and every time she would see one of those pictures, she would inevitably say, “Oh, how I hated that haircut!”

Obviously it was not a style becoming to little 3-year-old Betty Lou Bucklin from Hathaway, Louisiana.  She did not like having hair like a little boy.  After all, this was the time when little Shirley Temple was making movies showing off her full head of curly hair.  It was bad enough that her hair was pencil straight – not one curl to be found.  How could she curl her hair when it was too short to go on a roller?

Betty Lou Bucklin with first cousin Stanley Keys and their grandmother Addie Hine Bucklin

And the photos of her with that haircut showed her disapproval.  She was either frowning or looking away from the camera.  In this photo she doesn’t look too thrilled.  At least she is a little distracted by her new little cousin Stanley Keys.

This photo used to confuse me when I was a kid.  My mom’s father was Fred Bucklin.  Fred’s mother was Addie Hine Bucklin. My mom’s mother was Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  Myrtle’s mother was Daisy Keys.  So how is it that Mom’s first cousin is a Keys and he’s a grandchild of Addie Bucklin?  I thought that maybe Mama was confused since you can’t see the face of the grandmother standing there.

But come to find out, she was not confused.  I was.  Stanley Keys was the son of Frank Keys.  Frank was Myrtle’s first cousin.  But Frank married Edna Bucklin.  Edna was Fred’s sister.  So that would make Stanley my mom’s first cousin through the Bucklin line, but he was also her second cousin through the Keys line.  I wonder if that confused my mom back then?

Probably not.  All that was going through little Betty Lou’s mind was this:  Who’s bright idea was it to give me this stupid “little boy’s” haircut?

Mama was good about writing on the backs of her photos. This one gives all of the pertinent information.

My Father Was a Hunter

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Rob, Jodie, Jamie, Karen, Al, Bob, and Van Landry in 1963 in Jennings, Louisiana

I was reminded of that fact recently.  We went to our friend Lulu’s house where her son Matthew was selling copies of a book he had just written.  I was not keenly excited about the book, because I have never been interested in hunting.  But we were wanting to support him for various reasons.  Plus the book was written about southern Louisiana by someone who grew up in the area.

Matthew read a short passage from his book (“The Duck Camp” by Matthew Wemple) about when he was a child and his father came home from hunting.  It brought back so many memories of my own that I hadn’t thought about in years.  I don’t really have that many references to hunting to jar those old memories of mine.

But his writing brought back plenty.  For one thing, it reminded me of this old photo from around 1963.  I’m pretty sure it was an instance of my dad coming home from hunting.  He’s got his hunting cap on as well as his rubber boots.  That was some of the standard hunting clothes that he had back then.  There were a few photos taken of this event.  I posted one of them on Facebook last year for Father’s Day.

Daddy hunting in 2000.

There was another article of clothing that Matthew reminded me of in his excerpt – my dad’s old hunting vest.  For some reason, I remember being intrigued with that thing.  It seemed like there were pockets all over it for various things and there were even places to store shotgun cartridges on it somewhere.

There are other vague hunting memories that I remember.  He and my mom’s dad would prepare for duck hunting by getting decoys ready.  My grandfather would make some of those decoys himself and also carved ducks that could be hung on a wall.  He and my dad would sometimes test their aim with a pistol by tossing a coin up in the air and shooting at it.  I seem to recall them actually hitting it at least once.

Bob and Johnny Landry (brothers) hunting in 2000.

Then there were the unpleasant memories associated with hunting.  They were always getting up really early on cold mornings.  Who wants to do that?  Then they’d bring all those birds home and you’d have to pluck them.  That wasn’t so bad until you had to singe them.  Not a smell that you’d want to be around too long.

Those things were enough to keep me from wanting to go hunting.  The desire just wasn’t there.  But you can see from this photo of my dad that he enjoyed it.  I can see how it can be an enjoyable diversion.  And I was glad to be reminded of those long ago pleasant memories of my dad that were lurking in my brain.  Thanks Matthew.

Bob Landry in Jennings, Louisiana. It looks like he was a pretty good shot.

Grandma Sue and the Granddaughters in 1919

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I’ve posted three other photos that were taken on the same day as the photo I’m posting today.  The photos were taken around 1919 somewhere near Hathaway, Louisiana.  The first photo I shared from that day was posted over two years ago.  The other two photos were shared in 2017.  I didn’t post any in 2018, so I’m thinking it is time to share this one.  The only problem is that I don’t have any more from that date, so this is it.  Unless, of course, a few more show up in the future.

Susan G. Stanbrough Hine with her seven granddaughters in 1919.

One of the photos was of my great great grandfather George Henry Hine with his grandsons.  This photo is of his wife Susan G. Stanbrough Hine with her granddaughters.  Of course, we all know her now as Grandma Sue, since we found letters that she wrote and signed as Sue.

Sue and George were born in Hamilton County, Indiana, as were their six children Addie, Bert, Rowe, Lonnie, Jim, and Ollie.  Before any of the children were married, the family had moved to southern Louisiana.  So all of their grandchildren were born in Louisiana, except for Robert Bucklin who was born during the short stint that Addie and Lou Bucklin spent in Arkansas.

In the photo you can see Grandma Sue in the middle of the photo surrounded by her granddaughters.  She actually looks happy in this photo.  Like her daughter Addie, she tended to not smile in photos and in some cases it looks like they are scowling.  But she has a nice smile in this photo, which I really like.  Sitting in her lap is her youngest granddaughter at the time Wanda Hine, who was the daughter of Bert.  She was born in 1917 and is the younger sister to Leta Hine.  Leta can be seen on the far right in the photo and she was born in 1912.

On the far left of the photo is a little girl with her head hung down.  Her name is Alta Zay Hine, she was born in 1912, and she was the daughter of Lonnie.  I don’t know what she was sad about.  Maybe she wanted to be the one sitting in Grandma Sue’s lap?  Standing between Alta and Grandma Sue is Audrey Hine.  Her father was Jim and she was born in 1910.  She would have a younger sister named Darlene in four years.  Darlene would have Grandma Sue around for the first ten years of her life.

Standing behind Grandma Sue is the oldest granddaughter.  Her name was Mary Bucklin and she was born in 1900.  We saw a photo of her with her mother Addie along with Sue and George previously.  Addie’s middle daughter is the girl in the dark dress.  Her name is Edna Bucklin and she was born in 1909.  Addie had six sons in a row between those two girls. (Including my maternal grandfather Fred D. Bucklin) There was either one or two sons between Edna and the next daughter Ruth.  She was born in 1915, but so was her twin brother Roy.  So if Ruth was born first, only Robert was between Edna and Ruth.  Otherwise Ruth was the last child born to Addie and Lou.

So that’s it.  Sue and her girls have all been identified.  Oh, wait!  I mentioned Ruth, but forgot to say which one was her.  But since I have pointed out all of the others in the photo, you know that she was young girl in the front on the right of the photo.  She seems preoccupied with something she has in her arms.  It looks like it could be a stuffed animal or such and her little cousin Wanda seems drawn to it as well.

Now we’re done.  Everyone accounted for.

Say so long to Grandma Sue.

Landry Christmas Circa 1938

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Now that we are looking back at Christmas, I thought I’d take it back to a Christmas of long ago.  I’ve written at least two Christmas related stories that were about tragedies, but I’m not going to do that this year.  Our family has been hit with a tragedy this week, so I will look back to a photo that shows some peace and calm.

Germaine, Johnny, Frances, Wana, and Bobbie Landry at Christmas in 1938.

This is a photo of my dad’s family at Christmas from the late 1930s.  From the apparent ages of the kids in this photo, I estimate it to be from the Christmas of 1938.  That’s the month before my dad turned 10 years old.  I still remember how I thought it was such a big deal when my age turned from a single digit age to a double digit age.  Plus you got to use all ten fingers to show how old you were!  Oh, the joys of childhood.

And one of those joys of childhood is Christmastime.  It was such a magical time.  The expectation was so high.  And the wait was so painstankling long.  From comments from my siblings this week, I realized how well our parents protected us from the turmoil that can show itself in the world.  We all have cherished memories from childhood.

And what led to that was probably similar memories that my parents had, such as the scene from this week’s photo.  That’s my dad on the far right of the photo.  He came from a family of eight children.  The oldest three (Marie, A. J., and Hubert) are not shown in the photo.  A. J. died at the good old age of 94 last week, leaving three surviving siblings.  Those three siblings are the first three children shown in this photo from left to right.  On the left is Germaine,  who was 11 years old at the time.  Her nurturing skills were already starting, because as you can see, she seems to be comforting 2-year-old little brother Johnny in this photo.

The little girl with her head down is 4-year-old Frances Mae.  I’m not sure what she is doing.  She might have something in her lap, but my photo isn’t clear enough to make it out.  Wana, of course, is the little girl with the curly hair.  She was a happy 6-year-old who looks like she was getting ready to tell her sister a funny little story about the boy next door.  Bobbie (my dad) looks mostly happy. Or should I say content?  He doesn’t really have a big smile, but you can’t say he is sad or upset.

So there it is.  A flash into the past.  Happy times at Christmastime.  These siblings would continue to get together for Christmas for decades to come, which provided a lifetime of great memories for more people than I’ll ever know.

Fred Bucklin Circa 1928

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Fred Bucklin circa 1928

This is a nice old photo of my maternal grandfather Fred Bucklin.  I’m thinking he was around 21 years old in this photo, so the estimated date in 1928.  I’m not sure of why this photo was taken.  It was with a group of other photos from the same time.  Some of them were of him and his identical twin brother Clarence and others were of the land where their family lived.  I posted one of them a few weeks ago that looked like the beginnings of his nursery.

The other thing that I noticed about the photos is that both Fred and Clarence had a boutonniere or something with a ribbon streaming down from it.  They were both dressed up as well.  Their father Louis Bucklin died in November of 1927, but I’ve seen a photo of that and nobody was wearing anything like what is seen in this photo.

I also wondered if maybe it was some prize ribbon that they got at some fair or something.  This is probably the time that they started gaining interest in plants and nursery work.  They graduated from high school in 1926 and I know they had a business together at least by 1930.

This was also when Fred was still a single young man.  He was married to Myrtle Phenice March 12, 1930, in Raymond, Louisiana.  I would assume that the wedding took place at the Raymond Methodist Church.  I’ve never seen a photo from their wedding, but I don’t doubt that it happened!  In the 1930 Census, the record shows that Fred and Myrtle Bucklin were married at age 22 and they both were still 22.  So they were newlyweds.  He was listed as a laborer in the farm industry.  He probably worked on the Bucklin farm for his mother Addie Hine Bucklin.  Myrtle was not working at that time.

Bucklin Bros. Nursery 1931 price list

As I said, he was in business with his brother at least by 1930.  I have this copy of the price list from the 1931 growing season and my cousin Joseph has posted the one from the previous year.  As you can see from the photo, the name of the business was Bucklin Bros. Nursery.  The sheet says Elton, LA, but it was really in Hathaway.  Elton was just the closest “big town” around there.  I wonder if the name of the business was an homage to their uncles?  Their dad’s brothers Joe and Edd had a mercantile business in downtown Jennings in the early 1900s (approx. 1899-1914).  It was called Bucklin Bros. and was  a successful business for a time.

The Bucklin Bros. Nursery later changed names because there was a falling out between the two brothers.  I don’t know the particulars of the why and when of this, I just know that they ended up both having nurseries down the road from each other.   My grandfather stayed in the business for a long time.  I remember him puttering around the greenhouse in front of their property when I was a kid.

And though he retired and later died, there are still plants and cuttings of plants that he rooted and sold all of those years ago.

I enjoy coming across them from time to time.

Grandma Celeste and Her Niece

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A few weeks ago I thought about writing a post about the name Celeste.  I think it is a very nice name – heavenly, in fact.  It also has been a common name in the family.  I realized that when I added a few more family members with that name recently.  Then I came across this photo today and I thought I’d do a bit of an edit to get rid of some scratches and spots.

Amanda Leveque with her aunt Celeste.

So here is a photo of Marie Celeste Leveque Landry, who was my paternal grandfather’s mother.  Grandma Celeste’s youngest child was named Robert Joseph Landry.  He would later become a Sr. when he and my grandmother named my father Robert Joseph Landry, Jr., their third son.  I was the third son of a third son, but I wasn’t a III.  That distinction goes to my oldest brother Rob.

In this photo, she is the older woman on the right with white hair.  She was in her mid 80s in this photo, which was taken around 1932 or 1933.  The other woman was her niece Amanda Leveque.  Amanda was the daughter of Celeste’s older sister Marie Evelina Leveque Leveque.  Celeste had two older 3/4 sisters (they had the same father and their mothers were Landry sisters), but Evelina was her older full sister.  I wrote Leveque twice intentionally for her, because she married her Leveque first cousin.  That Leveque family line lived in New Orleans.  Amanda would have been in her mid 60s at the time of this photo.

Now to get to the part about that Celeste name.  Our Celeste had a brother named J. A. Leveque, Jr.  He had two children named Joseph Mark and Lucy.  Joseph had a daughter in 1895 that he named after his sister and his aunt, probably a favorite aunt.  He named his daughter Marie Lucie Celeste Leveque.  She went by the name Lucie and that was the name I had for her until recently.  I found out about her full name from a DNA match who was named after her great grandmother.  So the name Celeste is still present in that line.

But it is also present in the descendants of Grandma Celeste.  I’ve mentioned before that she helped her son Sebastien to care for her granddaughter Manette when Manette’s mother died.  To honor her grandmother before she died in 1934, Manette named one of her daughters Celeste Marie Bouquet.  She was born in 1928 and went by the nickname Tessie.  Tessie in turn gave one of her daughters the middle name of Celeste.  That daughter did the same for her own daughter.

There may be more with the name in the Bouquet family, but I do know there is at least one in the Landry family.  By that I mean the Robert J. Landry, Sr. family.  My cousin Doug gave his daughter Adele the middle name of Celeste.  There also happens to be a Celeste in the Patureau line.  I doubt that she was named for our Celeste, but that’s who I think of when I see the name.  Actually Celeste was named after her grandmother Clarice Celeste Bruneteau Landry, who was alive when her namesake was born.  Though the name Celeste hasn’t been with the Landry and Leveque lines as long as the Leobon name has been in the Patureau line (250 years), it has been around a respectable 225 years.

How do you spell respect?

Keys to the Ship

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The ship Aurania of the Cunard Lines brought my Keys family to America in 1887.

I was excited to run across this photo a few weeks ago.  It is a photo of the ship that my Keys ancestors boarded when they were immigrating to the United States from England.  The name of the ship is Aurania.  It was part of the Cunard Lines.  I’ve mentioned the name of the ship before, but I had never seen a photo of the ship until I saw this one.

Martha Ann Cook Keys was born in Great Wigsborough, England, on November 8, 1836.  Henry Keys was born in Chipping Ongar, England, on April 18, 1822.  Martha and Henry were married on Martha’s 33rd birthday.  They went about starting a family of their own.  Henry Alfred was born in 1870 and Leonard James was born in 1873.

Their next child was my great grandmother Daisy Henrietta Martha, who was born in 1876.  (Daisy’s daughter Myrtle would become my maternal grandmother.)  Henry and Martha’s last two children were daughters Rosetta Ruth born in 1879 and Mabel Olive born in 1881.  The family lived in Hackney and Tottenham around London when the children were young.

Part of the list of passengers of the Aurania on that fateful trip. At the top of the list is my great great grandmother Martha A. Keys.

They decided that they wanted to move their children to America because of some increased incidents of crime where they were living.  They also had some family members already living in the United States and they must have heard some positive reports.  They began saving up money for the move, but then tragedy struck.  Henry fell ill with bronchitis.  He fought it for four months, but then succumbed to the illness in 1886 at the age of 63.

Martha mourned the loss of her husband, but did not let their dream die along with him.  She continued to save for the journey and the following year decided it was time to make the move.  They sold off most of their belongings and went to London to meet up with the Aurania.  It was the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and people were celebrating during the week that they went to London.

More details about the Aurania and the date of arrival for Martha and her family.

On June 21, the queen took part in a procession or parade.  I don’t know if my ancestors had a view of this event, but my great grandmother told her children about the celebratory atmosphere when her family was boarding the ship.  She was a child herself at the time and remembered the other passengers on the upper decks throwing candy and treats down to them.

I’m not sure when the ship left port in England, but it arrived in New York on June 27, 1887.  The family did not immediately head for Louisiana.  They spent a short amount of time in New York at the Great Exposition or some such thing.  It was some type of fair that you could enter your handiwork into competition.  Leonard entered a handkerchief and Daisy submitted a pinafore.  They both won honorable mention.

They then moved on to Louisiana.  Their intention was to go to Louisiana by boat, but for some reason none were available.  The Cunard Lines set them up with train tickets.  The tickets were for Beaumont, but according to the passenger list for the Aurania, their destination was Louisiana.

They arrived in Louisiana in July 1887, and the rest, they say, is history.

Go Go Patureau – To Mexico!

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Last week I posted a photo of Phenice Family relatives in Nebraska.  In the course of the post that I wrote, I mentioned that I had wondered if my Phenice grandmother (Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, mother of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) had ever been there.  It seems not.

According to my aunt, Grandma never went to Kansas nor Nebraska.  And she never really traveled much at all.  I had discovered from a previous post that Grandpa (her husband Fred Bucklin) had done more traveling than I had realized.  While Grandma and the family (including my mom, little Betty Lou who was too poor to have a “real” store-bought doll) stayed at home in Hathaway, Grandpa went to a spa vacation in Hot Springs, Arkansas, every summer.  While that is not terribly far to go on a vacation, he was still traveling more than Grandma.

Germaine Erie Patureau Landry on her way to Mexico.

But it was not nearly as much as my other grandmother liked to travel.  She was known for enjoying being on the move.  (Kinda like Jacko.)  So this week I’m posting this photo of Mee Maw (Germaine Erie Patureau Landry, the mother of my dad Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr.) when she was getting ready to go to Mexico.

To me, she seems very excited to be on the way to the land of her father’s birth.  (Though he was born in Mexico, he was of French and Acadian heritage.)  She loved to travel and would go with family most of the time.  My mom always referred to her as a “Go, go, Patureau.”  I’m not sure if my mom made up that moniker, but I always liked it.

Sisters Erie, Sylvia, and Lorena traveled with Sylvia’s son Rhett.

From the look of the second photo, this was a trip with family members.  That’s my Mee Maw on the far left checking to make sure that she wasn’t shortchanged by the money transfer.  Next to her is her younger sister Sylvia Patureau Marionneaux with her son Rhett.  On the right is Lorena Patureau Cary.  They all look excited about all the money that they received in the exchange.  I wonder who took the photo?  Was there another family member on the trip?

I got this photo from Rhett’s son Wade over a year ago and appreciated seeing this old photo of my grandmother enjoying herself.  She loved traveling and being with family, so this was the best of both worlds for her.  That makes me smile.

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