Happy Valentine’s Day!
A 1943 Valentine post card to Mary Bucklin Phenice from her sister Edna Bucklin Keys when Arlene was 2 years old.
Patureau Lane Properties
Circa 1905 Patureau Lane in Crescent, Louisiana
I came into possession of this photo a little over a year ago. I had seen it in the book “Trasimond Landry: Soldier and Public Servant” by Thomas R. Landry (my Mee Maw’s first cousin) and was on the lookout for a good copy of it. That book is one of two books that I have about my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry. It has some history of the Landry family and also lists all of the descendants of Trasimond Landry. But this post is technically a Patureau post since he was my grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau’s maternal grandfather.
When I started writing these posts, I knew I was going to have to track down more photos because I really didn’t have that many to begin with. So I referred to this book to see what photos I wanted and this was one of the top ones I wanted.
Then we moved my parents out of their home in Jennings when they moved to assisted living in Lake Charles in August 2015. Someone saw the “happy house” at 758 Lucy Street and decided they wanted it, so my siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws and I cleared out their home in January 2016. As you may have guessed, this photo was discovered while clearing out the house. My brother-in-law Allen found it with some other old photos that I had never seen before. I’ve already posted some of the others, but now it’s time for Patureau Lane Properties.
I called it that because this is a south-facing view of Patureau Lane in Crescent, Louisiana, around 1905. It was named Crescent because of the crescent shaped bend in Bayou Plaquemine about 4.5 miles west of Plaquemine proper. For a period of time it was a central portage area for travelers in that area of Louisiana. This led to a community in Crescent in the early 1900s that consisted of many members of the Landry and Patureau extended families. (Which made it easy to find and marry your not too distant cousins!)
One part of that community was the Star Club. This was long before social media, so people had to have some place to get together to share news with their neighbors. It was a social club, but it also performed services for the community. But the big event was a ball that they had at the end of the year. The ball was held in the Star Club Hall, which is shown on the right in this photo.
But another important fact about the Star Club was that the secretary for the year of 1902 was my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau and the treasurer was my great great uncle Thomas B. Landry (Thomas R.’s father). In the photo V. M. Patureau’s home is the house that is to the left (across from the Star Club Hall). The home on the right belonged to the Leobon Patureau family. The Thomas B. Landry family lived across the bayou road from V. M. Patureau. (The horse and carriage in the full-frame photo was in front of that home. This photo was taken at the intersection of Patureau Lane and the bayou road.)
The main problem with this photo is not really a problem with the photo. It’s a problem with my knowledge. I don’t know who all of these people are! Even though there are several little girls in the photo and they look similar to old photos of the Patureau family, I can’t definitely identify anyone. But I’m sure they must be family. Why else would we have the photo and the photo was used in the book about descendants of Trasimond Landry? I sure would like to know who they were. Does anyone know? There may be other copies of this photo out there. If anyone knows more or finds out more, I would appreciate being kept in the loop. Inquiring minds want to know!
Full-frame photo of Patureau Lane looking south from the bayou road. Behind to the left would be Thomas B. Landry’s home, to the left is V. M. Patureau’s home, Star Club Hall is in the middle to the right, and to the right is the home of Leobon Patureau. Circa 1905.
Keys Reunion 2017
I thought I’d use my Throwback Thursday series to encourage everyone to try to attend the 2017 Keys Family Reunion. It will be held on June 3 from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm at the Lutheran Church in Jennings. It is being hosted by our cousins Julie Phenice Campbell and Diane Phenice Prejean. It should be a nice celebration of 130 years of our family in the United States.
This photo is from the first Keys Reunion that I remember. It was on June 10, 1973, at a KOA campground near Jennings off of I-10. The newspaper article for this event is on the first page of a scrapbook that I kept back then. It was written, of course, by the family historian Edith Keys Segraves. The original immigrants who came from England in 1887 were Martha Cook Keys and her children Henry Alfred “The Judge”, Leonard James, Daisy, Ruth, and Mabel. None of them survived past the year of 1967. So the oldest generation present in 1973 were the grandchildren of that brave pioneer woman Martha Cook Keys. My grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin was one of those grandchildren present. (She is sitting right of center in a greenish dress.) One of the things that surprised me in my research is that one of those grandchildren is still alive. (She has since passed away. Martha Bryan Boose was born in 1920 and she was present at many of the reunions.
1973 Keys family reunion near Jennings, Louisiana. Descendants of Daisy Keys Phenice are shown.
This photo is from the Daisy Keys group. If you look at the left of this photo, you will see a small boy standing with a greenish shirt on. That is my first cousin Dale Bucklin. I am standing next to him in the brown shirt and wearing my cool 70s glasses. Standing next to me is my younger sister Jamie. We are standing in front of aunt Margaret and uncle Austin Bucklin (holding Anita, I presume). Next to Jamie is our cousin Keith Woolley. In front of Grandma is my cousin John Bucklin in a lavender shirt. Behind her are my siblings Karen, Jodie, and Al. My mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) can be seen toward the right with a noticeable navy Y collar shirt. My brother Rob is behind her to the left. Behind her to the left is her father (Fred Bucklin). My dad (Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.) is to the right of them with a red striped shirt that matches the background. There are a few others I recognize; enough of them to realize that this is a photo of the descendants of Daisy Keys Phenice. (See another version of this photo with names on it below.) The top photo (which was used for the newspaper) includes descendants of all five of the children of Martha Keys.
I have a few memories of this reunion, but the most intriguing memory is what I haven’t seen – the videos that were taken that day. I remember a few men walking around with these huge video cameras and lugging around extra batteries and such. You had to put forth a lot of effort in those days to make a short video. And they probably didn’t even have sound! But I would still like to see some of that live action recorded on that long ago day. So if any of you know who might have those videos or where they might be found, I would love to see them. Or have a digital version of them. I don’t ask for much! I’m sure if they were found and brought to the reunion, they would be the highlight!
But this was not the first party for the Keys family. I found an even older newspaper article from June 25, 1895. That was before any of her children were married or had children of their own. The article stated that in China, Louisiana, “the party at Mrs. M. A. Keys was enjoyed by all present.” Hopefully the same will be said about our get together this year.
Newspaper photo from June 1973 showing most of those in attendance at the Keys Family Reunion
Photo from the Cook-Keys book by Edith Keys Segraves. My mom labeled some of the people. This is the Daisy Keys group from the 1973 reunion.
Original photo of the one above. I was able to scan this from the collection of Edith Segrave’s daughter Carolyn.
Photo from above that includes the names of most of the people in the photo. Thanks to all of the cousins on Facebook who helped to identify the faces.
The Last Week of Bob and Betty
Two months ago I wrote a post titled “The Week of Bob and Betty” because they had had a rough week with medical problems and hospital stays. At the end of that week there was a happy ending because they were able to be together for their 64th wedding anniversary. I did not know then that in two months they would pass away within 5 days of each other. This past week was the last week of Bob and Betty.
Bob Landry married Betty Lou Bucklin on November 1, 1952, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
This post is about when their lives ended, but also about their lives together. The photo I’m using is a photo of their wedding, which is when their lives together officially began. The date was November 1, 1952, and the place was the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana. As you can tell from the photo, they were kinda happy.
I don’t know why I had never scanned this photo before. I thought that their wedding photos were blurry or eyes were closed. My siblings suggested I add this to the photo memorial, so I found the photo and scanned it. It’s a great photo of both of them! So why wasn’t there a large copy of it framed and hanging in their house?
Because their life was about their family. There were family photos on the walls at different times in their life. They also had photos of their children on top of their piano and TV. Then when the grandkids came along, the refrigerator was plastered with all of the events of their lives. Their house was so festive when the family all came together at the holidays. We were watching old videos the other night and the festivity is what struck me the most. Of course the Christmas after the death of my sister Jodie was a bit subdued, but the family recovered their joy. (As she wanted and knew we would.)
There was always a lot of love in their house. They made sure we knew that they loved each other by always calling each other “Honey” and always greeting each other with a loving kiss. They were not perfect and no one is. They were loving parents and always wanted the best for us. In different ways they let us know that they were confident in our abilities to succeed. They believed in us.
So this is about the last week of Bob and Betty. But not really. Every day is a day of Bob and Betty for me. I carry their genes in my cells everywhere I go. But more importantly I carry their love for me wherever I go. That will continue.
A Phenice Frankenphoto
Sylvan, Myrtle and Grace Phenice circa 1907.
This is an unusual looking photo, isn’t it? It’s been pieced together a bit like that famous monster. That wasn’t the plan when I first decided to post this photo, but it came about from the story I wanted to tell. I also want to refer back to a couple of previous posts. I had once said that I didn’t have a photo of my grandmother when she was a youngster. I even suggested that she might have not liked the way she looked when she was younger and got rid of the photos. (I was thinking that I mentioned that in the Pool Post, but actually it came from the Graduate Post.) I also mentioned that I had discovered some old photos back in November. (That one was from a comment to the Camelot Post.)
So this is one of the photos that I discovered in a box of old negatives that I have had since the 1980s. At least the main portion of the photo is from that photo. Around 1982 Grandma (my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin) asked me to take some photos of some of her old photos. So I borrowed some of her old photos and took some black and white photos of them with my old Canon SLR camera. She paid for the film, of course. I was a poor college student at the time after all. When I got the prints in, I gave her a set of prints, some of the negatives, and returned her old original photos. My set of prints and negatives went in a box. They were just old pictures. I didn’t want them in my photo albums.
Fast forward to November 2016. I went looking for some other negatives that I wanted and came across these old black and white photos that I had completely forgotten about. They made a liar out of me. I said that there were no early photos of her. And I had one all along. Fortunately the names were written on the back of the photo. The boy in the photo is Sylvan Austin Phenice who was born Nov. 23, 1901. He was the first child born to Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys Phenice. In the middle of the photo is my grandmother. She was born Myrtle Daisy Phenice on Dec. 19, 1906. The other girl in the photo is Grace Leona Phenice, who was born Dec. 14, 1903. They were all born in Louisiana. The family lived in Colorado for a short time after the birth of Grace and before the birth of Myrtle. (See Gold Mine Post)
But in finding the “lost” photo, I realized something else. I had a piece of the original photo in a group of photos that I had gotten from my mom. I didn’t know who was in the photo or what the rest of the photo was, but I knew that part of the photo was missing. The original piece that I had is what makes up the head of Sylvan in the upper left portion of the photo. So now I know that the missing part of the original photo is my grandmother as a toddler. Where, oh where, is the rest of the photo? Don’t I wish I knew! As you can see, the detail in the original is much better than the photo I took in 1982. And I thought I was being so clever!
Well, at least I found this old photo of my grandmother. And I identified part of the original photo. And remembered something else. Remember when I said that I wondered if my grandmother got rid of her old photos because she didn’t like the way she looked in them? That was so far from reality! My mom has a baby photo of herself that was from a contest she won. Something like “Gerber’s Cutest Baby” or some such thing. Well I can remember my mom saying that Grandma used to say, “Well I was a cute baby, too.” and probably showed my mom this old photo to prove it. And from what I could tell, it seemed like there was a bit of contention about who had been the cutest baby. Some people’s children!
A Doctor and His Patient
Grampa Max makes a house call.
What can you say about a photo of a man and a cow? I guess I’ll try to give you something! I came across this photo last year when we cleared out our Lucy Street home in Jennings. My dad must have collected some old photos and had them stashed away in the big closet in the “running” or “dance” room of the house. I don’t ever remember seeing the photos. He didn’t take them out and show anybody that I recall. I guess he was just saving them until I could get my grabby little paws on them!
But it seems to run in the family. Maybe it’s genetic? Because my cousin Tricia found some old photos in her mom’s (my aunt Wana’s, my dad’s sister Wana’s) attic. And from what I can make out about the way the photos are displayed, an old photo album of Mee Maw’s must have been dismantled and divided. Take this photo of Vincent Maximilian Patureau (my great grandfather, “Grampa Max” to my dad) which was pasted onto a white page with several other small photos as an example. There were a few pages like this that were part of my dad’s collection.
Then Tricia found her mom’s collection just before the family reunion last June. She showed me a few of them and sure enough, some of them were on the same type of white paper. I’m hoping some of the other cousins might find more in the future. Or maybe Daddy and Wana were hiding them because they took all of them and didn’t want their siblings to know about it! That doesn’t really sound like them, so I’m still hoping for more to show up. I need to replenish my supply for these Throwback Thursday posts!
As I said earlier, this is Grampa Max, the family veterinarian in Lafayette sometime around the mid 1920s. The cow is obviously his patient. Jacko wants to know where the baritone is to call the cow. I told him that the cow was sick, so the vet had to travel to the cow. (We saw his nice car in a Veterinarian at Your Service.) He seems satisfied with that explanation. Actually, the cow in the photo seems satisfied as well. I’m not exactly sure what the nature of the call was, but I’m thinking that this is a happy customer. And as the old saying goes, a happy cow makes for a happy family! I’m glad that some of Grampa Max’s visits had happy endings. I hope that most of them did. I know that some of them did not, but that story is for another time.
A Keys Keepsake
I thought I’d do something a little different for the start of the year. I’m not stopping the vintage photos with stories, but I thought I’d do something different from time to time. I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while and now is a good time to start. So this the the first of the Keepsake Throwback Thursdays. The more I talk to people about family history and such, the more I find out about different treasures that have been passed down through the generations. I am hoping to take photos of some keepsakes that other people have so they can be shared with the family. Just like the old photos, you can share them and keep your treasure at the same time.
This week I’m going back to the 1880s in England. It was a time before all of our modern conveniences. It was a time before this branch of the family had left Europe. It was a time of myths and legends, kings and castles. Yes, you heard that right, castles. (You also heard the myth part, too, right!?)
In 1883 my great great grandmother Martha Ann Cook Keys had a problem on her hands. Her second son Leonard, who was 10 at the time, had come down with diphtheria. It is a very dangerous disease and in fact a few years earlier in England, two members of the royal family had died from it. So it was a scary situation.
She called a doctor to see to her ailing son, but the doctor just wanted to know if her husband was home. When she inquired as to why he was asking this, the doctor said that Leonard would probably die that night. The doctor left without offering any hope, but Martha did not give up. She decided to take the situation into her own hands, literally. She put a finger down Leonard’s throat to break the membrane that can form and kill a person. It was a risk, because this could also lead to hemorrhaging. She was fortunate that it did not and Leonard began to recover.
Cross stitch by Leonard Keys from 1883 in England
His recovery took a while, so Martha sent him to stay with her Aunt Jane for a while. She must have been a very important person because she lived in a castle. Or so goes the family legend. I have not been able to find any resources that proved that the family owned a castle at one time. But I haven’t found any that proved that we didn’t either. My mom always seemed to believe that there was a family castle, so it must be true. It was while he was recovering in the lavish luxuries (minus modern conveniences, of course) of the family castle that he did this cross-stitch sampler.
For those of you a little older than me, you may remember this item hanging in the house of Daisy Keys Phenice. Mama said that is was hanging in her house for YEARS before it was given to her by her grandmother Daisy. And that is why it is still in my family. It was given to my great grandmother by her brother because he undoubtedly wanted her to have it. For those younger than me, one day I will pass it on to someone deserving. Or at least desiring!
Slabsters and Doughboys
I have posted a few photos of my grandfather already, but it’s time for another one. One of the previous ones was a photo of him in his World War I uniform and another one was in a baseball uniform. This time it is a combination of the two. I loved this old photo when I first saw it. My cousin Tricia texted me a photo that she took of a few old photos that she had found. This one came out pretty good, but I’m sure that a good scan will be an improvement. It looks like we’ll have to wait on that for a while, though.
In the meantime we have this version of the jewel from the past. And this time I have an improved date on the photo. When I posted the previous WWI photo, I put an estimated date of 1915 on it. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention or maybe I just acquired new information in the meantime, but I have information proving that 1915 date wrong. His draft registration card for World War I was dated June 5, 1917, so the photo is from after that date. We’ll just say that it is from 1919, unless there is later information proving it wrong. (Update: This date has been changed because of later information obtained.) Maybe there’s something written on the back of the actual photo!?
1919 – Front and center is my grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, a lieutenant in World War I
Anyway, Robert Joseph Landry (later to be a Sr.) was 24 years old when he registered for the draft. He had already been playing baseball, as evidenced by the back of another photo I posted of him with a baseball team in 1915. I’ve also read an article about how he was a pitcher for the semi-pro baseball league – or the Sawdust Baseball Circuit. In fact, he was “quite a slabster” in his day. That was just one of the many terms for pitcher from 100 years ago. So when he served his country in the military, it was only natural for him to be a part of the team there as well.
They needed some distraction and recreation after all. Though I don’t think that he went overseas during his stint in the Great War, he may still be considered a doughboy. That was a term for those serving in the military during WWI. A slabster and a doughboy – that’s my grandfather. He is shown front and center in this photo. They were careful about how they set up this photo with the bats and gloves arranged just right. So with him being shown prominently, it looks to me like he was a driving force for this endeavor. Or so I like to think. Whatever the situation, it’s a nice glimpse into the past of the grandfather I never really knew.
A Yuletide Story
I spend a lot of time doing research. I know that this does not surprise anyone who has been reading my posts. During this research I come across a lot of stories. Some stories are inspiring. Some stories are happy. Some are sad. It’s not that I go looking for stories, I just find them in my search for family history. And sometimes a story really strikes something in me that makes me want to share it with people. I found a story like that this week. It is a very tragic story that needs to be told.
But I’m not telling you that story this week. I already had a tragic story picked out to tell you this week. The odd thing about those two stories is that they both occurred on the same calendar date and both involved a young mother named Dolores. But there are even more commonalities in the story that I am telling this week. Plus there is a tie-in with Christmas and it definitely is more tragic. Isn’t that what everyone wants this week? A tragic Christmas-themed story? Well that’s what you are getting from yours truly.
This story is about two cousins. Actually those cousins are third cousins. Two girls were born a bit over eighty years ago and they were great granddaughters of two Stanbrough sisters. These two distant cousins never met. They grew up and they both found the man of their dreams. One of the girl’s names was Dolores Henke and she married her childhood sweetheart named Frank Yule. His name is our first Christmas connection. (You know like, “Yuletide carols being sung by a choir.”) The other girl was Betty Lou Bucklin, my mom. And we all know that she married the love of her life.
After these young women married their respective husbands, both of the families went to live in California. Not long after that, their families started to grow. Actually they started to grow at a remarkably similar pace. They each gave birth to their first child, a daughter with a “J” name, in California in October of 1953. Our Jodie was born on Oct 14th and their little Janice was born just eight days later.
Though my family moved to New Mexico, the similarities continued. Both of the families had their second child, a son, born in April of 1955. Their Scott was born on the 21st and our Rob was born just six days later. That’s amazingly close. Even though the families moved further away from each other geographically, a few more parallels took place. The next child born to each of these families was a girl with the given middle name of Jean.
Now you can see why I connected with this story. Their family started in much the same way that mine did. It seems like a rather happy story, too. And I suppose it probably was up to this point. But that wasn’t what initially got my attention to look at this family a little closer. You start looking at things in family trees and other documents. You have to make sure the birth and death dates are accurate and make sense. So you look at those dates closely. When you see children with similar year of birth, you think twins. But when you see the same year for the death of more than one or two people in a family, you think tragedy. And that is what I found.
The Landry family in 1961. Betty Lou Bucklin Landry with children Al, Karen, Rob, Van, and Jodie in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
There is one more similarity that I know of. In the later part of 1961, both of these families were involved in automobile accidents. Our family got into an accident in Lake Charles on our way to my mom’s family for Christmas. (This is the other Christmas connection.) We were thrown around a bit, Rob was ejected from the car, but for the most part we were fine. We were able to celebrate Christmas and a new year. The same cannot be said for the Yule family.
The Yule family was driving on Highway 399 in Ventura, California, on Sept. 17, 1961. They were traveling along in their station wagon when a truck made an illegal turn in front of their vehicle. That was the day that all similarities between these families ended. Because, you see, all five members of the family perished that day. The father was the oldest at 34 years of age and the youngest was three-year-old Barbara Jean. A truly tragic ending.
Safe travels this Christmas.
Sept. 13, 2017 – Addendum
Christmas 1961 in Lake Charles
I was going through a packet of papers that I had gotten from my parents’ home in Jennings in January of 2016 and came across this old newspaper article. My mom liked to save things. Sometimes that was a bad thing and sometimes it was a good thing. This time it was a good thing.
Urchins and a Tiger
Karen, Rob, Jodie, and Al Landry at LSU in 1960
After last week’s long post full of all kinds of details, I figure it’s time for something short and sweet. This photo has long been treasured in my immediate family. Mostly because it makes everyone laugh. It is a photo of my brothers and sisters a few months before I was born. And since I live in Baton Rouge, I appreciate it even more because they are at the tiger enclosure at LSU. Not the huge one that they have now, but the smaller one that was there in 1960. As you can see, the Landry family is all about comfort and practicality. I always wish I had been in this photo. Maybe if I had, I would have wished that I hadn’t! I’ve been told that the Landry kids look like urchins in this photo. Is that bad?