Bucklin Double Exposure

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Double Bucklin

Bucklin family double exposure circa 1950

I don’t know what it is about double exposures that capture my attention, but they do.  Particularly when they are older photos of my family.  I’m guessing that this one was taken around 1950 in Hathaway, Louisiana, at the home of my great grandmother Addie Mae Hine Bucklin.  She was my mother’s paternal grandmother.  I’ve posted photos of her before and she usually has a rather dour look on her face.  There are exceptions to that, but this is not one.  Now that I think about it, all of the ones I’ve posted so far show her scowlish demeanor.  I promise you that the next photo that I post of her will be one with a smile.

But for now you will have to put up with that sour look one more time.  Poor old Addie!  She seemed like a sweet woman whose family meant everything to her and all I do is give her a hard time.  I can just picture her scowling at me!  See her?  She’s the one standing in front of the window in this photo.  She’s also standing ‘behind’ the only person who is doubled in the photo.  The other thing I like about the photo is that it looks to be a candid shot.  Sure, they were setting up for a group photo, but it doesn’t seem like they are quite posed yet.

In fact, it looks like my mom is coming down the steps when the photo was taken.  That’s Betty Lou Bucklin on the far right in this photo.  Her sister Loris is between Betty Lou and Addie Mae with the dark blouse on.  In front of Loris is their younger brother Austin.  Sister Alma is on the other side of Addie Mae.  She looks a bit dazed from being bombarded with the lights from the double exposure.  Older sister Sylvia is the first female seen from the left of the shot.  She’s got the most light on her from the double exposure, but she’s smiling like a trooper.  To the right of her is my grandfather Fred D. Bucklin, father of Betty Lou and son of Addie.  To the right of Fred is his sister Edna Bucklin Keys.  Next is a brother-in-law.  The next two are cousins of my mom.  The older one is a Bruchhaus boy and the younger one is maybe a Keys.  The woman next to them is Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus, who is trying to imitate the sour look of her mother.  She even crossed her arms for better emphasis.

I’m not sure who all of the people are.  I’m pretty sure that the man to the left of Sylvia is her uncle Herbert Bucklin.  I’ll be editing this post as I get corrections and additions concerning the identities of certain people.  I’m posting this other photo from the same day, but that is all I have from that day.  I’m wondering if there is a ‘final result’ photo that shows everyone ready and smiling.  With Addie in the photo, that may be asking for a bit much!

Bucklin family preparations

Getting ready for the Bucklin family photo. I can just hear her now, “Come on, everyone, get outside. Let’s get this over with.”

 

Hats in Hand and a Fob to Boot

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Southern gentlemen from 100 years ago.  Note the fob on my great grandfather Max Patureau on the left. This photo has been edited and colorized.

This photo has a bit of Southern charm about it.  Don’t you think?  The men are dressed nicely with their jackets and hats.  I guess hats on your head were not for  indoors or for photos.  I’m not really sure about hat etiquette from 100 years ago.  The setting is very nice as well.  It looks like these men are standing around old live oaks with Spanish moss hanging from them.

I’m pretty sure this was taken in Lafayette, Louisiana.  I’ll tell you why I think this.  The man on the left is my great grandfather Vincent Maximilian Patureau, who we all like to call “Grampa Max.”  He lived in Plaquemine until 1912 and then moved to Lafayette with his family.  Part of the family was his son Romuald or Rome (rhymes with foamy) who is standing next to him in this photo.  Next in the photo is Louis Joseph Peter Landry who was the brother of Robert Joseph Landry, Sr., otherwise known as my grandfather Pee Paw aka Pappy.  So Louis was my grand uncle.

Louis and his wife had moved to Lafayette by the time their first child was born in 1906.  And since his wife was Clemence Babin, aunt of my grandmother Erie Patureau (Mee Maw), the families would have associated with each other.  They were pretty close according to Tommy Landry’s account of the family.  In fact my grandmother was living in Louis and Clemence’s household at the 1920 Census.  And with family get-togethers like the one in this photo, there would be chances for her to get to know her mother’s first cousin Rob Landry quite well.  Well enough that they were married in November of 1921.  (Which makes me wonder:  Is there a photo of Mee Maw and Pee Paw’s wedding?  If so, someone is holding out big time on me!)

Getting back to the photo.  The man on the far right is Pierre Oscar Patureau.  He was Grampa Max’s younger brother.  He was a dentist and he lived in New Orleans.  That doesn’t help my theory that this photo was taken in Lafayette, but it still points to southern Louisiana.   And since Uncle Oscar died in 1926, this photo was taken earlier.  I estimate the date as around 1920.

The main inspiration for posting this photo was DNA related.  On 23andMe daddy had a match with someone that showed as his 2nd or 3rd cousin.  This is not unusual because everybody with a good amount of Cajun DNA shows up at this predicted level of relationship.  Even the fact that the match had the last name of Landry wasn’t too significant.  But his name showed up on my tree, so I checked to make sure he was the same person in my tree.  And sure enough he is.  He even has a son named Van Landry!  The DNA match is the great great grandson of Louis Joseph Peter Landry, the man in this photo.  But this DNA match didn’t know it.  He only knew that his grandfather’s name was Dickie Landry.  With the great legacy of family tree information and old photos that my dad left behind, I have been able to share lots of family history with him.  I hope he appreciates it as much as I do.

A Keepsake Letter: Much love, Myrtle

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This letter has been on my mind the past few days, so I thought it would make a good post in the Keepsake series.  My cousin Mary texted me a note about the song “Amazing Grace” that was played so wonderfully at my parents’ funeral by a family friend Marcus Davis.  She also talked about how it had been Grandma and Grandpa’s favorite song.  That put me on a quest to find this letter that I had acquired a few months earlier.

It came from a stash of some of my mom’s treasured mementos.  It is a letter that my grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin wrote to her childhood friend Emily Brown Stothart.  It was written a couple of months after the death of my grandfather Fred Bucklin.  They had been married for almost 54 years.  That should be enough information to set you up to read the letter I’m posting.  It mostly speaks for itself, and thankfully she had nice penmanship as well.

I think it is a wonderful letter to have.  So touching and sweet.  There is something that I want to accentuate, though.  She kind of casually makes the statement, “A person can’t help but grieve…” and continues on.  Grieving is not the same as, “I shed a few tears” or “I felt a bit sad.”  After witnessing firsthand the grief of someone losing their spouse of many decades, I’m sure it was a powerful feeling and experience for her.  And this letter was one of the ways that she dealt with some of that grief.

It is also interesting to see her talk about some childhood experiences.  I really liked how she talked about fixing their hair in the “new styles” that they had seen on their favorite blog (Oops, wrong time frame.  Must have been from magazines.)  In another letter her friend talked about riding the buggy to school and sometimes Myrtle’s brothers Henry and Orville would ride horses to accompany them.  Oh, the good old days.

Patureau Lane Properties

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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!

Patureau Lane circa 1905

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

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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.

Keys Family reunion in 1973This 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.

Keys Family Reunion

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.

Keys Family Reunion 1973 - Descendants of Daisy Keys

Original photo of the one above. I was able to scan this from the collection of Edith Segrave’s daughter Carolyn.

Keys Family Reunion 1973 - Descendants of Daisy Keys

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

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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

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Sylvan, Myrtle, and Grace Phenice in 1907.

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

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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

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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

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!

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