E-mail: edhicks@mobiletel.com
Phone: (504) 532-3586
Membership and/or address changes:
Please send by mail to TGS, Station 2 Box 295, Houma, LA 70360-0295
NEXT MEETING Saturday, August 25, 2001
North Branch Library, Gray, LA 1:00 p.m.
The July meeting was a fairly short one, due
to a misunderstanding about the guest speaker (or lack thereof). However,
there were a few announcements that need covering here. First, Dorotha
Horvath’s new address was given out, so if you weren’t there, here it is:
Mrs. Dorotha Wheeler Horvath, 1122 Patton St. 9-A, Sulphur LA 70665. You
may have been helped by Dorotha in the past. She was the genealogy librarian
at the North Branch and before the Genealogy Section was moved, she worked
at the Main Branch in beautiful downtown Houma. Anyway, she is doing better,
now, after a bout with diabetes, and would love to hear from you. Second,
the announcement of the finalization of the publication South Louisiana
Vital Family Records No. 9 (1930-1932) was made, and a last request for
material which needs to be included (or omitted). If you have reason to
believe that it may have been omitted or added in error, mail information
concerning an event that took place in your family during those years to
our hard-working Corresponding Secretary, Jess Bergeron, at the address
above. You should have a source for your data. If you have access to email,
send it to pchau@cajun.net and it will be taken care of. At the meeting,
Jess announced that our clearance sale is going very well, with just a
few copies of the sale books left. (Houma Newspaper Deaths - Some Missing
Years is a bargain at $12.00 for the hard cover and $8.00 for the soft
cover. Our Book of Charts, Volume 2 is going for $20.00 for the hard cover,
$15.00 for the soft. And Cemeteries of Houma, Louisiana will be selling
for $18.00 for the hard cover, and $14.00 for the soft cover.) If you are
interested, write him, or check our web site. The sale ends at midnight,
August 31, so be sure and get your order in before then, Cinderella, because
the prices will revert to the original ones. Watch this space for future
sales.
Those who were at the meeting may have noticed
Tim Hebert sitting over in the corner with a little camera in his hand,
unobtrusively clicking away while the meeting was going on. He is so quiet
normally that no one suspected he was taking pictures for the web site.
Not too surprising, really. Well, the result is a bunch of candid shots
of the officers and others doing their jobs as usual. If you want to know
what we look like, log on to the web site given above and take a peek.
On the Main Page is a shot of Sheila Rodrigue reading the minutes of the
last meeting to a group of members, on the Officers Page is a picture of
four of the officers. (Left to right, they are Sheila Rodrigue, Nancy Wright,
Phil Chauvin and Ed Hicks.) On the News Page is Phil making some important
announcements to an unknown member, and on the TGS Publications Page you
can find Jess Bergeron and Ed Henry behind the table, ready to sell lots
of our books. They are all taken with ambient light, so there was no flash
to give him away. Very sneaky, Tim. By the way, Tim announced that he is
ready to include more data on the web page. He claims that it is one of
the best way to get people to come to your web site often. So, if you have
material that you have researched and want to publish, please submit it.
This is an arm of the Society, so the Board of Directors still has control
over what gets published, no matter what form it takes, so send it to Jess
Bergeron or Phil Chauvin, first.
MEMBERS
You may have seen member Ruth Stevens at the
Lafourche Heritage Seminar; maybe even talked to her without realizing
that she would soon be hospitalized with a heart attack. She is doing fine,
now, after having a stent inserted in an artery to improve circulation.
We all wish you well, Ruth. Hurry up and get back to the next meeting.
We are all praying for you.
Longtime member Lorraine Wise was in a terrible
accident with her tractor-mower. We’ll let her tell you about it, but suffice
to say it was a gruesome experience. She is still suffering from the trauma,
so please remember her in your prayers, also.
DEATHS
Our sympathies go to charter member Janice
Armond on the loss of her mother, Marie Naquin Blanchard, who died on Saturday,
28 July 2001. She is survived by four daughters, Priscilla Daigle, Mrs.
Whitney (Janice) Armond, Mrs. Calloway (Linda) Jones and Mrs. James (Brenda)
Taylor; one brother, Clarence “Kit” Naquin Sr. of Gibson; one sister, Mrs
Euma (Betty) Allemand; eight grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Claude E. Blanchard; her parents,
Milton and Mary Gros Naquin; five brothers, Theopold, Wilton, Adrian, Charles
and Milton Naquin Jr.; and three sisters, Elvige Lasseigne, Azelie Tregre
and Alice Richard. She was a member of the St Bernadette Bereavement Group,
a member of the Kaycee Ladies Auxiliary and a parishioner of St. Bernadette
Catholic Church.
He and his wife, Yvonne, were members for
only a short time, but he left behind many who thought well of him. Irvin
C. “Peanut” Cunningham Jr., a retired captain with the St. James Parish
Sheriff’s Office, died Tuesday, 7 August 2001 at his home. He is
survived by his beloved wife of 45 years, Yvonne Ordoyne Cunningham; two
brothers, Farell and his wife Brenda, and Eugene and his wife, Linda. Also
survived by a sister, Mary Agnes Cunningham Vicknair and her husband, Willie.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Irvin “Frog” and Sadie Cunningham
and three sisters, June Cunningham Cotton, Joyce Cunningham Mayeaux and
Carolyn Cunningham Accardo. Peanut was a member of the Knights of Columbus,
lifetime member of the St. James Boat Club, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Louisiana
Sheriffs Association, National Sheriffs Association, Houma Indian Tribe,
American Legion, Lions Club, Committed Adorer of Our Lady of Prompt Succor
Adoration Chapel, a member of St. James Parish Council on Aging and the
Louisiana Wardens Association, and a U.S. Air Force Veteran of the Korean
Conflict.
COLLATING SESSION
Your summer quarterly comes to you through
the hard work and good spirit of the following workers who cheerfully spent
an hour and a half or more putting it together. Collating the pages, adding
the covers and stapling them are a few of the jobs required. Then they
must be counted, stacked in boxes, labels must be applied, bundled in zip
code order and taken to the post office for mailing. A lot of work goes
into just the “back end” of the production. These persons took part: (in
alphabetical order) Jess Bergeron, Essie Cavalier, Marcie Cavalier, Phil
Chauvin, Ed Henry, Ed Hicks, Gloria Hicks, Lou Ostheimer, Rodney Pontiff,
Dot Smith and Nancy Wright.
GUEST SPEAKER AT AUGUST MEETING
We are fortunate to be able to bring you the
noted author of genealogical books, Elton Oubre. He will speak on “Acadia”
at the August 25 meeting, so come and bring a friend. All our meetings
are open to the public.
Mr. Oubre has just returned from a six
week vacation and tour of Acadia in Canada and he will tell us the history
of old Acadia, what it was, and what you will find there now. With the
next CMA coming up shortly, this will be an “introduction” to the land
of Acadian ancestry from a person who is bi-lingual, a historian, and a
genealogist. He also visited the “Martyr’s Shrine,” which was the highlight
of his trip. There will also be a display of brochures from his trip and
he will conclude his talk with a question-and-answer period.
CORRECTIONS
In our June issue, we printed a paragraph
about Volunteers needed. It said that Nancy Wright, our secretary is a
volunteer at the Nicholls State University in the Archives Department,
cataloguing the records from the old jail in Thibodaux. You may have wanted
to volunteer, but hesitated because there were three persons mentioned
in the article, and anyway, there was no contact information given in the
article. The corrections are: 1)only two persons are helping, Nancy and
Goldie Legendre, and they sure could use YOU. 2)If you are interested,
call Nancy at 868-0370 and she will give you more details about where,
when and how often. You may email Nancy at tewright@cajun.net and ask her
to call you at her convenience, if you have trouble finding her at home.
On the subject of the Nicholls State University
Archives, we need to clarify another article. This one appeared in last
month’s newsletter (July, 2001). From the feedback we got, it is evident
that some persons were under the impression that some records were “lost.”
That is not true. The Nicholls State University Archives knew that these
records were among their holdings, but they had not been catalogued, and
therefore not available to genealogists and others. At least that is what
we should have said. We were trying to let people know what Nancy and Goldie
are doing, working on The Lafourche Parish Historic Records Preservation
Project Collection. And it is exciting, fulfilling work. There are all
sorts of interesting material that need cataloguing — vital records,
plantation records, coroners records and so on.
To protect the reputation of Mr. Sidney J.
Coulon, Justice of the Peace, we should explain that the marriage certificates
mentioned in last month’s newsletter were typed with the names typed in,
not filled in on a blank line in longhand. On this form that may have been
devised by him, it says it is a true copy of the certificate on file in
his office. This wording leads Nancy to believe that there may have been
no requirement to register these marriages in the Courthouse, or that Justices
of the Peace were not instructed to do so. That brings up another question:
How many other former J.P. records were thrown away at a later date?
BOOKS
You may get mad at those annoying, repetitive,
redundant commercials on TV, or those annoying flickering banners on the
Internet, but it is a truism that “It pays to advertise.” The second printing
of First Landowners and 1810 Annotated Census of Lafourche Interior Parish,
LA (Lafourche and Terrebonne) by Mrs. Audrey B. Westerman is going very
well since we put the notice in a recent newsletter. It is going so well
that I have to warn you that you may miss out again if you haven’t ordered
your copy. Send in a check with your order, please. The price is $40.00
for the soft cover, plus postage of $3.00. The book contains maps showing
properties held by all the first settlers of this region. There is an better
description on the Internet at this address: http://www.rootsweb.com/~laterreb/saleinfo.htm
“Double column format, every name index, 237 pages, soft covers. Listed
by wards, and house number to make finding on the microfilm fast. Columns
include name of each individual, relationship to head of the house, color/race,
sex, marital status, year of birth, age, number of children born, number
of children living, birthplace of individual, birthplace of each parent
of the individual. These records were extracted by two experienced local
genealogists so the margin of error in reading the microfilm is very slim.”
What are we talking about? It’s the publication 1900 Census, Lafourche
Parish LA which is being offered at a pre-publication price of $30.00 plus
$3.00 postage if mailed. After August 1, 2001 the price will be $35.00,
so if you haven’t ordered your copy, yet, now is the time to do it.
Marcie Cavalier and her industrious husband,
Essie, have put together some of the cemetery research they have done.
Articles which appeared in Terrebonne Life Lines, our quarterly, sometimes
split up in separate issues, are now in individual booklets. They were
introduced at the Lafourche Heritage Seminar on August 4, 2001, and will
be offered at our monthly meetings. Here is a list: 1. St. Joseph &
Sacred Heart Cemetery Listing, 2. St. Jules History & Cemetery Listing,
3. Burial Record for St. Jules & St. Martin, 4. St. John Cemetery Inscriptions,
5. St. Lawrence & Trosclair Cemetery Inscriptions, 6. St. Charles Cemetery
Inscriptions, 7. St. Martin History & Cemetery Inscriptions, 8. Private
Cemeteries in Assumption Parish. They are quite popular, since they offer
the convenience of being between their own covers, not combined with other
articles, and not split up.
Do you know what month October is? What does
that have to do with Genealogy?
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