Cyrille Charleston Pitre Sr
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 2 Dec 1894 - Thibodeax, La
Christening:
Death: 15 Nov 1945 - Iberville, Plaquemines, LA
Burial: 17 Nov 1945 - St Philomene Cemetery, Pitre Family Tomb
Cause of Death:
Find A Grave ID: 121422744
Parents
Father: Henry Valery Pitre
Mother: Marie Lea Ayo
Spouses and Children
1. *Jean Cecile Mable Leonard {FGID: 185757979}
Marriage: 27 Aug 1915 - Lafourche, Louisiana
Children:
1. Dibert Edward Pitre {FGID: 89941756}
2. Cecile Pitre
3. Preston Joseph Pitre {FGID: 33511804}
4. Camille Maria Pitre
5. Jennie Pitre
6. Daisy Pitre
7. Cyril Charleston Pitre Jr
8. Freddie H. Pitre
9. William Jacob Pitre {FGID: 183077544}
10. Muriel Ann Pitre
11. Arthur Bert Pitre Sr
12. Curtis Robert Pitre Sr
13. Pitre
14. Pitre
15. Judith Elisabeth Pitre {FGID: 121422898}
Notes
General:
Per 1930 US Census 4/15/1930 Precinct 1, Police Jury Ward 6, Iberville, Louisiana
Cyril Pitre is the 35 year old white male head of household, who rents his home for $25 a month. He was born in Louisiana, as were his parents. He works as a overseer on a sugar farm, and is not a veteran. His wife is 31 year old Mabel Pitre. Mabel was born in Louisiana, as were her parents. When they first got married Cyril was 20 and Mabel was 16. There are 7 children living at home, all born in Louisiana: 13 year old son, Dibert Pitre, attends school; 11 year old daughter Cecil Pitre, attends school; 9 year old daughter, Camille Pitre, attends school; 6 year old daughter, Jennie Pitre; 4 year old daughter, Daisy Pitre; 3 year old son, Cyril Pitre Jr; and 1 year old son, Freddie Pitre.
Per 1940 US Census 4/10/1940, Enterprise Road, Ward 6, Iberville, Louisiana
Cyril Pitre is the 45 year old white male head of household, who rents his home on a farm, was born in Louisiana, and lived in the same house in 1935 [true for the entire family]. Educated through 2 years of high school, he works as an overseer on a farm, working 54 hours the last week of March, and in 52 weeks of work earned $520 in 1939. His wife, 41 year old Mabel Pitre, informant, was educated through 6th grade and does home housework. They have 9 children living at home, all single: 21 year old daughter, Cecile Pitre, educated through 4 years of high school, works as a stenographer in a lawyers office, working 42 hours the last week of March, and in 52 weeks of work earned $312 in 1939; 20 year old son, Preston Pitre, educated through 4 years of high school, works as an attendant at a filling station, working 54 hours the last week of March, and in 13 weeks of work earned $271 in 1939; 14 year old daughter, Daisy Pitre, educated through 1 year of high school, attends school; 12 year old son, Cyril Pitre Jr, educated through 6th grade; 11 year old son, Freddy Pitre, educated through 3rd grade; 9 year old son, William Pitre, educated through 2nd grade; 7 year old daughter, Muriel Pitre, educated through 1st grade; 5 year old son, Harold Pitre; and 3 year old son, Autor B. Pitre.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pitretrail/
Cyrille Charleston Pitre was born 2 December 1894 Thibodaux, Lafourche, LA, and died 15 November 1945 Iberville, Plaquemine, LA. Burial was 17 November 1945 in St. Philomene Cemetery, Pitre Family Tomb.
Notes for Cyrille & Mable:
[I'm very grateful to my cousin Lana Merliss for taping and writing up notes from discussions with many family members. Below is my distillation of that information.]
Cyril was the oldest of Henry and Lea's children, born 1894 in Lafourche. When he was 5, the family moved into the newly purchased house on Hwy. 308. In the summer after he'd turned twenty he married 16-year-old Mable Leonard. (This line of Leonards were originally French. Her 3 x great-grandfather Jean Baptiste Louis Leonard had come from Liege in the Low Countries and married in 1730 at St. Louis Church (now Cathedral) in N.O. to another French immigrant, Anne Coudray.) Mable's family lived in the same general area as Cyril's but on the other side of the bayou. [Bayou Lafourche used to be much larger, big and deep enough for paddle wheelers to move up and down.] Her father worked on White's Plantation (about 2 miles past the church going south on the right side of Hwy. 1) and her mother was a cook there. Cyril and Mable may have met at a Saturday night dance.
When Cyril & Mable were married they lived in a smaller house behind the main one (purchased by Henry and Lea in 1899). The children arrived quickly and in only 14 years they were a family of 10, so Cyril moved the family to Plaquemine in 1929. {Grandmother Philomene was a midwife who actually delivered many of her own great-grandchildren including the first 7 of Cyril & Mable. The others were delivered at Plaquemine Hosp.)
When one of the girls was only about 4 years old she visited school with an older sister. She kept up with the older children so well, that the teacher told the family she could stay. When the teachers told her to bring a birth certificate, MaPete told her to tell the teachers that her mother didn't speak English and couldn't understand what they wanted. This was to get around the age requirement for entry to school, and it worked. The teachers had to speak French to manage the children but the lessons were in English. On the playground everyone spoke French.
When Cyril came home for lunch, he liked red beans, but he wanted them cooled off so he wouldn't burn his mouth. When MaPete forgot to put them on early enough and they were still too hot when Cyril sat down to lunch, he would get mad. But when he fussed, MaPete would soon shut him up. When she would start fussing back, he would come out with something like "OK, Ma, I'm through. I won't say anything else." When he took the money to do so, Poppa drank straight whiskey, Cream of Kentucky. Cyril was very even tempered, and never did the correcting of the children. MaPete really took care of things. She had so much work to do, yet didn't expect or ask for much help. The only chore the sons remember doing regularly was putting wood in the house. They had 2 cows, a son milked one and MaPete the other. She worked very hard rearing her family: sewing, gardening, washing, milking cows, cooking, killing hogs, etc. Once Mable and sister-in-law Chloe decided to make crawfish bisque. Someone brought them each a sack of crawfish. An hour later Mable had finished, Chloe hadn't even started. Mable acted like Chloe and Bee's second mother. She also made Bee's school clothes.
Cyril smoked, drank beer, didn't fish but loved to hunt. He trained a bird dog and a rabbit dog. He was also a real Yankees baseball fan. One of the girls used to listen to the game on the radio, taking down the stats in shorthand while he was working in the sugarcane fields, then reading the notes back to him at night. The radio worked only part of the time, but the children knew not to walk between Cyril and his radio when he was listening to a ballgame. He also liked boxing and other ball games. He'd get so excited, he would have never lasted through a TV game! He was tall, and turned gray early with a bald spot on the back of his head.
The house on Hwy. 308, bought in 1899, by Henri Pitre & wife Lea and approx. 100 acres of land was sold in 1973 to Jack Wise, real estate attorney in Thibodaux, for approx. $35K. The land is between Labadieville & Thibodaux. An uncle had cared for it until his death. Once he caught a guy with a dragline collecting and selling the dirt off the levee. Each of the 12 children received about $400, 1/12 of their father's share.
The house had cypress siding on the outside, a tin roof, doors & windows on front and sides, and a front porch with posts. The 3 rooms across the front left to right were a son's bedroom, a large living room and Grandma Cattoon's room. Behind them were 3 more rooms: Grandpa Cattoon's smaller room, a large storage room (which also contained the stairs to the attic), and Grandma Lea Pitre's room. There also used to be a porch, dining room and kitchen with pantry. The kitchen extended the "long way" back behind Grandma Pitre's room. The dining room was behind Grandpa Cattoon's room and part of the storage room. The kitchen, with a kerosene stove, was behind the dining room. There were 2 fireplaces, one being on the north side (in the son's bedroom). Grandma would put 2 "firebricks" in the fireplace during the day. At night she would sprinkle a little water on them, wrap them in cloth, and put them under the covers. There was a swing on the front porch outside Grandma's room. There are indications that storage areas were marked off under the house.
There was no indoor plumbing, running water, or electricity. They used lamps and candles for light. The outhouse was to the left out back. They had chamber pots (porchams) to use at night. The well was out back to the south side. There were some nice pieces of furniture in the family rooms, including a piano, a big mahogany table that sat 10 or more, and a pretty mantlepiece with an old wind-up clock. In Papere's room there was a corner piece of furniture for hanging clothes. In Grandma's room there was a bed, an armoire, a washstand with marble top with a bowl and pitcher in it. In Grandma Cattoon's room there was a bed, a sideboard with drawers and a mirror, a washstand with marble top with a bowl and pitcher on top and a bottle of Holy Water. She sprinkled the Holy Water when it was needed. (One of the daughters said that when she was a child and bad weather came up in the night, Ma Pitre would get all the children up, dress them and sprinkle Holy Water.) The son's room had a dresser with a square mirror, a bed, and a chamber pot. Grandpa Cattoon died in his little room in the back of the house. A neighbor, who often performed the same task, washed and dressed him there. He was waked in the living room. The funeral home brought a coffin to the house and he was then taken to the church for his funeral and burial.
There were 3 plantations right together, The Myrtle Grove, the Star, and the Enterprise. They were living on the Enterprise Plantation in 1939. The "big house" featured a spiral staircase and had wrought iron columns. The walls were so thick that the kids could climb into them and run around and play in them. Hay was stored there after it was no longer lived in. The older boys played poker upstairs. One night, while they were playing cards, they heard a noise on the stairs. When they investigated, it turned out to be a horse coming up the stairs. The boys left the upstairs area by sliding down the banisters. That house has since burned down. Later, they lived closer to town (Plaquemine) on a plantation they called The Island. They were living on the Evergreen Plantation when Cyril died (called Poppa by the family). A son had left home at 17 to join the Navy. He was away when his dad died. By chance he ran into a fellow from Plaquemine who had been home the summer before and told him that he was sorry to hear about his father's death. The son said, "You are mistaken, my father's not dead." But the other man said he had been told on that visit home. Eventually about a year's worth of mail caught up with him including letters about his father's death.
Later they moved to the plantation they called The Island. This is where MaPete and 9 of the children moved in 1945 following the death of Poppa Pitre (Dibert was in the navy, two others were married, three had died.) The family had been living on 'The Island' on Bayou Jacob Rd. in an overseer's house provided by Poppa's employer, the Wilbert family. "The Island" was so named because it was surrounded in front and one side by Bayou Jacob and on the other side by another bayou. On his death, they naturally had to vacate, but the Wilberts offered to sell them their choice of houses in town. MaPete chose the one at 400 Church St. Dibert and a sister probably worked together to fund the purchase.
Per Findagrave
Cyrille Charleston Pitre
BIRTH1894
DEATH15 Nov 1945 (aged 50\endash 51)
BURIALSaint Philomena Cemetery Labadieville, Assumption Parish, Louisiana, USA
MEMORIAL ID121422744
SPOUSE OF MABLE LEONARD
Spouse
Mable Leonard Pitre 1898\endash 1994
Children
Preston Joseph Pitre 1920\endash 2008
Jennifer Pitre 1924\endash 1936
Freddie Henry Pitre 1929\endash 2002
William J. Pitre 1930\endash 2017
Judith Pitre 1945\endash 1945