Eighty years young, Maddie Norman planned a party that was unabashedly unconventional, exceptionally educational and, well, unique. What this octogenarian mother of four and grandmother of 10 did, literally, was take her family on a trip down memory lane?really, a cruise on memory?s bayous. That?s right. For Maddie?s 80th birthday, she, along with 18 family members and other guests, boarded three boats and floated down Bayou Liberty, visiting the houses of her maternal ancestors, the Cousins (that?s pronounced COO-zan). As they traveled from house to house, Maddie related the history of her family in St. Tammany Parish, a story she?d spent nearly 10 years discovering.
Maddie?s interest in her family?s genealogy began long ago with her daughter Michelle?s high school assignment to write about her family tree. When Michelle questioned her mother about details of her family, Maddie was stumped. ?I realized I didn?t know anything.?
Maddie Norman.
Intermittently, over the next 10 years, Maddie searched libraries and courthouse records to uncover her family?s story. She even traveled to France to decipher her family?s historical documents firsthand. However, although she understands French fairly well, the records she accessed were written hundreds of years ago in a language that is very different from today?s vernacular. At that point, Maddie realized she?d researched enough. ?I quit cold turkey. There?s no end to it. It?s like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You?re always looking for the next piece.?
Even though Maddie is no longer researching the family tree, she nevertheless enjoys reading about local history, especially Judge Frederick Ellis? book, St. Tammany Parish: L?autre C?t? du Lac. ?I enjoyed it immensely,? Maddie says. While reading Ellis? many references to the Cousin family, Maddie admits that she ?began to see them as people. I never thought about that before. They were real people. They were running the Union blockade across Lake Ponchartrain for the Confederacy and had their schooners confiscated. At the time, New Orleans was held by the Yankees.?
Her mother?s paternal great-grandfather, Terence Cousin, (tay-RAHNS, says Maddie with proper French inflection), was held in house arrest by the Yankees at his home, ?Tranquility,? on Bayou Liberty. She adds, ?When the soldiers came to question his brother, Anatole, (Maddie?s mother?s maternal great-grandfather) whose home was located on nearby Bayou Paquet, a servant went to the door and told them that the entire family had smallpox, so they left them alone.?
Maddie has firsthand knowledge of the Cousin residence on Bayou Liberty where her mother grew up. ?I have happy memories of that place. We spent our summers there. I remember we had watermelon at eleven o?clock every day. After eating the watermelon, we would scrape the pieces down to the rind and try to float them in the ditch.? Laughing, Maddie continues, ?They had the biggest grasshoppers there. We used to catch them and put a string on their back legs and attach the string to a matchbox bottom. Then we?d watch the grasshoppers pull the matchbox. We thought that was so much fun.?
Some of Maddie?s family boarding the boats. Above: The Cousin/Tabary family on the front porch of the family house on Neslo Road in Bonfuca, now Slidell.
So how did a genealogical search morph into a birthday cruise down memory lane? Maddie?s daughter Suzanne Reese explains, ?I was in town from Memphis (for All Saints? Day) to help my mom and her sister with the cleaning of the family headstones and tombs. What I got was a huge family history lesson! I had heard about the area called Bonfouca back then (now Slidell)?but to hear about it with the genealogy my mother knew so well was intriguing.?
That same day, Maddie told Suzanne that she?d like to celebrate her 80th birthday by taking a boat ride on the bayou to see the family?s ancestral homes. ?I told her that would be awesome, and that she could tell all her children and grandchildren the same stories she told me,? adds Suzanne. Maddie agreed, and they both decided they?d start looking for a boat when the weather got warmer.
In April, the mother-daughter duo visited five area marinas searching for a boat. ?With all the boats and marinas nearby, you think it would be a piece of cake to get a boat, but it wasn?t,? Maddie explains. ?No one would rent us a boat in Mandeville, Slidell or Lacombe. We didn?t know what to do.?
Suzanne recalls thinking, ?Well, if we can?t get the boat, why can?t we at least try to see if we could see the houses? That?s when I picked up my phone and called Charlotte Collins, daughter of the owner of the Fran?ois Cousin house, an old historic property in Slidell. I tried my best, nervously, to explain who I was and why I was calling. Charlotte was as interested in us as we were in her!?
What a huge blessing Charlotte turned out to be! Through her post-Katrina efforts to save the house, she became curious about the early settlers of the bayou. She even compiled a book of art depicting various sites in the area. (Entitled Rooted in Libert?, she hopes to have it published next year.) ?My father, my husband and I could relate to Maddie?s memories of this amazing landscape, so unspoiled since her childhood,? Charlotte explains. ?Our family decided we wanted her wish to come true.?
?She was a gem,? exclaims Suzanne. ?She was exactly the one I needed to talk with.? Not only did Charlotte?s family have two boats on site, she had also given guided tours before. She was very familiar with the bayous and the properties.
Charlotte invited Maddie and Suzanne to visit her before the party. Maddie says, ?Charlotte showed us some old bricks from the Cousin family brick business of long ago. I learned how important the family was to the development of St. Tammany Parish. Charlotte?s father, William, remembered my Uncle Gus, who died in 1969. Uncle Gus worked at a bank in Slidell. They did business together.?
This visit sealed the deal for Maddie?s celebration. With Charlotte providing the boats and the navigation, and Maddie serving as tour guide, her dream became a reality. On July 9, the day after her official birthday, Maddie and her family met Charlotte at the Fran?ois Cousin house and traveled by boat down Bayou Liberty to ?Tranquility,? the home of Maddie?s great-grandfather. ?The Terence Cousin house is something I always wanted to see from the bayou,? says Maddie. ?It was on my bucket list.? The family stopped to take pictures. Then, they went down the bayou to the bridge at Highway 90 and the Tammany Trace, to what once was Maddie?s grandmother?s land, where Maddie spent many a summer. As the family passed the property, Maddie shared stories of her summers there.
After the cruise, the celebrants returned to the Fran?ois Cousin house and enjoyed a catered lunch. Coincidentally, the caterer they chose was Charlotte?s nephew, Christopher Case, who grew up in the Fran?ois Cousin house.
Relaxed and refreshed, the birthday entourage traveled by car to Dubuisson Cemetery, where the idea for the event was born. From there, the family drove to Anatole Cousin?s house on Bayou Paquet, where the servant fooled the Yankee soldiers by telling them the family had smallpox, for more photo ops and a walk to the bayou.
Festivities concluded the next day with Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Lacombe. Another Fran?ois Cousin house is situated across the street from the church. While Maddie and her guests were not able to go inside the house, they did get to see it from the outside and take photos.
It?s a safe bet that Maddie Norman and her family had sweet dreams that night?dreams of long-ago kin, gallery-wrapped Creole houses and grasshoppers pulling matchboxes on a lazy bayou shore.
Editor?s note:
Maddie?s daughter, Suzanne, first told Inside Northside about her mother?s 80th birthday plans. She shares the following:
?Mom is selfless and unconditionally loving. She?s very smart. In 1972, she earned her master?s degree in fine arts. After our dad died in 1990, we saw our mom do things she never did before. She became very independent and traveled quite a bit, visiting her children and grandchildren out-of-state and even going to Europe.
She?s especially happy when she?s with her 10 grandchildren. She?s taken each one of them, when they reached 10 years of age, on individual weekend trips to a destination of their choice in the United States. More recently, each year at Christmas, she has taken the five or six oldest grandchildren to cities such as Paris and Rome for a week. The next invitation is to London.
I hope by writing about my mom?s birthday celebration, Inside Northside will encourage others to research their genealogy. People live all over the world now, and stories of families get lost. In my mom, we had the perfect person to acquire this information from, and that is what we did for her 80th birthday. Just as she wanted.?
Filed under: September-October 2011, St. Tammany Life
Source: http://www.insidenorthside.com/st-tammany-life/a-cruise-down-memory-lane-for-maddie%E2%80%99s-80th-birthday/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-cruise-down-memory-lane-for-maddie%25e2%2580%2599s-80th-birthday
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