Thomas Nast, “Emancipated Slaves,” Courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress.
The document below is a list of all slave emancipations at the Attakapas Post and St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, from 1756-1863. These are only emancipations contained in St. Martin Parish’s Clerk of Court’s Conveyance and Original Acts volumes.
Note that the Attakapas Post covered St. Martin, Lafayette, Vermilion, Iberia, and St. Mary Parishes. When Louisiana was admitted to the union of states in 1812, those same present-day parishes still made up what then became St. Martin Parish (sometimes called Attakapas County). In the 1820s, Lafayette and St. Mary broke off as their own parishes, and Vermilion followed in 1844. Iberia Parish only broke off in 1868. So the emancipations below reflect this large administrative district.
Email Christophe at christophe.landry@yahoo.com for a free document retrieval, translation, and transcription quote.
Thanks!
Wow! I have just recently restarted my genealogy research and I came across your website. The Slave Emancipations in St. Martin Parish spreadsheet on line 99 lists my paternal 3rd great grandfather, Godefroy De Cuir, as freeing the woman who later married his son, Balthasar. This is a fantastic find for me.
Merci beaucoup!