Categories: Economy, Genealogy, History, Identity, Latinité, Migrations, Mythology, Slavery

I was recently conducting research for a client. Their family has been on the eastern and western banks of Bayou Têche in lower Iberia Parish since 1765.

Right away, anyone who knows anything about the current dominant narrative in Louisiana history, will recognize that year. For it was in that year that the first large group of Acadians, led by the now folk-heroized BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil brothers (Joseph and Alexandre), re-established themselves after years of conflict, languish, and bouncing around the Atlantic.¹Shane K. Bernard, Teche: A History of Louisiana’s Most Famous Bayou (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016); John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: the Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (W.W. Norton & Company, 2005); Carl A. Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: the Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765-1803 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1985), among many others.

That area had come to be known as La Fausse-Pointe. The Tchétimachas had long inhabited the area, especially at Bayou Chêne and Grand-Lac, but it was the bourgeois Louisiana Creoles, Canadians from the Great Lakes and Quebec, Frenchmen, who received French colonial and Spanish provincial royal concessions to develop the land, with their slaves, and raise stock. Yes, cattle ranching and cowboys (called vachers in Louisiana French, vashé in Kouri-Vini, and vaqueros in Louisiana Spanish) predated early 20th century Hollywood western reels by 200 years on the banks of the Têche!²Bernard, Teche; Andrew Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders in the Atlantic World, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); Brasseaux, The Founding; etc.

Fausse-Pointe saw much of its growth when the Beausoleil group settled there in 1765, followed by Malagueños and Granadenses from Spain in 1774. The latter literally came with few material or monetary belongings. But the Beausoleil group came with money. And we know that Joseph had commissioned a ship with his own money to transport his colony to Fausse-Pointe.³Gilbert C. Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: the Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999); Ibid., Francisco Bouligny: A Bourbon Soldier in Spanish Louisiana (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1993); Glenn R. Conrad, ed., New Iberia: Essays on the Town and Its People (Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1985.

This will come as a surprise to many, since Louisiana history has been re-articulated since the 1970s, which gave rise to the current myth that all Acadians were poor, illiterate, and their progeny faired not much better than the slaves in the area … or so the story goes. As I have demonstrated in my doctoral thesis, this drive to identify as marginalized whitened ethnics was not unique to south Louisiana in the 1970s. It was a national movement and Louisiana Creoles from the southern parishes of the state who came to identify as white, harnessed that national drive, firmly anchoring themselves in the mythologies of modern whitened melting pot America.

In truth, the Beausoleil group arrived well educated in the ways of working the land and turning marsh into profitable lands. It only makes sense that many of their children, grandchildren, and descendants, would die of considerable wealth, education, and human chattel in their lengthy successions and estates in the St. Martin Parish Clerk of Court’s records.

One early example on the Têche is Pierre BROUSSARD, who was a son of Alexandre BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil and Marguerite THIBAUDEAU, all born in Nova Scotia before the deportation. In 1798, at St. Martinville, then chief administrative and Catholic parochial hub of Bayou Têche, a widower in first marriage of Marie MÉLANÇON, Pierre remarried fellow Acadian Marguerite GUIDRY. Their marriage was far from simple: property was brought to their marriage in the civil marriage contracted that same year at the court house in St. Martinville. When Pierre died at Grande-Pointe, near present-day Parks and Breaux Bridge, on 12 Dec 1828 at the age of 75, he left at his departure, an estate of movable and immovable property, including over 50 slaves of all ages, sexes, and ethnicities, a large plantation at Fausse-Pointe. In total, his estate was valued at $32,662.50, or, $600k to $800k.⁴Pierre BROUSSARD, of Acadia, widower of Marie MÉLANÇON, son of the late Alexandre BROUSSARD and Marguerite THIBAUDO, of Acadia, married 16 April 1798 Margueritte GUIDRY of the Attakapas District, daughter of Pierre GUIDRY of Acadia and Marguerite MILLER of Virginia, in the United States. Witnesses were Thomas CONRAD – sacristan, Augustin GUIDRY, and Achille BÉRARD. Église Saint-Martin (St. Martinville, La.), Registre des mariages vol 4, #150. St. Martin Parish Clerk of Court, Original Acts vol 18, #149; Estates, #611. Currency conversion on http://www.measuringwealth.com.

It is true that many wealthy planters in colonial and national Louisiana were illiterate. Pierre BROUSSARD’s succession clearly calls us all to question received ideas that were crafted during the Cajunization Movement. The image below, from petition papers to open Pierre’s succession, show this far better than I can describe. Note, in particular, the beautiful late 18th century penmanship in the signatures during the petition process. George P. BRIANT and Pierre BRIANT are not of Acadian descent. The other signatories are.

 

A later example, still at Fausse-Pointe, just before the war, is the family of Maximilien DÉCUIR père and Susanne BROUSSARD. Maximilien’s négresse, Susanne, was a daughter of Édouard Armand BROUSSARD and Anne BENOÎT, both born in Nova Scotia. Armand was a double-first cousin of Pierre BROUSSARD cited above, son of Pierre’s uncle Joseph BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil and Agnès THIBAUDEAU. Maximilien had not come from an impoverished family, but his wife, Susanne, did not either. When Maximilien died in 1853, his estate, which he shared with his wife, was worth $69,205.00. In today’s American currency, that totals somewhere from 1 to 2 million dollars. Most of this value was in the 70-something-slaves the couple owned.⁵Anne BENOÎT, native of Acadia, parishioner of Saint-Jean Church-Parish, daughter of Alexis BENOIST and Hélène COMAU, married 24 May 1775 Amand BROUSSARD, native of the same locale and church-parish, widower of Hélène LANDRY, son of Joseph BROUSSARD and Agnès THIBAUDAU. Witnesses were Michel MAU, Jacques FOSTAIN, Jean-Baptiste LABAUVE, Olivier TRAHAN, Pierre BROUSSARD, and Joseph LANDRY. St. Martin Parish Clerk of Court, Original Acts vol 1, #25. Maximilien DÉCUIR, native of St. Martin Parish-Church at the Attakapas, major son of the late François DESCUIRS who resided at the Lake [Fausse-Pointe] and Marie Manon LABBÉ, married 11 Nov 1811 Susanne BROUSSARD, native of same parish, major daughter of Amand BROUSSARD of Fausse-Pointe and Anne BENOÎT. Witnesses were Jean-Pierre DÉCUIR, Nicolas BROUSSARD, Joseph BABIN, Julie BROUSSARD, Amand BROUSSARD. Église Saint-Martin, Registre des mariages vol 5, #226. Maximilien DÉCUIR died 9 Nov 1853 at age 74. Église Saint-Pierre (New Iberia, La.), Registre des sépultures vol 1, p 47. His succession was probated 17 Nov 1853. St. Martin Parish Clerk of Court, Successions, #1392.

As seen in Pierre BROUSSARD’s succession, the firm signature of learnéd Louisiana Creoles of Acadian descent appear throughout the 64-page-succession, with few signing by their “ordinary mark” (the +/x). Take note of the consistent use of the acute diacritic over the E in DÉCUIR, and the ornate 19th-century-flourishes beneath many of the names. With the exception of Jonas MARSH, Danton G. FUSÉLIER, and [Baltasar] Eusèbe NEUVILLE, all signatures are of Louisiana Creoles of Acadian descent.

Pierre BROUSSARD, Maximilien DÉCUIR and Susanne BROUSSARD’s literacy and accumulation of wealth may not represent every Louisiana Creole of Acadian descent’s reality in south Louisiana. The 1850 and 1860 annotated slave censuses of St. Martin and Lafayette Parishes, and the volumes of civil acts in the clerks of court office in those parishes, strongly suggest that the Fausse-Pointe BROUSSARD experience was far from unique. Novelist Chimamanda ADICHIE’s TedTalk on “the Danger of a Single Story” is especially instructive here. Don’t cheat yourself of a beautiful history we all share of love, blood, sweat, and tears, in all of its glory, passion, and shamefulness.

– Christophe Landry