Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, August 26, 1997

Plaquemine Brûlée was first American settlement

by Jim Bradshaw

Plaquemine is an Indian word for persimmon. Brûlée refers to land that was cleared by burning away cane and underbrush. The first Plaquemine Brûlée settlement was probably just west of what is now Church Point. It was an area settled first by Protestants, and Methodists built the first church in the area in 1820. The settlement was probably visited by a Methodist missionary as early as 1805. Rev. Elisha Bowman was assigned to the district that year.

In early descriptions, all of the settlers along the bayou -- from the northeast corner of the parish to its junction with Bayou des Cannes near Mermentau -- were said to be "of Plaquemine Brûlée." Eventually, there were too many settlers and settlements, and the first Plaquemine Brûlée settlement became known as Lower Plaquemine Brûlée and the area around what is now Church Point was called Upper Plaquemine Brûlée.

Approximately half of Acadia's early landowners were on Plaquemine Brûlée. An early reference to settlement in the area is in the St. Landry Police Jury minutes of Aug. 4, 1818, when Jacob Harmon was named overseer for a road to be built from Opelousas to Plaquemine Brûlée.

Rev. Daniel Devinne, another early Methodist circuit rider came to the district in 1820. "We built a church in Plaquemine Brûlée," he wrote in his autobiography, "the first Protestant edifice in the beautiful country of the Opelousas." This was also the first church established in what is now Acadia Parish. Jesuit missionaries would not begin visiting the area until 1837.

Devinne described the first church: "It was about twenty-four by thirty-six feet, and on the Spanish model, roof largely projecting, and walls of wattle plaster, white-washed on both sides; the outer walls of which gave the church, at a distance, a very fine appearance."

The Plaquemine Brûlée church was known as "the cradle of Methodism in southwest Louisiana for some 40 years before the Civil War," according to an old report in the Crowley Daily Signal. In 1895, it was moved about a mile northeast of the original location, on to land donated by W. W. Dyson. The building that was moved was evidently not the original building. An item in the Crowley Signal of Nov 9, 1895, said that the Plaquemine Brûlée church had been built "nearly 40 years ago," which would indicate that a new church had been built about 1855.

The present church was built in 1947. According to the annals of the church. the old structure was carefully taken down and much of the material, such as heart-of-cypress timber, was incorporated into the new building.

A church for black people was established at Plaquemine Brûlée in 1870. This was the Maryland Chapel, Christian Episcopal Church, built on an acre of land given by Mrs. Jesse Clark. This church building also served as the first public school for blacks in what is now Acadia Parish.

The post once established at Plaquemine Brûlée in 1838, had its name changed on Nov. 12, 1890, to Branch, for Branch Hayes, a grandson of Bosman Hayes, the first merchant of Plaquemine Brûlée.

Plaquemine Brûlée had a public school at least by 1877, when it reportedly had an enrollment of nearly 300 pupils. The school was operated for 4 ½ months each year, from October until March. The one teacher was paid $225 for the term.

Legal notices and advertisements in early newspapers indicate that there were several businesses operating at Plaquemine Brûlée prior to the Civil War. The Opelousas Gazette of April 9, 1842 carried notice that a tanyard would be sold at public auction at Plaquemine Brûlée. The tanyard was said to be "in complete order, having 30 vats, with limes, pools, and bates (a bath used to remove lime), with 60 cords of bark, with all necessary buildings..."

A new Plaquemine Brûlée firm began an advertising campaign in the St. Landry Democrat in 1880. In the Oct. 2 issue, a display ad for the Foreman & Duson store named C. W. Foreman and W. W. Duson as partners in the business. The firm dealt in "dry goods, clothing, boots and shoes, hardware, tinware, crockery, notions, groceries, provisions, &c., &c., &c." The advertisement also invited readers to market their produce with the firm, including "all country produce, such as cotton, sugar, molasses, rice, wool, hides, chickens, eggs, (and) split lumber, such as pieux and shingles."

The Opelousas, Gulf and Northern railroad came through the settlement in 1907, spurring hopes for development, but most of them did not materialize, though it did remain a trade center for planters up and down the bayou from it.

One of the largest landowners in the neighborhood was Bosman Hayes Jr., who was killed by outlaws in 1864. According to family tradition, Bosman Hayes Jr. owned a white mare which he would let nobody else ride. One night he heard a disturbance at the stable where the mare was kept. He got his shotgun and went to investigate. The night was clear and moonlit after a rainy day. Clothes had been left on a clothesline to dry. He saw two men leading his mare away. Hayes shot one of the men. The other was hidden by a bed sheet on a line. He shot Hayes and killed him on his own back porch.

A man identified in the old records only as Joannesse had a narrow strip of land down the bayou from the Plaquemine Brûlée settlement. William Henry Perrin's "Southwest Louisiana Historical and Biographical" reported that "Joseph Cheasson (Chiasson), alias Joannes, died several years ago in this parish at the advanced age of nearly one hundred and thirty years. When he was one hundred and fifteen years old he moved to Texas, and after living in that state several years ago returned to (then) St. Landry."

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