Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, November 25, 1997

Loreauville made early reputation as place for bees

by Jim Bradshaw

Some people say that Loreauville was known first as Picouville for the local Picou family.

When it was incorporated on April 23, 1909, Loreauville had a population of 291. Its first mayor was C. F. Berard.

Adrien Gonsulin was instrumental in the growth of the town. Gonsulin built the area's first railroad so that sugar cane could be transported from his plantation to his sugar mill. He owned a sawmill and a store.

Dr. Angus Steven Shaw moved to Loreauville before the Civil War. His two sons, Guy and J. W. imported Italian bees to Loreauville about 1880, when they were young men. They used the profits from their apiary to put themselves through medical school, but they found that bee culture was more profitable than practicing medicine. Queen bees of the Shaw Line were shipped to countries the world over. Dr. Guy Shaw continued to receive orders and inquiries for some 20 years after he quit propagating bees for shipment. He kept about 30 hives until his death in 1941.

As a youngster, Dr. Guy Shaw had built the first bicycle in Loreauville, and, in 1902, brought the first automobile there.

According to the story, the car was unloaded from the train at Loreauville. Dr. Shaw sat down, read the directions on how to operate it, then had a friend run ahead of him to clear the path as he drove the car home.

John Walet, another influential businessman in early Loreauville, owned a store, a cotton gin, and quite a bit of land in the area.

The entire town was evacuated and inundated during the Flood of 1927, but was immediately cleaned up and rebuilt when floodwaters receded.

Before 1918, Loreauville had no high school. There were four country schools that had classes through the seventh grade: Prince School on the Lake Dauterive Road, Dugas School at Fauxbourg, Steckler School on Hwy. 86, and Bonin School at Marshfield.

Loreauville's first high school was a four-room wooden building, set up on brick pillars near St. Joseph's Church. New rooms were added each year to the school. This building burned in 1936, and classes were held for a time at the old Camos Home, also known as the Darnell Place, on Hwy. 86, south of Loreauville.

The school was rebuilt on its present site, a 10-acre lot in the center of town, but that building burned in 1941. This time, students went to Jeanerette for classes while a new school was being built. That structure, still standing, was finished in 1943.

Ozaire Loreau donated two arpents for St. Joseph Church on April 15, 1871. There had apparently been another chapel in the community before this, on land donated by Mr. Picou. That chapel must have been built about the time of the Civil War, and was destroyed by a storm in 1869. Priests from New Iberia had been serving the area since 1838, when the New Iberia parish separated from the church at St. Martinville. St. Joseph's was established as a church parish on Feb. 9, 1873, and Father Charles Baubein, a native of Montreal, was named the first pastor.

In 1879, a storm did considerable damage to the church, and a new one was built in 1880. This church would be torn down in 1961 to make room for the present building.

In 1918, when the Diocese of Lafayette was created, Bishop Jules B. Jeanmard asked the LaSalette Fathers to take charge of St. Joseph's Church. They continued to serve there until the 1970s.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).