Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 27, 1998

Carencro name comes from old Attakapas legend

by Jim Bradshaw

Carencro is the name of a town, a district, some low hills, and a bayou located in northern Lafayette Parish.  The town was first named St. Pierre, for the church founded there and continued under that name until the coming of the railroad in 1880.   The name Carencro may be derived from an Indian legend that a mastodon once died there and that vultures (carrion crows) feasted on the carcass for weeks.

In a letter written on April 23, 1802, Martin Duralde, a former commandant of the Opelousas post, related the legend as it had come down from an Attakapas Indian.   Duralde wrote:

"Many years before the discovery of the elephant in the bayou called Carancro (sic) an Attakapas savage had informed a man who is at present in my service in the capacity of cow-herd that the ancestors of his nation transmitted (the story) to their descendants that a beast of enormous size had perished either in this bayou or in one of the two water courses a short distance from it without their being able to indicate the true place, the antiquity of the event having without doubt made them forget it."

Some people think that the name comes from the Spanish carnero, meaning "bone pile."  This idea also comes from the mastodon legend, and the idea that the buzzards left nothing but a pile of white bones after they had picked the mastodon clean.

There is yet another theory, that the place is named for the carencro tete rouge, a red-headed buzzard described in 1774 by Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz and referred to by other European explorers as early as 1699.  Du Pratz described the bird as having black plumage and a head covered with red flesh.  He said the Spanish government protected the birds, "for as they do not use the whole carcass of the buffaloes which (the Spaniards) kill, those birds eat what they leave, which otherwise, by rotting on the ground, would ... infect the air."

Few white men settled in the Carencro area until the coming of the Acadians.  Some of the Acadians sent in 1765 to the Attakapas district were given lands along Bayou Carencro, although probably not in what is now the town of Carencro.  At that time, Jean and Marin Mouton, Charles Peck, Louis Pierre Arceneaux and others began to establish vacheries in the vicinity.  More cattlemen would follow after 1770, when Spanish Gov. Alexandro O'Reilly decreed that "a grant of 42 arpents in front by 42 in depth could be issued only to those who owned 100 head of tame cattle, some sheep and horses, and two slaves to oversee them."

In 1769, Juan Kelly and Eduardo Nugent toured the area for the government and reported to O'Reilly that "the inhabitants maintain everything imaginable in the way of livestock, such as cows, horses and sheep." A Frenchman named Lyonnet, visiting in 1793, found thousands of cattle on the Attakapas and Opelousas prairies.

Jean and Marin Mouton were among the early settlers on Bayou Carencro. Other early settlers in the Carencro area were Charles Peck, Traveille Bernard, Rosamond Breaux, Ovignar Arceneaux, and the Babineaux family.  An 1803 census of' the Carencro area listed family names including Arceneaux, Babineaux, Benoit, Bernard, Breaux, Carmouche, Caruthers, Comeaux, Cormier, Guilbeaux, Hébert, Holway, LeBlanc, Melançon, Mire, Mouton, Pierre, Prejean, Rogers, St. Julien, Savoie, and Thibodeaux.

The first post office at Carencro was established on Jan. 11, 1872, with Auguste Melchior as postmaster.  The telegraph line reached there in 1884.  The first telephones were installed by the Teche and Vermilion Telephone Line in 1894.  The company was headquartered in New Iberia.

According to Roger Baudier's history of the Catholic Church in Louisiana, the Carencro area was first served from Grand Coteau, later from Vermilionville, and then from Breaux Bridge.  St. Peter Parish was established there in 1874 and Father Andre Marie Guillot was sent as its first pastor.  The church was at first called St. Pierre au Carencro, named for Pierre Cormier, who donated land for the first church.   Before a church was established at Carencro, services were held in the Carmouche Blacksmith Shop.  Father Guillot died of yellow fever while, serving in Carencro and is buried in the church cemetery.

According to Baudier, "(Father Guillot's) successor was Father J.F Suriray.   Trouble with the parishioners arose and Father Suriray was threatened by the people.  Some three years after his coming to Carencro, he was obliged to leave.   Some time after, the church was destroyed by fire and the parish remained without a pastor until 1883."  A new church was built in 1893, but was destroyed by a tornado before it was ever used.  Another church was built, and it burned in 1904.   The current church was built in 1906 under the administration of Father F.J. Grimeaux, who served the parish for some 25 years.  A young carpenter named Hector Connolly worked for $2.50 a day to build the 110-foot steeple.  Father Grimeaux, in addition to serving as pastor, organized and played clarinet in the Carencro Brass Band.

The Church of the Assumption was completed in 1925 to serve a black congregation.   The Holy Ghost Fathers accepted an invitation to direct the parish and sent Father Joseph Dolan as the first pastor.  Assumption School was built in 1948 and was staffed by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

About the turn of the century, Father J.B. Laforet sold three lots to Mother St. Patrick of the Sisters of Mount Carmel, who opened St. Ann's School of Carencro, in 1897.

In 1874, what was probably the first school in Carencro, was opened on the Auguste Melchior farm. Melchior, a Frenchman who had come here from New Orleans, was named director of the Lafayette Parish educational system about 1870. His wife, Viviana, taught at the Carencro school.

In 1889, Carencro had two private schools.  Charles Heichelheim, a German, ran a school for boys, and Edmond Villére operated one for both boys and girls.  That year, the first public school was built in Carencro, and a second story was added to it 10 years later.  The school became an approved high school about 1917.

The Opelousas Courier reported on the young settlement at least twice during the year 1879.  The edition of Saturday, April 19, tells us: "This little village is rapidly expanding. ... The grounds of the church have been planted in trees and enclosed with a fence of a new kind.  This enclosure is of iron wire and armed with steel barbs, forming a barrier inaccessible to animals."

On Sept. 6, the newspaper gave this account: "The little village of St. Pierre, at Carencro, born only a short time ago, tends to stretch itself in an astonishing fashion with numbers of buildings where all kinds of trades and professions are prospering there.   Many beautiful stores, well assorted with that which meets the needs of the inhabitants, are established there since a short time ago and we note, among others, the fine establishment of Mr. Ignace Bernard near the church."

By 1889, Carencro had two sugar factories, one operated by J.C. Couvillon, and another run by I. Singleton.  In 1894, Victor E. Dupuis, one of the larger cane growers of the area, formed the Carencro Sugar Co. to build another sugar mill alongside Morgan's Railroad there. The sugar mills in the area closed about 1900.

There were several horse-powered cotton gins in Carencro before 1876, but, in that year, Avignac Arceneaux built the first steam-powered gin in the parish. Four more gins went up there in the late 1880s and in the 1890s.  In 1889, 1,800 bales of cotton were shipped from the Carencro, Station.  Cotton gins continued to operate in Carencro until the middle 1970s, when the last two of them, Cotton Products Co. and Farmer's Gin Co., were closed.

Indeed, in the early 1880s and into the 1890s, Carencro was a larger shopping center than Lafayette.  In 1890, according to one account, the town had "a good hotel, town hall, and all the other appurtenances of a First-class country town, including a cotton gin and two good lumber yards; also a well organized hook and ladder company ... two private schools ... and two public -- one white and one colored -- and a Catholic church."  In 1894, Carencro merchants sponsored a full-page advertisement in The Lafayette Advertiser, calling the town "Center of the Garden Spot of the State."

Among leading merchants in the 890s were the Brown Brothers, Jacob Mitchell, D. Daret, A.G. Guilbeau, G. Schmuler, C. Micou, and J.C. Martin.  People owning large plantations near the town were Mrs. Z. Broussard, Dr. R.J. Francez, Mrs. O.C. Mouton, Louis Roger, Mrs. F. Abadie, C.C. Brown, St. Clair Kilchrist, V.C. Dupuis. and L.J. Arceneaux.

In 1891, historian William Henry Perrin suggested that "there is no prettier site for a town (than Carencro) nor one with more solid advantages than comprised in this place.