Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

Farmers found Henderson before fishermen did

by Jim Bradshaw

The entire area within the current corporate limits was as yet unclaimed and unworked in 1855, when the state surveyed and subdivided the land for sale.

Original purchasers of the state owned lands within the corporate limits of the town included Leon Dupuis, Adolphe Dupuis, Hermogene Guidry, Joseph Latiolais, Alexandre Latin, Arcade Patin, Treville Guidry, Cyprien Dupre, and John Barrineaux.

Land was also purchased by the New Orleans Pacific Railroad and by the Atchafalaya Basin Levee Board. Other purchasers in the area just outside the corporate limits of Henderson were Marcel Patin, Antoine Patin, Joseph Patin, Onezime Patin, Evaniste Angelle, Alexandre Melancon, Frances Dauphine, D. Dupuis, Homer Patin, Cyprien Melancon, Samuel Thorne, P. T. Hebert, Noah Phelps, and Cesaire Angelle. John Talley and his son William, though not original purchasers of land in the area, early on acquired portions of the land originally belonging to Samuel Thorne, Leon and Adolphe Dupuis and others.

Many of these landowners were quite wealthy, and were able to purchase multiple tracts of land. Several were substantial landlords with large holdings.

These wealthy plantation owners presented a sharp contrast to the poorer Acadian subsistence farmers and the swampers of the area. Many of the original landowners of the Henderson area initially worked their plantations with slave labor, and later by the efforts of sharecroppers.

Some did not work the land at all, but merely kept it as an investment, eventually selling timber rights to the logging companies.

Not many of these purchasers intended to live on their newly acquired properties. The Dupuis brothers were residents of Breaux Bridge, where they were merchants in addition to owning large plantations in the area. Cyprien Melancon, another Henderson area landowner was also a merchant and postmaster in Breaux Bridge.

Henderson originally was so sparsely occupied that it didn't even have a name. For many years courthouse documents referred to the area simply as "near Grand Pointe (as Cecilia was then known), or, because so much of the land was swamp, as Cypremort (Dead Cypress).

It was not until the Southern Pacific Railroad built a station there about 1900 that the community acquired an identity of its own. At that time, as part of its efforts to improve service across the nation, Southern Pacific constructed a line connecting Lafayette and Baton Rouge. Stations were built at small communities along the way. One of the stations was established on the western edge of the basin and named Lenora. Before long the little community of farms adjacent to the levee was known as Lenora. In fact, the name Lenora was used as late as 1970 to describe the location of the Interstate 10 bridge across the Atchafalaya Basin.

Initially, new development in the Henderson area was concentrated along the levee and just south of Lenora Station. It was several years before the lands adjacent to the new levee were dry enough to settle.

Why the area came to be called Henderson is not entirely clear. It has been suggested that the name was that of a railroad worker who died while working on the line in the area. According to reports, this unfortunate Mr. Henderson is buried along the rail line close to where the town is now. Another version is that the railroad worker was not named Henderson, but was from Henderson, Kansas.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the large plantations that had originally characterized the area had become small family farms growing cotton, sugar cane, corn, and truck crops. Because the nearest sizable town was Breaux Bridge several miles away, the small community of farmers began to develop several of their own services and to accommodate some of the residents of the swamps who found it inconvenient to travel to the larger towns for all of their needs.

By the 1920s, a small but flourishing farming community had developed.

The town of Henderson as it exists today was strongly influenced by the many refugees from the Atchafalaya swamp who settled there because they were forced to move to drier land after the flood of 1927.

Indeed, levee construction, almost literally, paved the way for the development of the Henderson settlement. A dirt road was built during the construction, and swampy land in the area was drained when the levees contained the Atchafalaya. It became ideal farmland, yet close to the swamp for those who wanted to maintain their ties to it.

Mr. and Mrs. Euclide Talley were among the first to settle in the Henderson area, arriving near the Lenora Station about 1929. They moved there from St. Martinville and opened a boarding house, restaurant, and grocery store for levee construction crews.

Henry Guidry and his family arrived in the area soon after the Talleys, moving from the Atchafalaya settlement that had been battered by the 1927 flood. He opened a grocery store, restaurant, and dance hall. Guidry was first to move to the "new" Henderson, south of the Lenora Station where the town is now. He picked up his building in 1934, hitched it to a mule team, and pulled it to new land he'd cleared next to the levee. After he moved his business there, a small settlement began to take shape.

Aristille Robin and his family arrived in the early 1940s to work in Guidry's restaurant. Robin founded his own restaurant after World War II. Willis McGee, Nicholas Guilbeau, Archange Dauphine, Alex Wiltz, Jules Wiltz. Bienville Frederick, Edwin Brasseaux, Joe Amy, Freddie Zeringue, and Valerie Hebert arrived at the new settlement in the 1940s.

The Henderson road was paved and incorporated into the state highway system in 1951, encouraging more people to move into the area. In 1954 the Pat Huvals bought Henry Guidry's place. They sold it a few years later and built a larger restaurant. The development of the crawfish industry in the 1960s added to Henderson's reputation as a place to eat.

Huval began the push for incorporation of Henderson in 1971 and was named its first mayor. The first councilmen were Early Bijeaux, Milton Serrette, Etley Collette, Dudley Patin, and Sidney Usie.

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