Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

St. Martinville is Acadiana's Oldest Settlement

Petit Paris was incorporated in 1817

by Jim Bradshaw

In the 19th century, a bustling social life earned the little town the name Petit Paris.

The Town of St. Martinville was incorporated by an act signed by Gov. Jacques Villere on Jan. 30, 1817. The land there was granted to Jean-Antoine Bernard Dauterive during French colonial days. The grant was confirmed and expanded by Spanish Gov. Luis Unzaga on Sept 4, 1771. Shortly after that, Dauterive donated to the Catholic church some 480 arpents on both sides of Bayou Teche. Town lots would be sold by the church in the years following, with the understanding that they were subject to a yearly "rental," usually between $12 and $18, for the maintenance of the church.

Dauterive and his family did not live at the Attakapas post. Their home was on a plantation that he owned on the Mississippi River in what is now Iberville Parish. He had come to Louisiana as an officer in the French army, married here (May 1, 1764), and stayed. The year after his marriage, his lands at Attakapas would become part of history, when a band of Acadian exiles would settle on and around them.

Several hundred Acadians arrived in 1765 to settle on Dauterive's land as part of a deal under which they would raise cattle for him in exchange for land. But when they got to the place, rather than build a village--as the French administrators had expected them to do--they dispersed to the area of Fausse Pointe, downstream from the Dauterive land, and upstream to the areas of today's Parks and Breaux Bridge.

The present church at St. Martinville bears an inscription saying that it was established in 1765. This is the date when the congregation was formed with the coming of the Acadians, and there may have been a simple chapel there at the time. But the first church building came nearly a decade later.

Father Jean Francois, who came with the Acadians, probably established the first church, but did not remain at the Attakapas post. He probably returned to France shortly after the church was established, as he disappears from Louisiana church records. The church there remained without a resident pastor for more than a decade, depending in the meantime on priests from Pointe Coupee and Opelousas.

Dauterive's donation of church land in 1771 and the subsequent construction of a substantial church there made the fledgling St. Martinville a center for the farflung Acadian farmsteads in the Attakapas district. But there was a fuss before it could be built.

Gov. Unzaga wanted Dauterive to supply the lumber to build the church. Dauterive said he'd done enough. He'd given up the land for the church and to form a village around it, and he'd already helped build two other churches, at New Orleans and at Bayougoula (Iberville Parish). That didn't satisfy the governor, but he finally worked a deal with two other men to get the church built. Jacques Francois Ozenne would supply the lumber. Jean Berard would build the church.

Ozenne, who would later settle on Bayou Tortue, lived in the Pointe Coupee district then. He cut the timber there and transported it to the Attakapas post. It may have been that the governor now wanted Dauterive to help pay the bill, and he again refused. Whatever happened, it seems that Ozenne got stiffed.

In early 1774,, Ozenne wrote to Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire, commandant at the Attakapas post, complaining that the residents were not paying. "I beg of you to ask the governor to see that (the debt) is paid, for the residents have refused to pay not only for the wood but also for my trip to Attakapas," he said.

The governor made his arrangements. He ordered the seizure and sale of all Dauterive's property in Iberville and Attakapas. It went up for auction in December 1775, but stayed in the family. Elizabeth Montault de Monbarrut, Dauterive's wife, bought it. Dauterive died soon after, on March 24, 1776. An inventory taken at the time of his death said that a slave named Joseph was living at the family property on the Teche, with 40 head of cattle and 40 horses there.

Father George Murphy took charge of the church at the Attakapas post in 1791, and is generally credited with referring first to the church as being dedicated to St. Martin of Tours. Before that it had been called l'Eglise de la Nouvelle Acadie aux Attakapas.

About three years after she acquired the Teche grant, Mrs. Dauterive began the process of selling it piece-by-piece. The first sale was to the widow of Paul le Pelletier de la Houssay, on Nov.13,1778. On May 14, 1779, the widow Dauterive sold a second tract from the Teche grant to her late husband's brother, Joseph Bernard d'Hauterive de Valiere, a captain in the Louisiana Fixed Battalion.

On Aug. 14, 1810, the St. Martin Parish Police Jury purchased land at what would become St. Martinville "in order to lay out a town and build a city hall." The land the police jury bought was owned by Paul Briant and Jean Berard. Briant sold the jury a tract 1 arpent wide by 40 arpents deep. Berard sold a tract 2 arpents by 40 arpents. Both were on the west bank of Bayou Teche.

On Jan. 30, 1817, Gov. Villere signed the act passed by the Louisiana legislature incorporating the town of St. Martinville. Section 1 of that act describes the limits of the town:

"...beginning at the lower line of the property owned by Alexander Porter, junior, on the western side of the Bayou Teche, near the church of Attakapas, thence with the said Bayou to the lower line of the property owned by Louis Gary, so as to include all the land between the before mentioned boundaries fronting on the said bayou to the distance of ten arpents back from the same, together with all the land on the eastern side of the Bayou Teche, that may be comprehended between the two lines to be drawn due east opposite to the aforesaid boundaries of A. Porter, junior, and Louis Gary, with the depth of two arpents from said bayou, shall continue to be known and distinguished by the name of the town of St. Martinville...."

The upper limit of the town would today be about 250 feet south of the point where Railroad Avenue reaches Bayou Teche. The lower line of the property owned by Louis Gary would be approximately where Gary Street is today. Ten arpents west from the Teche would be about the line of the present Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

On Sept. 18,1817, Nile's Weekly Register printed a description of the Attakapas country, and noted that "the most important town in (St. Martin and St. Mary parishes) is that of St. Martinville." The anonymous writer gave this description:

"It contains forty dwelling houses, besides out houses, it has one Roman Catholic church and residence for a priest, one court house and a public jail, one academy, a small market house, for meat only, three taverns, three blacksmiths, three tailora' (sic) shops, two boot and shoemakers shops, one joiner's shop, one silversmith's shop, two bakers' shops, one tinner's shop, and ten stores. It is the seat of justice for the county of Attakapas. In this town there reside four attorneys-at-law and three physicians. Its inhabitants are industrious and enterprising, and amongst them several very respectable families. The (inhabitants) are generally decent in their deportment and friendly among themselves. They are chiefly French and Americans and some Irish and Scotch. It is beautifully situated on the bank of the Teche, which is about fifty yards wide opposite to it, and about fifteen deep. It is destined one day to become a very respectable inland town being in the centre of a rich and populous country."

In 1818, John C. Calhoun, acting Secretary of the Navy, commissioned James Cathcart for a timber survey in Louisiana and Florida. Cathcart noted in his diary that "...St. Martinville .... contains about one hundred houses, and probably between 600 and 700 inhabitants, it has a Gothic built church, jail and Courthouse .... Some few houses are in part built of bricks, but mostly of mud."

He also noted that "nine miles from the Church there are several plantations close together, which has the appearance of a town, some were newly clear'd, and some others had small Peach trees on them in blossom; at Peltiers 5 miles below the church at the narrowest part of the river were several Flats waiting to load cotton for New Orleans, they carry from 100 to 150 bales from 300 to 400 lbs. each.

"....at 6 p.m. we arrived at St. Martinville (the church) and put up at Gregg's tavern, which is not as commodious as Pintards, the rain entering in every direction; Gregg and his wife are both scotch, of which there are a considerable number of the lower order of this town; he is by trade a Gardiner, and they both seem to be good industrious people of their class, are very obliging and know very well how to charge for their civility, indeed this is an art that no person is ignorant of in this vicinity."

In 1838, the Weekly Picayune in New Orleans printed some observations about St. Martinville, which had been furnished by "a young gentleman just returned from a summer tour in that part of the state."

The young gentleman said that "St. Martinville is built on both sides of the river, which is very narrow at this place, and has a draw bridge ....contains numerous stores, a Court House, two Banks, good Hotels, a French Theatre, etc. has good streets well laid out, one male and female seminary etc.... steamers in high water can ascend as high as Breau's Bridge (sic), fifteen miles above St. Martin's ...."

That French theater may have been responsible for a bit of poetic license in local history, as well as for drama on the stage. Robert Schmalz looked at St. Martinville's past as part of a 1982 study of music in Louisiana's plantation society. Says he:

"(The people of St. Martinville) demanded many of the luxuries that they enjoyed elsewhere and this is reflected in the musical history of the region. However, it is unfortunate that so much of the earliest (and possibly the most significant) record of such activity is oral and hence, suspect. To illustrate, one such well circulated story has the 'French Opera Company,' presumably from New Orleans, performing in St. Martinville (in 1795) ....

"Indeed, if a performance of "The Barber of Seville" was staged at St. Martinville in 1795, it would have to be considered an event of historical importance .... If in actuality such events did transpire at the end of the 18th century, they would pre-date the birth of the operatic tradition for which New Orleans is justifiably famous .... The fact that there almost certainly was no building in the town as it existed in 1795 capable of housing such a performance simply serves to confirm the obvious.

"It is nevertheless quite conceivable that (the performance) occurred ... at a somewhat later date. The advent of regular steamboat service up the Teche greatly enhanced St. Martinville's accessibility as a summer resort. If we postulate a date in the 1830s or 1840s for such a performance, then at least the circumstantial evidence which survives would not strain the credibility of the assumption. Further, although (the accounts) fail to specify the composer of "The Barber of Seville," it seems probable that Rossini's version of 1816, and not the older (1792) Paisiello/Beaumarchais setting, is the most likely candidate (for a St. Martinville performance). The Rossini opera received its premier performance in New Orleans and by all accounts enjoyed great popularity in that city. It is ... not unreasonable to assume that the opera, or popular arias extracted from it, would have served to entertain the residents of St. Martinville and their summer guests at some time during these decades."

The first school in St. Martinville was probably a Catholic school started in 1794 by Father Alexander Viel. The oldest parochial school still existing in the parish began in March 1881, when the first Sisters of Mercy arrived from New Orleans. The first public high school was established in 1900. It burned down in 1927, and a new one was built on Port Street.

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