Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 24, 1997

Early settlers during days of Spanish rule.

by Jim Bradshaw

Spain needed bodies to fill the Louisiana territory, and welcomed the French Catholic Acadian families who had been exiled from old Acadie. Many of these families emigrated to Louisiana in small groups in the 1760s, then, in 1785, the French and Spanish governments together helped bring over many of the Acadians who had been sent to France at the time of their exile from old Acadie. A few native Frenchmen came with them.

Spanish immigration laws during this time were designed to create a loyal and Catholic settlement in Louisiana, which, on paper, meant that American Protestants were not welcome. But Spain had neither the power nor the inclination to police settlement of the Vermilion River hinterlands, and a good proportion of the early settlers had American names.

They were drawn here by fertile fields, abundant wildlife, and grazing land for cattle.

During the colonial period, land was acquired from the Spanish government by requete (a request for permission to occupy the land), or sometimes just by settling on it. Sometimes land was purchased from the Indians.

Peter Lee, Jr. and his brother Mark Lee, Sr. made land claims along the Vermilion River as early as 1796. Two islands bearing their names are located in the marsh south of Henry and west of the Boston Canal.

Claude Broussard, son of Joseph (Beausoleil) Broussard, held early claims on both sides of the Vermilion River, parts of which were later acquired by Benjamin Hargrove and by Jacob Ryan. Hargrove was from Virginia. One of his daughters married Ryan, who was a native of Georgia.

A Pedro Perrot, as the Spanish spelled it (likely a Frenchman named Pierre Perault) and Pierre Gaillard, from La Rochelle, France, held early grants on the river in the Mouton Cove area. Charles Hebert, an Acadian, held land on both sides of the river where it joins with Coulee Kinney.

Victor Boet, a native of France, held lands on the east side of the river, where Valcourt Coulee now branches from it. Land across the river was held by Christoval Simon Abreo, a native of Aragon, Spain, and by Charles Comeaux, an Acadian.

Lands at Grosse Isle were granted to Paul Lelletier de la Houssaye. The original grant included the spring or "fountain" of Grosse Isle Coulee, which old plats show as a waterway flowing into the Vermilion River below the town of Perry.

On the east side of the river were several large tracts held by the White family. One was for John White, one for Jesse White, one for another John White, and one for William White. The family came from Virginia. The first John registered his cattle brand at the Poste des Attakapas (as early St. Martinville was known) in 1790. James Taylor White, a son of the first John White, was credited with blazing the first cattle trail from Anahuac, on the Trinity River near Houston, to New Orleans.

Creoles of color and a few slaves came with the first settlers to the Attakapas region, but apparently few of them were among the first to find the Vermilion marshes and prairies. By 1810 there were 269 gens de couleur libres in the Attakapas region, probably none of them in Vermilion. The 1850 census shows only two such families in Vermilion, 14 people in all.

The Spanish government awarded land grants to new settlers before 1800 on the condition that they would clear the land, and help build and keep up levees, bridges, and roads. The first land grants in Vermilion Parish were on the waterways because there were few roads. The prairie areas were settled later.

It was in March of 1844 that the Louisiana Legislature, 32 years after statehood, formally incorporated Vermilion Parish, carving it from what was then Lafayette Parish. Section One of the act provided:

"That all that part of the Parish of Lafayette, on the south side of the following boundary line, to wit: Starting at a point where the line dividing the Parishes of Lafayette and St. Martin crosses the Bayou Parc Perdue; from said point, on a direct line, to the first woods on the Coulee known by the name of Darby's Coulee; from thence down said Coulee, to the Bayou Vermilion; thence along said Bayou to the mouth of Coulee Ile des Cannes thence along said Coulee to the mouth of Grange's Coulee, to the last timber therein; thence, in a direct line, to the first timber on the Indian Point Coulee thence, down said Coulee to its mouth or junction with Bayou Queue de Tortue; thence down along the line now forming the boundary of said Parish of Lafayette to the place of starting, and all the territory within said boundary line to be known by, and called, the Parish of Vermilion."

If that description seems a bit unclear, it is. Even when the bill was written, nobody knew exactly where some of those "first woods" began. In 1910, the police juries of Vermilion Parish and of Iberia Parish appointed two surveyors and established the boundary between them. They found that some 2,800 acres near Lake Peigneur that were assessed in Iberia Parish were really in Vermilion. The Vermilion Parish Police Jury accepted the report. The Iberia Jury (which stood to lose the land) did not, and nothing came of it except for more confusion. According to one report, when "a very serious crime" was committed some years ago in the marshy area in dispute, the villain went free because it could not be established which court had jurisdiction. (The boundaries have since been adjudicated and confirmed.)

Even though Vermilion Parish was now an official place, it was sparsely populated. As Wakeman E. Edwards described it in his "Historical Sketches of Vermilion Parish":

"The parish was an ocean of grass, with a few groves of trees scattered here and there over the broad expanse. These groves were called Islands by the inhabitants, from their resemblance to the wooded islands in the sea. ...The grass all over the prairie was as high as a man's head on horseback and densely thick. There is a tradition that during the Spanish regime, the inhabitants were forbidden to grease the axles of their wooden carts so that they might squeak and make a noise while going through the prairies among the high grass as they could not be seen for any distance, and the Governor feared that smuggling might be going on between the bays along the Sea Coast, through the prairies to the Opelousas and Avoyelles settlements....

"The broad level prairie was unfenced and open, and anyone could travel in any direction he desired to go. The coulees and platins or marais were not boggy, and could be safely crossed almost anywhere. There were sufficient cattle in the country from 1844 to 1854 to keep down the grass, so it was not so formidable as at an earlier date. The prairies were generally burned off every winter, so as to get early grazing in the spring for the cattle.

"During the decade 1844 to 1854 the principal settlements of the parish were on Bayou Vermilion, Bayou Tigre, Bayou Queue de Tortue with a few settlers in Prairie Greig, Grand Cheniere, Lake Arthur, Lake Peigneur, and a few in the prairies.

"Stock raising was the occupation of a majority of the inhabitants at this time. Along the borders of the bayous and coulees and often far out in the open prairie the stock man had his little home. It consisted generally of a small wooden house with a shed in front, a mud and stick chimney, windows without glass. Often the house was built of wooden frame hewed out of wood, and then filled in with mud (clay), mixed with Spanish moss, and one room or sometimes two. There was also the cow pen or corral for keeping cattle, and a calf pen, a small corn crib, a little garden, and a small corn field, of four or five acres, often less, completed the humble home of the inhabitant.

"Here he lived in contentment, surrounded by the vast expanse of the rich grassy prairie, where his small herd of cattle and horses ranged, and fed from year to year with but little care. He cultivated his little field oft corn; and looked after his cattle, and it was charged that he sometimes looked after other people's cattle, when he wanted a fat cow or steer to butcher.

"The wife and daughter made the garden, raised poultry, milked the cows and spun and wove 'cottonade' and other fabrics, while the husband rode about the prairie, barefooted on his little Attakapas pony. A great many cattle belonging to non-resident owners were also scattered over the prairies, with no one to guard them, they became great temptation to those of weak moral perceptions."

The legislative act that carved out Vermilion Parish required that the parish seat should be located on the west side of the Vermilion River not more than one-half mile from Perry's Bridge (now Perry), which is about three miles south of the present town of Abbeville. It is not surprising that there should be such a provision, since Robert Perry, who owned most of the land in those parts, had a hand in writing the act. It was introduced into the legislature on Jan. 29, 1844, by Daniel O'Bryan, Perry's son-in-law, and was signed into law on March 25, 1844, by Governor Alexandre Mouton. He appointed William Kibbe as the first parish judge and Robert Perry as its first sheriff. Perry promptly appointed John M. Miles as his deputy sheriff. (Some accounts list Miles as first sheriff of the parish even though he was only a deputy). Felix Oneil was named the first Vermilion Parish clerk of court, William Caldwell was made recorder. All of the appointees were from Perry's Bridge or nearby.

A year later, in 1845, a new Louisiana constitution went into effect, under which parish officers were to be elected, rather than appointed by the governor. The first sheriff elected for Vermilion Parish was Nathan Perry, who was only distantly related to Captain Robert Perry, if at all.

Vermilion's first seat of justice was in fact located at the foot of the bridge Robert Perry had built across theVermilion River. A place would be designated for a courthouse, but none was ever built at Perry's Bridge, because it was also in 1845 that Father Antoine Megret began to lay out a town that would be named Abbeville. He would begin a bitter competition that would eventually make his town the parish seat.

The early settlers in Vermilion Parish came by foot, pirogue, horseback, schooner, wagon, cart, and buggy. If they did not travel by water, they traveled on ruts that were barely roads, footpaths, or rough cattle trails. During the rainy season, mud often made the so-called roads impassable. Bridges or ferries were few and far between and were often in such disrepair that it was dangerous to use them.

John Jacob Abshire, a pioneer merchant in the Bayou Queue de Tortue section, in the northern part of the parish, built a bridge across Coulee des Iles and charged a toll of two pieux for crossing. Pieux were split cypress rails and were often used for money, since barter was more customary than cash in those days. Abshire's bridge was nothing fancy, just three cypress logs floored with heavy oak.

The St. Martin Parish Police Jury had given Robert Perry a contract to build a bridge across the Vermilion River in 1817. (Both Vermilion and Lafayette parishes were part of St. Martin then. Lafayette was split from St. Martin first, then Vermilion was split from Lafayette.) The bridge served as a crossing for the cattle driven from Texas to New Orleans. By 1828, the bridge had to be remodeled to provide a draw to accommodate boat traffic up the river to Vermilionville.

The Vermilion was navigable for steamboats as well as schooners and was a major transportation artery for the area in the days before railroads. According to the Abbeville Meridional of March 2, 1879, three steamers were plying the Vermilion Bayou in those days. In "The Vermilion Bayou in Steamboat Days," Mrs. Margaret Manley Kerksieck reported:

"By 1890 steamboats were making regular runs, some from New Orleans, but more from Morgan City. The head of navigation ... was at Pinhook Bridge (in Lafayette); from there the bayou flowed southward to Abbeville, Perry's Bridge, Rose Hill, Bancker, Ramsey Plantation, the Rose Bower, Hope Mill, and finally Adrien Nunez's vast spread to the Gulf."

There was a stagecoach line that began at New Iberia and connected Abbeville to a line going to Texas.

Planning began in the middle 1800s to build a railroad line from New Orleans to Texas. By the 1800s and the Civil War, a line had been completed from Houston to the Sabine River and another one ran from Algiers to Brasher City (Morgan City). By 1881, those lines were linked --with rails running through Franklin, New Iberia, Lafayette, Crowley, Lake Charles, and on.

There was a hot debate over whether to connect Abbeville to the main line in New Iberia or to run it through Lafayette. In 1887, several miles of track were laid for a Jeanerette-Abbeville Railroad, which was never fully completed. The Iberia & Vermilion Railroad Co. was chartered April 6, 1891, and construction was started on a rail line to Abbeville, which was finished by the end of 1892. In 1893, the Louisiana Western Railroad planned a line from Eunice to Midland, and it was completed in 1894 and then extended on to Gueydan.

The first telegraph office Abbeville was located in Lastie Broussard's office on State Street. In May 1888, the Meridional reported that the telegraph line to New Iberia was "substituted" by telephone with headquarters in Solomon Wise's store.

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