Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, June 24, 1997

Vermilion Parish Communities: Part of Parish History

by Jim Bradshaw

Andrew Gamble, who was know as "Gam" by the French-speaking people of the area, owned a stable from which he sold and rented mules and horses. His brother Oscar Gamble, established a mercantile store at the place.

Andrew grew just after the turn of the century because of its location as a central pumping station for the irrigation system for the rice fields in the area. Before the 1900s, the farmers in the area were already planting so-called "Providence Rice" watered by rainfall. But the Hunter Canal was dug around 1900 and Andrew grew because of it.

The Hunter Canal Co. put about 20 company houses there for its employees. There was a large barn that housed the mules, horses, harnesses and feed, and later the trucks, bulldozers and backhoes that kept the canals flowing. At its peak the company employed about 100 people, operating a large pumping plant on the Vermilion River at Milton. That plant pumped water from the river through a 400-mile system of canals that irrigated most of the rice grown in the area.

The first canals were built with large mule teams pulling a heavy iron scoop, called a "slip." Dredges and draglines were used later. There was a large flume at Andrew to control the flow of water to the north and to the west. The farmers paid one-fifth of their crop for water rent. The canal was closed in 1981.

A one-room school was built at Andrew around 1908, and a second room was added some years later. That school was closed in 1923, when a school was built at Indian Bayou.

Bancker, located almost due south of Abbeville, where Hwy. 690 crosses the Vermilion River, was for many years a thriving community built around several large plantations.

On the east side of the river were Live Oak Plantation, owned by Adrien Nunez, and Cade Plantation, the property of William Cade, who established the first post office at the place (in 1896) and named it for his son, Bancker. Hope Mill Plantation was on the west side of the river. It was owned by Solomon Wise and Henry Bartels.

Hope Mill was a large plantation and had an open-kettle syrup mill, a sugar mill, a cotton gin, a saw mill, a grist mill, a moss gin, a cooper shop to build barrels and hogsheads for molasses and syrup, a blacksmith shop, a general store, and a private school. Until about 1900, workers on the plantation would grind the cane, boil it into a syrup and pump it into a tank barge that would be pushed by steamboat to Rose Hill Plantation, where it was converted to sugar.

The first school at Bancker was a private school on Hope Mill Plantation, where Alice Bartels, daughter of Henry Bartels, taught the children, some of whom came from the other side of the Vermilion River by pirogue or skiff. About 1890, Diedrich Ramke donated an acre of land for a public school to be built at Bancker. It lasted for about 20 years, then was moved to William Cade's property, across from the present Bancker Cemetery. This school remained in operation until 1920, when it was consolidated with the Henry School. The Bancker students then had to ride to Henry in a mule-drawn vehicle called a "transfer."

In the beginning, water was the chief means of transportation in Bancker and most of the houses there faced the river. There was no public road in the immediate vicinity. A few steamboats plied the Vermilion and small sail boats went up and down the river regularly. They were poled or towed by a skiff when there was no wind.

The first church at Bancker was started on Hope Mill Plantation when Sunday School classes were held in Bancker's first school. About 1873, a Methodist Church was built nearby.

The first Catholic Church in Bancker, Our Lady of Lourdes, was built in 1895, and was served by priests from Abbeville until May 1897, when it was established as a parish and Father F. C. Blast was named its pastor. This church was on land donated by William Cade bordering the Vermilion River. It was moved to Henry in 1939, and was renamed the St. John Church.

All that remains in Bancker to show that the church was once there are two large gate posts marking the entrance to the church yard, a cemetery, and a grotto. The grotto was originally built of concrete made to resemble natural stone and has recently been refurbished. It is a replica of the original grotto at Lourdes, France.

Sugar cane was grown on the island itself, and a syrup mill operated about the turn of the century on its western end by George Stansbury, was said to have produced the finest syrup in the area. Other syrup mills dotted the outskirts of the big island and were owned by Pierre Cessac, Jim Mestepoy, Numa Bernard, and the Dakar family.

Around 1908, the first road was built across the swamps and through Big Woods. A resolution passed by the parish provided that every able-bodied man between 18 and 36 years of age had to donate 12 days a year free labor to help build the road.

Men climbed tall cypress trees and pointed out the right direction to keep the road going straight. Cypress trees were cut and laid in a mat. Later dirt was shoveled in wagons, hauled in, and used to cover the cypress logs.

The early Boston community families were those of Emile Broussard, George Pulling, Hulin Dronet, Dubois, and others whose descendants remain in the area.

Later, Meaux Brothers would operate a general store in Cossinade, as well as the post office, and a dealership in buggies and wagons. Alphonse Girouard had a saloon there.

The Cossinade School held first public school classes in the fall of 1912, though children had been schooled in private schools in the community before that. Tho public school closed in the late 1930s and children were bused to Kaplan.

In order to build their homes they had to buy the lumber from a sawmill in Abbeville and transport it by ox cart through the marsh. There were no stores there at first, so the people raised their own animals, grew their own vegetables and made their own clothing from homespun cotton.

About 1900, three one-room schools were built at Cow Island: the Harrington School, the Odelon School, and the Broussard School, with each neighborhood hiring its own teacher. This went on until 1918, when the Cow Island community approved a tax to consolidate them in one school. It was named the Ernest Broussard Agriculture School, after Ernest Broussard, who lived in the community from 1850 to 1906. He raised a family of 10 children and was the owner of thousands of acres and large herds of cattle. In 1930, a school bus route was started from the E. Broussard School to Abbeville High School. Six years later, 1936, a new building was constructed and E. Broussard became an approved high school. The first graduation exercises were held in 1938.

The center of the community is St. Anne Catholic Church, which serves two missions: Immaculate Conception Chapel at Forked Island, and Sacred Heart Chapel at Pecan Island.

One of the earliest settlers in Esther was W. W. Kuehling, who operated a general store. He was born in Virginia in 1849 and moved to Vermilion Parish in 1872. He would become sheriff of the parish 10 years later.

Kuehling married Leontine Loquex of New Orleans in 1881, and their daughter, Esther, was born in 1888. It is for her that the place was named when a post office was established there in 1899.

Around 1905, a public school was constructed on property donated by Pierre Cessac, adjacent to the cemetery. The school was closed in 1933 and the building put up for sale. The local Catholic congregation bought the building for $125 and moved it to the present site of St. James Chapel on land donated by Napoleon Broussard. The chapel was served by the pastor at Bancker.

W. W. Kuehling's son, Robert, was a later postmaster at Esther and operated a general store there that became a common gathering place for the men of the community. The building later became known as John's Trading Post.

In the 1880s, when the first families came to settle Forked Island (Ile Fourchue), it was open country, a high ridge in the marsh, broken only by trails made by the herds of cattle that roamed the marsh.

Forked Island was truly an island then with coulees forming three forks. People had to cross waterways on log rafts or travel through the marsh on horseback. Later, a pontoon bridge was built across the bayou to South Forked Island.

Jules Schexnayder and his family were the first pioneers to settle in the area. They reared 22 children at their original homestead south of the Intracoastal Canal, and, not surprisingly, some of their descendants live in the area today. Later came the families of Onezime Gaspard, Theodore Rung, Helire Broussard, Remy Hebert, Lodias Stelly Sr., Columbus Dartez, Anatole Touchet, Arville Suire, and Oneal Sicily.

Accounts of the early days claim that black bears roamed the area, and children were not allowed outside in the afternoons unless Momma was standing nearby with a loaded musket.

Rice was planted on Forked Island around 1920. It was first cut by hand with sickles. At times there were as many as 40 men working in the same field. The land had been marshland, so reapers could not get to the rice. After dying, it was taken to the threshing machine, which was placed on higher ground. The rice grains were poured into burlap bags of 165 to 200 pounds. The harvested rice was transported on barges to Abbeville via a small canal that has since been dredged to form part of the Intracoastal Canal and then up the Vermilion River.

The first road to Forked Island was built about 1917 by men using little more than shovels and wheelbarrows. A new and better road was built in the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

That road was the primary road for years until the Louisiana Legislature in 1970 demanded improved hurricane evacuation routes for low-lying areas of south Louisiana. Ground was broken in December 1973 for the Forked Island Bridge, a high level fixed span across the Intracoastal Canal.

School in Forked Island was first taught in & room in the home of Mrs. (Mim) Nelson Harrington. A one-room school was built in 1910, northwest of the Intracoastal Canal, where the old pontoon bridge was located. The school was later enlarged to two rooms, then three rooms.

In 1936, the Forked Island Elementary school was built on the south side of the Intracoastal Canal and classes were held there until 1982, when the elementary schools of Forked Island and Cow Island were combined into the Forked Island-E. Broussard Elementary School in Cow Island.

Forked Island had no church until 1933. Church services were held at the school on Sunday mornings. Immaculate Conception Church was built in 1933 and a new one was built in 1965.

Forked Island's first store, that of Mrs. Harrington, was located northwest of the Intracoastal Canal. Shortly after Mrs. Harrington's store opened, the Ducre Prejean Store and the Keno Nunez Store opened in the same general area. Martin Primeaux opened the first store south of the Intracoastal Canal in the early 1920s. Other stores which followed there were those of Saul Prejean, Gaston Dartez, and Lodias Stelly Jr.

The first school was apparently in the Methodist Church and began around 1850. About 1876, a one room building was put up on the site of the present school. The land on which the school is located was donated by George Hayes. Around 1905, a two-story wooden building was built in front of the one-room school. This building served until 1922 when a three-storey brick building was put up and Indian Bayou became an accredited high school. Its first class of five students graduated in 1923. The high school building was replaced in 1948.

The first post office was established at Indian Bayou on March 7, 1879. William Sheppard was postmaster. The office was discontinued in 1951, and the community has been served since as a rural route from Rayne.

Robert Green wanted to raise hogs in Lower Egypt, but things didn't work out for him. He sold out and moved to Nunez. The Whites, Fosters, Kibbes, and Cessaces moved in to farm, fish and trap the area.

About 1930, a group of investors from outside Louisiana bought the Belle Isle property 15 miles southwest of Intracoastal City and formed the Louisiana Furs Corporation. This spurred the first minor development of the place as a stepping off point, and Mr. and Mrs. Alpha Richard opened a boat landing and gasoline pump there. Before that, guests for the newly formed club had to be taken by boat from Abbeville.

In 1941, the Intracoastal Waterway reached the area, and the intersection of river and canal close to the Gulf created new opportunities. Real estate developers renamed the place Intracoastal City.

In 1949, Petroleum Helicopters established a base, and in 1959, N. R. Broussard established a boatyard there. They and their neighbors were soon to reap the harvest of offshore oil development. At the height of operations in the Gulf in the 1980s, some 200 oil and gas related businesses had facilities of one sort or another in Intracoastal City.

In 1964, Seacoast Products opened a menhaden processing plant there and continues to operate pogey boats from the place. Shrimpers and other fishermen also use Intracoastal City as a port of call.

Gustave Laurent, son of a French immigrant, moved to the point about 1845. He and his wife, Carmelite Hebert, opened a store that became the trade center for the area. The French settlers around Laurent's Point engaged in farming, cattle raising, and logging. Trade goods came to the store via Leesburg (as Cameron was called then) up the Mermentau River in sailing schooners, which, in turn, hauled locally produced goods to Galveston and other ports.

Oranges were one of the leading exports from Laurent's Point, many of them grown on Hermosa Plantation, owned by the Laurents.

Laurent's Point had one of the first rice mills in southwest Louisiana, and the first post office in the area was in Laurent's store.

A ferry ran between Laurent's Point and the Lake Arthur community for some years in the late 1800s.

The first of the Bertrands in the area was Sylvestre Bertrand and his wife, Elizabeth Pavie, who settled in the curve of Bayou Queue de Tortue probably before 1850.

Eve Bertrand, who married Ernest LeJoux, was the daughter of Sylvestre's son, Hermogene Bertrand. Ernest and Eve Leleux built a store on land given them by Hermogene. The store expanded until it included a bar, a room for men to play cards, a post office, and a general mercantile area. They built a dance hall next to it, then added a barber shop.

With better cars and better roads, Crowley and Kaplan became the trading centers for the area arid the Leleux store died with its owner.

Its name was changed to Leroy when a post office was established to remember the young son of Dr. Theonis Abshire. Theonis was the son of the original settlers off this area and the first doctor to practice there. He had his practice in a home where the Breaux grocery store is now located.

The doctor's son, Leroy, died in youth from tuberculosis.

The Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was established there in 1922, "to remove the danger from souls and to afford relief to the Catholic people of Leroy ... especially the old, the infirm, the poor and the young who cannot conveniently receive instructions on account of distance."

Father Maurice Veekmans was first pastor.

According to family history, cattleman Joseph Harrington, sometime before 1847, began driving herds through the area, bringing them from Texas to market in New Orleans. He liked the place. and decided to put up a home there, transporting timber from the Cow Island area to build his residence. His home was on high ground surrounded by ponds, and thus became known as Harrington's Island.

In the late 1800s, the Vermilion Parish Police Jury appointed a group of landowners to build a public road in the arena. They lived along a path used by the public to travel from Harrington's Island to Abbeville, and each of them was to pay $10 for the cost of a surveyor who would map the road, placing its centerline along the boundaries to, their properties and taking ten feet on each side (for a 20-foot-wide road).

In 1913, Millington M. Hartman, who owned a store in the area, was instrumental in having a post office established, and it was then that the name became Millington, in his honor.

At that time there were four one room schools located nearby, and, in 1919, the citizenry proposed that they be consolidated into one central school at Millington. On Feb. 24, 1910, Muriel Daisy Meaux and his wife, Odelia Broussard donated 1½ acres for the new school. This was when the community was named for them.

The school eventually grew into a high school, which was consolidated in 1977 with Maurice High School into the North Vermilion High School, located in the community of Leroy.

The center of Mouton Cove remains a small settlement today containing the Seventh Ward Public School and some commercial buildings.

Some 4,250 acres of land were originally sold to Marin Mouton by an Attakapas Indian chief. According to the old record found in the Vermilion Parish courthouse, Bernard, a Chief of the Attakapas Nation on Aug. 19, 1802, appeared before Louis Charles DeBlanc, "Captain of Infantry, Civil and Military Commandant of the Post of Attakapas" and "sold, ceded, quitclaim, transport(ed) and abandon(ed) at this time and for always" transferring to Marin Mouton, syndic "one tract of land containing approximately one league front on the western part of Vermilion, with the ordinary depth." The sale was passed "with the approbation of the Government General of this Province and also authorized by virtue of Article thirty-one of the new regulations of the intent general for the price and sum of fifty dollars paid and counted....

A small settlement was begun there when Abrom Kaplan, founder of Kaplan and a large landholder in the area, had a railroad siding built to accommodate a warehouse he'd built to store rice and to handle feed, seed. fertilizer, tools, and other needs of his sharecroppers.

About 1912, L. P. Theriot Sr. moved with his family to Mulvey from Gueydan to work as an overseer and business manager for Kaplan's holdings. The warehouse closed about 1937 and was later demolished. The Theriots returned to Gueydan.

It consisted of an impressive three-story plantation home located on the east bank of the Vermilion River, just south of its juncture with Young's Coulee, a sugar refinery located downstream from the plantation house, a railroad bed across Turkey Island to transport sugar cane from the fields to the refinery, a mercantile store, and, from Jan. 28,1884, to March 16, 1901, a post office. It was closed in 1901 and combined with the post office at Bancker. Martin Bagley was Ramsey's first postmaster.

The post office had been named for Dr. James B. Ramsey, who lived in the Young's Coulee area, where he'd moved from Iberia Parish in 1872. The doctor became prominent in parish civil and political affairs.

Riceville is located south of Bayou Queue de Tortue on Hwy. 91. On Oct. 5, 1895, some 80 lots of ground were sold at public auction to establish the town around the bridge that had been built across the bayou in 1899.

The bridge was first called the Gueydan Bridge, for Jean-Pierre Gueydan. It was later called the Riceville Bridge.

On May 28, 1897, an irrigation plant was completed at Riceville and began pumping water from Bayou Queue de Tortue to farmers in the Gueydan and Wright areas.

After the railroad track was built from Midland to Gueydan, the train went through Riceville daily, dropping the mail bag in front of a store and post office first owned and operated by Jerry Leach. In a later incarnation, the store became a night club known as The Town and Country Club of Riceville.

This settlement just west of Mouton Cove in the Seventh Ward of Vermilion Parish was named for the Theall family, probably after Joseph Theall, who was named the first postmaster of the community on March 6,1888.

Hebert Cove, Cypress Point, and Theall were three settlements which after the establishment of the post of rice gradually became consolidated under the one name of Theall. Roads through the settlement established a pathway from Mouton Cove to Forked Island, Cow Island, and Esther.

The Thealls came from New England to the Teche country about 1800 and migrated to Vermilion later. John Benjamin Theall was appointed the first parish clerk of court when Vermillion Parish was created in 1844.

In early Theall, there was a one room school, a grocery store, and a post office. The Theall post office was closed in 1954.

Following the Civil War, Joseph Theall bought a house which was built upriver on the Vermilion at Campbell's Ferry. It was moved by float and slide to the Theall settlement by a team of 12 yoked oxen. It remained there until 1872, when it was purchased for $100 by Ambroise LaCour Jr., who moved it across Little Bayou to higher land at Mouton Cove.

In 1888, John B. Wright of Parke County, Indiana, bought land six miles east of the J. R. Gueydan Plantation in western Vermilion Parish, and it was upon this land that the community named for him sprang up.

During the 1890's, John T. Gillentine became the first storekeeper and postmaster at Wright. Gillentine was manager of land owned by Will, Dick and Cal Garland, who were also from Parke Country and who had bought land there. They wanted the piece to be called Garland, but the postal authorities turned down the name because there was already a Garland, La. on their lists.

A very early store was established in Wright by Henry Baker, and in 1911 Hansford Hair and his son Millard established a general store which continued in operation until 1972. The Wright Post Office was closed in 1956.

The Wright School, founded in 1895, was a one-room school built on the Dick Garland farm.

In 1902 the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, a Southern Pacific subsidiary, completed its line through Wright from Kaplan to Gueydan. The railroad designated Wright as Hair Station, but the name Wright, used by the post office and later the school board, survived as the community's name.

At the turn of the century the bayou crossing at Woodlawn, midway between Milton and Abbeville, stood out in sharp contrast to the treeless prairie around it. This was a piece of grass-carpeted, rolling hills, shaded with moss-draped Eve oak trees, under which grazing animals kept the lawn clipped.

One of the large landowners of the area was Lucien Sarazin Broussard, whose plantation spanned the Lafayette-Vermilion parish line on the Vermilion River.

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