Host: Kyle Crosby
Camera/Editor: Michael Malley
#historyfacts #historyoflouisiana #louisiana #thingstodo #cajun
We are in Napoleonville and it’s one of the older settlements along Bayou Lafourche. As the Acadians were escaping genocide, they were dispursed all over the Atlantic. Seriously, there’s even a group that migrated to Brazil and the Falkland Islands. The largest contingent of these Acadian refugees to arrive in South Louisiana was also the last. They landed in New Orleans in 1785, and were basically given free range to settle where they wanted.
The vast majority of Acadians would settle below the Islanos population near modern day Paincourtville. A few years before the Acadians arrived, the Islanos people would settle along Bayou Lafourche at a place below Donaldsonville called Valenzuela.
As more people would settle on the bayou, the church in nearby Donaldsonville had reached capacity and then some. Not only did the Ascension Church service the large population of Donaldsonville and nearby towns along the Mississippi River, it now had to service the rapidly growing population of Bayou Lafourche.
Don Nicolas Verret was appointed Commandante of the Post of Valenzuela and Captain of the Militia. Behind these settlements, exists a large lake and it was named after this guy. Lake Verret still serves the area with outdoor entertainment, but the settlers petitioned Nicolas Verret to ask the Spanish Crown to build a new church, so he would go to Spanish Colonial Governor Miro for assistance. Miro asked the Spanish government to make necessary grants of land for the Church and to have one built and it was carried out in 1793. A Spanish Capuchin Friar named Bernardo de Deva was the first priest, and the first Church of the Assumption was a little more than a shack located at the site of the modern day church.
More people would move to the area right when the sugarcane boom began. Large plantations began popping up facing the bayou and slaves cultivated the enriched soil. Lake Verret provides a fast route to get to the Gulf of Mexico but it wasn’t connected to Bayou Lafourche, so it was clear that direct access to it would open the door for more economic opportunities. A canal was dug linking the two bodies of water and a community developed near where the canal meets Bayou Lafourche. This community was just known as Canal from as early as 1807.
Naturally, when you have a community in a position of intersecting waterways, it’s bound to grow. And grow it did. Over the convening years, the population would swell. This is when a man steps in by the name of Pierre Charlet.
Pierre was born in Grenoble, France, and he had the distinguished pleasure of serving in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armie. I’ve looked at several sources, and I couldn’t find out why, but for whatever reason, this guy named the community. He would name it after his previous leader. Napoleon the first, aka Bonaparte, aka the greatest general of all time, is the person Pierre would name the area after and Napoleonville was born. Come make a pass around the restaurants in the area on your next Louisiana road trip.
20 сен 2024
