Lafayette Parish, LAGenWeb

Welcome to Lafayette Parish. I am your new Parish coordinator, Mary Creamer. If you have anything to add, please send it to me. I know many of you may be concerned that the archives are gone but they have been folded into this site.

Although discovered eary in the 1500's, Louisiana was not settled until 1714, when the French settled Natchitoches on the Red River. The first organized migration from France occurred between 1717 and 1722 under John Law. In 1755, the British expelled the French settlers of Acadia, and later, Nova Scotia. As many as 5000 of these French Acadians, who became known as Cajuns, settled in Louisana.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 made Louisiana part of the United States. The next year, Louisiana was divided into two sections, "The District of Louisiana" above the 33rd parallel and the Territory of Orleans below it.

Check Out Our History!

Lafayette Parish Was Established

Lafayette Parish was established in 1823 from St. Martin Parish. The parish seat of Lafayette Parish is Lafayette.

I hope you find my efforts helpful in your research of Lafayette Parish
 roots. I am unable to do additional research on your family as I do not have direct access to records. I post everything I have for all to use.

Research Resources

Make sure you check the "Research Resources" section and especially the "Helpful Links" page

---

Search This Site

 

"The Chosen"

We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying - I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."

by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."

 

Lafayette's Families

If you would like your family members to show up here, send me the pictures and names.

Treville & Felicianne Broussard

Thomas & Alazlnena Duhon Stutes

Willis, Lillie Gertrude Hanks

Trahan, Albert Theoville
not his picture