A History Of The Breaux Family

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
A History Of The Breaux Family
Addendum To The Allendom Papers

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
PART 4

Ending of the War...

When the Seven Years War ended in 1763, the Treaty of Paris ceded the area west of the Mississippi to Spain, (France’s ally in the war), and east of the river to England. Accepting that they could never return to Acadia, and attracted by the French settlements in New Orleans dating back to 1718, the Acadians turned their eyes toward Louisiana. By happy circumstance, Spain was looking for settlers to develop and secure this new land, and England was more than fed up with those contrary "prisoners of war" who refused to settle down and become good Marylanders. So when Spain hearing of the Acadians reputation for hard work and antagonism toward England, issued the invitation to come on down and settle in, England agreed to provide merchant ships for their transport to Louisiana, -- so eager was she to rid herself of the contentious Acadians.

The Halifax Acadians arrived in 1765 and got word to their confreres exiled through the world that the Promised Land lay on the lower Mississippi. During the 1760’s, at least one thousand Acadians migrated to Louisiana. In 1785 nearly sixteen hundred from France, alone, made their way back across the Atlantic, bound for the new land. Early immigrants settled in the plains areas and began raising cattle, while a group of members from the old Acadian Breauxs were settled along the west bank of the Mississippi River.

Spain made efforts to reunite extended families, asking only that the exiles be willing to go where Spain sent them -- the purpose of all this, after all, was to support and develop the areas around Spanish forts, head off Indian raids, and serve as a "well-regulated militia" against any English shenanigans east of the Mississippi River.

On February 4, 1768, the English merchant ship, "The Guinea" arrived bearing 152 individuals, divided into 29 nuclear families including ALEXIS, Honoré, their two widowed aunts, cousins and their families. All were bound for settlement at the fort at Natchez, 100 miles upriver from a previous Breaux settlement at St. Jacques de Cabannocé (present day St. James Parish). Spanish records of the day provide us with a manifest which tells us a lot about the fortunes of our family since we last saw them five years earlier.

ALEXIS (42), MAGDELEINE (44) and their children have all survived the exile, (HONORE (21), Joseph (17), Charles (14), Marie (10) and they’ve added Anastasie (5) and Alexis Jr. (1). The orphan, Vivienne (whom we assume to be Amand’s child) is 25 and still in their care.

Honoré (37) and Magdeleine’s "toddler", Magdeleine is now 14. Alas, her two sisters born in exile did not survive, but there is a new little girl named Elizabeth (3). They are still traveling with a 12-year-old orphan.

Uncle Charles has died, but Aunt Claire (63) is listed as a widow head of family traveling with her children, Elizabeth (28), Anne (24), Magdeleine (22), and Pierre (18). Cousins Antoine (38) and Marguerite (32) still have Scholastique (17), Joseph (14), Charles (10), Perpetue (7) and are back in the toddler business -- they now have a new daughter, Marie Rose (4). The former newlyweds (Joseph Charles (34) and Marie Josette (30) have done well -- Marie Josette was near the end of a pregnancy when they set sail for Louisiana and her son, Charles, is born on arrival, joining his sisters Josette Marie (8), Marguerite (10) and Claire (3).

On the other side of the family, widow Aunt Marguerite (63) arrives with two grown daughters and her son, Jean (33), who in the past five years has distinguished himself by actually managing to find himself a wife, Marie (27) and begin a family (Marie (3), and Jean Baptiste (5 months).

One more note about that Cloatré family that appeared in the Nivernois letter list: GEORGE CLOATRE has passed away, but a careful comparison of the Nivernois letter of 1763 and the Natchez-bound manifest of 1768 reveals an important future family development - his wife, CECILE (30) is now listed as the head of household, has resumed using her maiden name, Braud(?) and is in charge of her children JOSEPH (7), Magdeleine (6) and Charles (2) and Amand’s orphaned son, Joseph Braud (15). As we compare the lists and noted how the orphaned children tend to be distributed (immediate brothers and sisters of the parents appear to be the first choice) it is virtually certain that CECILE is the younger sister (by 12 years of ALEXIS. As future events unfold, it become evident that we are descended from both!

Louisiana...

The earliest arrivals in Louisiana had been allowed to select their homesites from any vacant lands, so when ALEXIS et al discovered that the Spanish governor, Antonio de Ulloa intended to settle them 115 miles upriver from the other Breaux relatives at Cabannocé, they were definitely not amused. Ulloa was quite sympathetic to the destitute immigrants and greatly admired their industry, (he had written to the Spanish ambassador to France,

"... two slaves cannot accomplish in a year what one of the
indefatigable men can do -- much, in fact, that some Acadians have
died from exhaustion."

but he remained adamant about his plan and deaf to several weeks of wrangling, pleas, and threats. Fed up, he finally issued an ultimatum: get back on the boats for Natchez or get shipped back to New England! Grumbling, the Breauxs headed off to Natchez, with two exceptions -- at the last minute ALEXIS and Honoré and their families jumped ship and went into hiding on the farm of one André Jung. Not long after, records indicate that ALEXIS purchased a farm at Cabannocé from Joseph Ducros. (No, we don’t know where he got the money.)

The brothers’ story surfaced again two months later when Ulloa got wind of the whole business and ordered ALEXIS "to be sent for and tied up". ALEXIS feigned an illness got a three-day delay of sentence and fled the post "...with the help of fellow Acadian, Charles Gaudet." We could not find Gaudet on any of the lists of Maryland exiles so it is probable that his and ALEXIS’ friendship dated from the old days in Acadia.

He must have been a good friend indeed to risk being deported for giving aid to the rebellious Breaux (Ulloa’s penalty for such insubordination). That they managed to get away with it at all is thanks to the local Acadian militia who, when ordered to arrest ALEXIS and deliver him for deportation, replied that they really would not do that, thanks anyway. Ulloa, who admired the militia’s general willingness to fight bravely on Spain’s behalf, gave in on this point but issued an order that if it happened again he would confiscate their possessions and expel the whole lot of them from the colony!

The friendship between Gaudet and Breaux families will last a hundred years ... but more on that later.

Honoré, meanwhile, lit out for the other side of the river and sought refuge at the farm of one Jacques Enoul Duguay de Livaudais, apparently a man of some local stature. According to Honoré who was also a hunted man, "...Monsieur Livaudais petitioned Monsieur Darensburg (commandant of the Cote des Allemand post) and he closed his eyes". (NFS: These words may be an actual quote from Honoré. A tantalizing sentence in Brasseaux/s book states, "Honoré Breaux, whose memoirs are preserved in France’s Archives Nationales...". Now wouldn’t that be an addition to the family documents?

The rest of the Breauxs, by the way, went ahead and gave Natchez the old college try, but remained relentless in their petitions to be allowed to come down to Cabannocé to settle amongst their kin. The Natchez land was not fertile,they maintained, and worse yet, they were subject to sporadic Indian raids. A year-and-a-half later, Ulloa’s successorelented and allowed them to come "home" to what had become known as the Acadian Coast, settling alongside their long-lost relatives (and their more recently "lost" relative, ALEXIS, at Cabannocé (present day St. James Parish).

The widow Cloatré, CECILE Breaux, and her young children were among those who came "home" with them. Within a year she became the wife of ALEXIS’s dear friend, Charles Gaudet and moved in next door to her her brother. Their wedding may have been one of the first celebrated at the new St. James Catholic chapel, built in 1771 to replace the small shed that had served their needs since arriving.

Wedding bells continued to ring in those early years of the 1770’s. (Can you imagine all those pent-up hormones on the loose among those who came of age during the isolated years of exile?) ALEXIS and MAGDELEINE’S oldest son, HONORE (25) married MAGDELEINE BRAU (a distant cousin) on January 18, 1772. Their January wedding was typical of Acadian marriages of the day -- 75% of them took place in January/February (after the harvest was in) or May/August (after the spring planting was done and before the fall harvest began). Within a year, MAGDELEINE was pregnant as they began their married life on their own farm right next door to his parents. Their first child Marie, came along the following year.

And so, two years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the farms of Charles and CECILE Gaudet, of HONORE and MAGDELEINE Breaux, and of ALEXIS and MAGDELEINE Trahan Breaux were snuggled up one next t’other on the west bank of the Mississippi in St. James. One hundred years later, the Breaux and Gaudet descendants would still be next door neighbors, farming the same adjoining land (though both farms would have swelled into successful plantations with multiple families in residence.

Today, the great-granddaughter of EDOUARD and CELESTINE Breaux, Lillian Breaux Allen Williams, lives with her family in a house not far from the corner of Braud Road and Highway #18, which runs alongside the west bank of the Mississippi River in St. James. A few doors away stands an almost vacant lot with a shed and a huge sprawling fig tree -- all that is left after the fire which took the homestead of Leontine Braud Allen a few years ago. EDOUARD and CELESTINE’s great-grandson, Louis Allen, Jr., (Lillian's brother, Pistol") lived there until his death not long before the fire. Living with him were his granddaughter and her children. Tragically, one of the children was lost in the fire. The site of the homestead is still in the family, and Lillian’s son-in-law, Fred Morton, keeps it well-mowed and tended. The original foundation of the house can be seen and we brought back a piece of wooden shingle we found half-buried in the ground nearby.

There are still a few land records we must verify, but other evidence is overwhelming that this family homestead is a piece of the original Breaux plantation.

If so, this land has been in our family since before there was a Louisiana, before there was a United States of America. We are the custodians of a legacy that predates the American Revolution -- land that has been occupied by 8 successive generations of our family for over 225 years.

Life in Acadia...

Forty percent of the families who arrived at New Orleans on board "The Guinea" were headed by widows with their children. The Spanish colonial government issues each of them the same allotment of land and supplies given to all families: l musket and ammunition, a rooster and half-dozen chickens, 1 cows, corn for planting and four to six arpents of land -- long narrow strips fronting and stretching back from the Mississippi River. As an inducement to increase and multiply, no land would be granted to single members of either sex.

The land became theirs as soon as they had cleared and cultivated l arpent -- a feat accomplished by virtually all of the settlers within 2-5 years of arrival. This astounded the Spanish since the banks of the river were choked with hardwood timber, mostly live oak, and the Acadians were equipped with little more than their bare hands and a steely determination to get the job done. So successful were the new arrivals that within ten years the river Acadians had built levees, cleared fields, erected fences (personal independence and property rights were major concerns of the Acadians and fences were always a big issue), and returned to their pre-dispersal standard of living.

Cotton and corn crops produced clothing and for personal consumption and surplus for sale on the open market. Inveterate pipe-smokers -- a habit acquired from the Micmac Indians -- the Acadians also produced small quantities of tobacco along with squash, pumpkins, and occasionally, rice. The apple orchards of the pre-exile were replaced with fig, peach and apricot trees. West African slaves introduced them to okra and hog meat, and pork soon became the principle source of protein in the Acadian diet. As they prospered, excess provisions were traded (usually smuggled) to English posts in exchange for manufactured items, especially cast-iron tools.

The delicious gumbos which many members of our family still concoct were an amalgam of Indian, Creole, African and Acadian influences on the pot. Just about everything in the diet was boiled or fried. Most families owned two large cauldrons, suggesting meat and greens were prepared separately, and one large frying pan for frying eggs, bacon, and freshwater fish and which also doubled as a baking pan for cornbread.

Acadian clothing was primarily a home-grown affair -- the cotton crop was cleaned and spun into threats, women into fabric and fashioned into wardrobes at home. Men wore collarless, loose-fitting cottonade shirts, usually undyed, or bleached white, and knee-length britches dyed indigo blue. Felt hats for winter and palmetto woven hats for summer gave relief from the relentless southern sun. The men usually went barefoot and bare-legged in summer, switching to cottonade stockings and leather moccasins when the weather or occasion demanded it. (Acadian stockings were of such fine quality that even the snooty Creoles admitted there were none finer to be had at any price.)

Acadian homes were another amalgam of cultures. West Indian slaves showed them the value of raising a house on cypress blocks to increase circulation in the hot summers and as protection against floods. Large Parallel windows and doors borrowed from Norman architecture helped with ventilation as did the introduction of West Indian front galleries.

Furnishings were sparse -- they kept most of the their belongings in trunks at the foot of their beds. There were tables and chairs, and some armoires among the more affluent. One large room was the norm, and although some houses sported "bedrooms" -- additions to the main house that were rarely much larger than the bed and its storage trunk -- the older boys traditionally slept in small attics known as garconnieres (or "cocklofts").

Family and Cultural Solidarity...

We found some interesting contrasts in Acadian society, both pre- and post-exile: personal independence was as important as family and cultural solidarity. The Acadians preferred to live at a distance from one another, then come together frequently. The Spanish were frustrated in their attempts to convince the newcomers to settle in villages with the farms radiating out from them and the inhabitants clustered close together. yet the Acadians "bals de maison" -- weekly house parties -- were legendary. Held once a week on a rotating basis, young and old came together at someone’s home to dance, sing and tell stories of their history, passed down from generation to generation.

Acadian music had a rich, Celtic flavor, and musicians were held in very high esteem. Nearly all their fiddles had been destroyed in the years of exile. Brasseaux tells us that.

"The destitute musicians were thus compelled to mimic
fiddles verbal when presenting the traditional Celtic reels and jigs
constituted a major part of the early Acadians’ repertoire. By the
late 1770’s most of the fiddlers had achieved a comfortable existence
and enjoyed the leisure time to make, or the financial resources to
purchase new instruments."
A French traveler of 1804 said

"...The give ball...and will go ten to fifteen leagues to attend
one. Everyone dances, even grandmere and grandpere, no matter
what the difficulties they must bear. There may be only a couple of
fiddles to play for the crowd, there may be only four candles for light..
wooden benches to sit on, and only exceptionally a few bottles of
tafia diluted with water for refreshment. No matter, everyone dances.
But everyone always has a good helping of gumbo, the Creole dish
par excellence: then "Goodnight,...see you next week."

After awhile, local cabarets owned and operated by Acadians offered billiards and later card-playing for male recreation. But the grand passion -- born on the prairies and eventually making its way to the Acadian Coast, embraced by Acadians of both sexes and all ages -- was horse racing.

Straight line courses, usually 4 to 30 arpents (approximately 800 ft. to l mile) in length may have featured the pedigreed horses of the wealthy Creole or Anglo-American planters in the featured races, but the bulk of the racing schedule was filled with match races between the Acadian riding ponies or draft horses. Spanish and French missionaries were scandalized by the Acadian’s refusal to stop dancing during Lent, but they were downright apoplectic over the fact that the accomplished Acadian horsewomen rode astride their horses! (An immorality almost beyond belief.) As for the Lenten dances, the church ban specifically referred to "dancing to instrumental music" so the Acadians continued their "bals" with vocal music, only. The priests were also distraught at the Acadian penchant for smoking their pipes and occasionally let fly with an oath "on the very steps of the church!"

Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that their disapproval had any effect at all on the Acadians. Although scrupulous about attending mass and having their marriages and deaths blessed and recorded, they were notoriously anti-clerical and resented anything that smacked of church interference in their personal business.

History provides us with a delightful look at one of our magnificent Breaux women during these early days of settlement. By way of background: Early relations between the Acadians and their Creole or French-born neighbors were testy at best. The Creoles were mostly soldiers-of-fortune who, denied access to the feudal aristocracy to which they aspired in France, migrated to Louisiana and installed themselves as the local, self-styled aristocracy.

The Acadians were decidedly unimpressed.

French Creoles then seized on their unpretentious lifestyle, impure accents, and general "impudence" to label them "peasants", and were more than a little annoyed when the newcomers didn’t seem to care a whit about what the Creoles called them. In the prairie settlements, petty disputes between the two groups increased until the Acadians preferred to move away from the Creoles rather than put up with the constant conflict. But in St. James, where our line of Breaux settled, both groups were tied to the river so there was plenty of opportunity for good old-fashioned feuds to develop.

One lovely Sunday afternoon in the late spring of 1773, MAGDELEINE Breaux, (wife of ALEXIS), Bonaventure Godîn and a group of Acadian women were returning from mass when they failed to close a gate behind them as they passed through Sieur Croizét’s property. Unfortunately, Sr. Croizét was watching from his gallery at the time and came raging out of the house and across the field, berating them for their negligence and calling them, " . .sacre Rosse d’Acadiens, Canailles, toupies, garces, et en mot mille invectives!" (A call to the local library and a helpful researcher with an English/French dictionary reveal the following:

Rosse = broken down hag, whore or prostitute
Canailles = scum of the populace, scoundrel, destructive mob
toupies = flighty wench
garcés = wench,strumpet, hussy, ill bred slut

MAGDELEINE and Bonaventure took extreme umbrage at the insults and led the women in filing a formal complaint with the governor against the Creole landowner. Despite objections from the local commandant, himself a Creole, who refused to support the complaint, MAGDELEINE pressed their objections to the "invectives" all the way to the Spanish governor, Ungaza. Within a few weeks, Croizét was forced to issue a public apology! I’d say LEONTINE came by her "sassy" real honest!

Bad feelings between the two groups were further fueled by what history refers to as "amorous affairs". One of the reasons Creoles looked down on the newcomers involved the manner in which they related to their slaves. Creoles maintained clear master-chattel relationships and during the Spanish era of the late 18th century (1769-1803) a significant mulatto population sprang up along the Mississippi as Creole masters indulged their whims with their female slaves. During the same period, the newcomers also began to acquire slaves, but the relationship was quite different.

At first, the Acadians regarded blacks and mulattos as their social equals, working and traveling with them. In the 1770’s, the St. James Acadians, usually young men with infant children - began purchasing young Negro women as nursemaids or simply as maids to assist their wives with the housework after childbirth or during the latter stages of pregnancy. Thus, our family’s earliest slave acquisitions were prompted by familial, rather than economic considerations. Later, slaves were purchased to supplement the family labor pool in the fields, with family and slave working side-by-side. The Creoles were scandalized.

But we digress -- back to the "amorous affairs". While the Creole men were out plowing their way through the female slave quarters, some of their neglected Creole wives took lovers from among the young Acadian bachelors. The cuckolded husbands frequently found out, with occasional violent results.

One month after MAGDELEINE secured her public apology from Croizét, another member of the extended Breaux family found his way into the correspondence between local commandant Judice and Governor Ungaza. (NFS: We have been unable to determine exactly which Jean-Baptiste Breaux is involved, but it appears he is either the son of ALEXIS’s cousin, Simon, (in which case he would have been 19-years-old) or cousin Felix, age unknown.) At any rate, a French surgeon named Sieur Bertonville returned home one day in June to find his wife in flagrante delecto with young Baptiste Breaux. According to Juice,

"...when Sieur Bertonville entered his home and witnessed this
ugly spectacle, he became enraged. He got his musket, placed the gun
barrel against his wife’s body and would have killed her, as well as the
boy if the gun had fired, but fortunately it misfired. The boy and the
worthless woman saved themselves, each running in opposite directions,
one holding his pants in his hands, and the other her skirt...!"

We are now just two generations away from the waist of our hourglass, where EDOUARD and CELESTINE come together to produce the extraordinary LEONTINE, the focal point of so many of our family memories and source of such wonder stories. Much would change in our family during those intervening years -- intermarriage between Creoles and the river Acadians would soften the old animosities, French vs. Acadian distinctions would blur as both became citizens of a new nation in 1776 and a new State in 1812. (One of Louisiana’s first two senators would be a river Acadian named Joseph Landry, the son of the Joseph Landry who shared a Maryland exile with the Breauxs.)

On the plains and in the bayous, Acadians carried the heart of their distinct culture well into the 20th century: In July of 1980, a U.S. Supreme Court decision (James Roach vs. Dresser Industries) declared that Louisiana’s 500,000 Cajuns were indeed a distinct cultural nationality and were thus protected under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act from being called a "coon-ass" by a Texas boss. As mentioned earlier these Acadians rejected slavery and simply moved away from the Creoles who resented their presence.

To On The Shoulders Of Giants Part 5

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