INTRODUCTION

The city of Broussard, Louisiana, is located off Highway 90, a major transportation artery through the Gulf Coast. In addition, it is in two parishes, Lafayette and St. Martin, which is one of 22 parishes recognized on June 6, 1971, by the Louisiana State Legislature along with other parishes of similar cultural environments, as the Heart of Acadiana.

Broussard lies on a floodplain of one of the old meandering courses of the Mississippi River. The town’s roots sprouted in 1765, a gift from Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard, exiled sharpshooter and guerrilla fighter, and his followers, creating a wonderful legacy for generations to come with joie de vivre, food, music, culture, and arts. Its Francophone population of 9,382 oozes with Southern hospitality and charm, combining growth opportunities with cutting-edge 21st-century technology. In the year 2010, Broussard gained national recognition for its rapidly growing commercial expansions.

The State of Louisiana announced plans in 2014 to widen and construct a two-mile segment of I-49 South from north of Ambassador Caffery Parkway to Albertsons Parkway, the two main major arteries for commercial and residential building in the area. Work has begun on the project, and when completed, the entire section of infrastructure will have six lanes with frontage roads stretching to the neighboring Iberia Parish line.

Broussard, Louisiana, is the only city in Louisiana that does not have city property taxes, making it a great place to build, live, work, and play. Mayor Charles E. Langlinais’s $17-million recreational project, St. Julien Park, will be located next to substantial acreage that will draw interest to restaurants, hotels, and retail businesses.

Set on a backdrop of 125-plus acres of rugged landscape, St. Julien Park took a substantial design effort to incorporate the rolling terrain into the final design plans. Phase 1 is underway and will offer a chance for youth and adults alike to play together in a state-of-the-art facility with the most up-to-date and safe equipment. It is likely that St. Julien Park will become a regional draw for competitive sports teams and their families. Patrick St. Julien lives across the road from the St. Julien Park, named after distant relatives, and he looks forward to watching his grandchildren play on the soccer and baseball fields. The Broussard brothers, Joseph “Beausoleil” and Alexandre, would be very proud to see how prosperous the once frozen hills of Côte Gelée have become.

The book would not be complete without mentioning the New Acadia Project (NAP) grassroots undertaking, a multidisciplinary, historical, and ethnographic initiative to fill a 10-year gap in history. NAP is based out of Louisiana Public Archeology Laboratories and is a cooperative between the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and NAP Steering Committee, headed by Mark A. Rees, PhD. Their goal is to locate some 64 Acadie graves they believe could be in the Jeanerette area near Fausse Point. Now, 250 years later, there is the possibility of finding the graves of Acadie émigré’s Beausoleil, his brother, Alexandre, and other settlers who succumbed to yellow fever shortly after settling along the Teche Ridge in 1765.

This contribution to the Images of America series pays tribute to the spirit of the Acadians. However, despite Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard’s wits and skills, the Acadian resistance to the British failed. Through Beausoleil’s exploits, his group of fighters held back the British along the Petitcodiac River until 1768. The British cleared Acadie, leaving the lush and fertile land bare. Beausoleil Broussard, Alexandre Broussard, Jean Basque, and Simon Martin delivered a petition to the British at Fort Cumberland on November 16, 1759, relinquishing the fight rather than face the prospect of starvation. Jean Basque and Michel Bourg led another group of starving Acadians to the fort a few days later. The Acadians that were sent to Halifax were freed in 1763 when the hostilities ended. After the Treaty of Paris, about 1,700 prisoners chose to remain in Nova Scotia.

The British drove the Acadians from their homes and deported them to foreign ports on both sides of the Atlantic; Beausoleil Broussard and his band of followers were in the second group of families escaping the first wave of deportation 250 years ago. They chartered a schooner in 1764 headed to Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, then went up the mouth of the Mississippi River, intending to settle in Illinois. However, in November 1764, another enemy, tropical heat, fever, and epidemic plagues, wreaked havoc on the passengers, with only 200 Acadian survivors arriving in Louisiana in February 1765, having received permission to settle at Louisiana Poste des Attakapas.

Although French trappers, traders, and Indians lived in and around the Côte Gelée area prior to 1765, it was not until the exiled Acadians began arriving in southwest Louisiana at Poste des Attakapas that permanent settlement began. In April 1765, Beausoleil Broussard’s group reached the Poste des Attakapas, one of two outposts divided by two districts west of the Atchafalaya Basin in south Louisiana. It consisted of a small store, chapel, and pitiful barracks for the 14 soldiers garrisoned in the area known today as St. Martinville.

Antoine Bernard d’Autrieve obtained a land grant in 1760 and contracted with eight of the Acadians to sharecrop cattle for a six-year tenure in exchange for land and half of the livestock increase. But when Beausoleil Broussard and his band got to d’Autrieve’s land on the east side of Bayou Teche, their neighbors treated them as interlopers, although they had a voice as to where they would eventually settle. The leader earned the moniker Beausoleil for his and his people’s round smiling faces and willingness to work.

Around the same time, Beausoleil Broussard received a commission with the Louisiana militia as commandant of the Acadians, to assist and direct Louis Audry, Louisiana’s military engineer, with the continued settlement, as another 38 families, including Comeaux, Landry, Breaux, Girouard, Menard, and LeBlanc, settled into the area. These Acadians’ descendants continue to influence Broussard’s 21st-century development.

Three months shy of settling in Broussardville, Alexandre Broussard died in September 1765, a victim of the plague from the fever-ridden island from whence they migrated. His brother Beausoleil continued to direct and assist with the regrouping and settlement of the Acadians in Côte Gelée until his own death on October 20, 1765, a scant 13 days after Alexandre’s. Valsin Broussard, a mail carrier and descendant of Alexandre Broussard, is given credit with the early development of Broussardville, later renamed Broussard.

In the early 1800s, the St. Julien and Billeaud families, French émigrés, began arriving in Louisiana, settling in the Côte Gelée area. Pierre Jean Billeaud, a wheelwright and blacksmith, immigrated from Bourgneuf, France, settling in Vermilionville, Louisiana, the present-day Lafayette, in 1840.

Billeaud passed on his skills to his youngest son, Martial François Billeaud, born in 1836, and he started his own forge and blacksmith shop, where the Acadiana Hotel now stands on Pinhook Road. Martial François Billeaud settled in Lafayette Parish in 1850 and by 1914 built the Billeaud Sugar Mill. He married Lucille St. Julien and leased land from his father-in-law, Gustave St. Julien, to grow sugarcane at a time when cotton was the major crop and sugarcane was just gaining popularity.