APPENDICES

Acadians Who Found Refuge in Louisiana, February 1764-early 1800s

[lah-GRESS]

LOUISIANA: WESTERN SETTLEMENTS

According to the Acadian Memorial at St. Martinville, Louisiana, Pierre Lagresse was Acadian. He came to Louisiana in February 1765 with the party from Halifax via St.-Domingue, today's Haiti, led by Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil. Pierre died at Attakapas, where the Broussard party had settled, only a few months after he arrived in the colony, a victim of the mysterious epidemic that killed dozens of his fellow Acadians. He must have been a notable member of the Broussard party because he appears on the list of Acadians who exchanged Canadian card money in New Orleans two months after they reached New Orleans. Fellow Attakapas Acadian Jean-Baptiste Semer mentions one La Greze, probably Pierre, in an April 1766 letter to his father in France.

CONCLUSION

Evidently Pierre Lagresse was not married when he came to Louisiana, so his branch of this family did not take root in the Bayou State.

The family's name also is spelled Lagrese, La Greze.

Sources: [see below]

Settlement Abbreviations
(present-day parishes that existed during the War Between the States in parenthesis; hyperlinks on the abbreviations take you to brief histories of each settlement):

Asc	Ascension	Lf	Lafourche (Lafourche, Terrebonne)	PCP	Pointe Coupée
Asp	Assumption	Natc	Natchitoches (Natchitoches)	SB	San Bernardo (St. Bernard)
Atk	Attakapas (St. Martin, St. Mary, Lafayette, Vermilion)	Natz	San Luìs de Natchez (Concordia)	StG	St.-Gabriel d'Iberville (Iberville)
BdE	Bayou des Écores (East Baton Rouge, West Feliciana)	NO	New Orleans (Orleans)	StJ	St.-Jacques de Cabanocé (St. James)
BR	Baton Rouge (East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge)	Op	Opelousas (St. Landry, Calcasieu)

For a chronology of Acadian Arrivals in Louisiana, 1764-early 1800s, see Appendix.

The hyperlink attached to an individual's name is connected to a list of Acadian immigrants for a particular settlement and provides a different perspective on the refugee's place in family and community.

Name	Arrived	Settled	Profile
Pierre LAGRESSE 01	Feb 1765	Atk	arrived LA Feb 1765 with party from Halifax via St.-Domingue led by Joseph BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil; on list of Acadians who exchanged card money in New Orleans, Apr 1765, called Pierre LAGRESE; died Attakapas 31 Jul 1765, buried the next day

NOTES

01. Wall of Names, 19, calls him Pierre LAGRESSE.

I have not found this family in either Arsenault, Généalogie, or White, DGFA-1, so I must assume that the researchers at the Acadian Memorial have found an Acadian origin for Pierre LAGRESSE that eludes me. His death/burial record in Hebert, D., Southwest LA Records, 1-A:465 (SM Ch.: v.1, p.9; SM Ch.: Slave Funeral Register v.1, #10), does not give his first name, only his surname; one record says he died on 1 Aug & was buried 31 Jul, the other vice-versa, the one I use here of course. Unfortunately, Fr. Jean-François de CIVRAY, the priest ministering to the Acadians at Attakapas at the time, did not bother to record Pierre's parents' names or give his age at the time of his death. Since he appears on the list of Acadians who exchanged card money in New Orleans in Apr 1765, he probably was a man of means & likely in his middle age or even elderly. Fellow Attakapas Acadian Jean-Baptiste SEMER mentions one LA GREZE, probably Pierre, in an Apr1766 letter to SEMER's father in France; this only emphasizes Pierre's stature among the Attakapas Acadians. See Mouhot, ed., "Letter by Jean-Baptiste Semer," p. 223.

A notation at the bottom of <thecajuns.com/cardmoney.htm>, written by genealogist/historian/web host Stanley LeBlanc, reads: "Pierre LAGRÉSE was initially interpreted as Pierre LÉGÈRE. Stephen A. White thought that it was Pierre LAGRÉVE; however, Roger Rozendal's research indicates that it was Pierre LAGRÉSE."

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