APPENDICES

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

LAMOUREAUX

[la-more-ROH]

ACADIA

In c1693, at Plaisance, Newfoundland, then part of greater Acadia, Jean Lamoureux dit Rochefort, born in Rochefort, France, in c1664, married Marie-Madeleine, daughter of Abraham Pichot.  Jean was a fisherman and served as a major of the Plaisance militia before moving to Louisbourg on Île Royale, today's Cape Breton Island, where his family resided from c1715 to the mid-1720s.  According to the many censuses taken at Louisbourg during those years, Marie-Madeleine died before 1719, and Jean, who never remarried, became a prominent fisherman/merchant with many boats and helpers.  In 1726, he was counted at L'Indienne on Île Royale with one domestic servant, 36 sailors and fishermen in his employ, 6 chaloups, and a bateau ou goélette en pêche, which in that day was a respectable-sized fishing vessel.  By 1734, he and his children had moved again, this time to Havre-St.-Pierre on Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island.  Jean dit Rochefort died at St.-Pierre-du-Nord, Île St.-John, in September 1739, age 75.  During their life together, he and Marie-Madeleine had five children, four daughters and a son, all of whom survived childhood, married, and created families of their own:  

Son Jean-Baptiste dit Rochefort, born at Plaisance in c1704, married Marie-Claire, daughter of Jean Potier, at Saint-Pierre-du-Nord in July 1740, soon after his father died.  Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Claire had at least five children, including four sons, all born on Île St.-Jean:  Jean-Baptiste, fils, born in May 1741, Louis in October 1742, Francois in c1750, and Martin in November 1753.  

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Meanwhile, Pierre Lamoureaux, born at Poitiers, France, in 1732, probably no kin to Jean dit Rochefort, died at Louisbourg in 1754; he was only 22 years old.  He does not seem to have left a family in Acadia.

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

When the British rounded up the Acadians in Nova Scotia in the fall of 1755, the Acadians on Île St.-Jean, including the Lamoureauxs, were safe for now because they lived in territory controlled by France.  Their respite from British oppression was a short one, however.  After the fall of the French fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758, the victorious British rounded up most of the Acadians on Île St.-Jean and deported them to France.  

Jean-Baptiste Lamoureaux dit Rochefort died at St.-Pierre-du-Nord in May 1758, age 54, just before Le Grand Dérangement caught up to him and his family.  The British deported his widow and children from Île St.-Jean aboard an English transport that sailed first to Portsmouth, England, and then on to Cherbourg in Normandy, while most of the other island Acadians sailed straight to St.-Malo.  

Jean-Baptiste dit Rochefort's older sons both married fellow Acadians in Cherbourg.  Jean-Baptiste, fils married Marie Bertrand at Trés-Ste.-Trinité in October 1763.  Louis, who became a sailor, married Marie, daughter of Jean Hébert, at Trés-Ste.-Trinité in August 1763.  Louis and Marie's son Jean-Louis was born at Cherbourg in c1765.  Eight years later, in 1773, despite Louis's occupation as a sailor, he and Marie became part of an attempt to settle Acadians from the port cities on a nobleman's land in the Poitou region.  There, a daughter, Marie-Adélaïde, was born to them.  By late 1775, the Poitou venture having failed, Louis and his family joined other Poitou Acadians in their retreat to the port city of Nantes.  

In the early 1780s, the Spanish government offered the Acadians in France the chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana.  Louis and Marie, weary of life in the mother country, agreed to take it.

LOUISIANA:  RIVER SETTLEMENTS

Louis Lamoureaux dit Rochefort, his wife, Marie Hébert, and their children--Jean-Louis, age 20, and Marie-Adélaïde, age 10--booked passage aboard L'Amitié, the fifth of the Seven Ships of 1785, but for some reason they did not take that ship to Louisiana.  They sailed, instead, on La Caroline, the last of the Seven Ships, which reached New Orleans in mid-December 1785.  After a brief respite in the city, they chose to settle in the Acadian community of St.-Jacques, now St. James Parish, on the river above the city.  

No member of this family appears in the church records of South Louisiana, so the Acadian line of the family never took root in the Bayou State.  

NON-ACADIAN FAMILIES in LOUISIANA

Lamoureaux is a fairly common name in France, but the name was not common in Louisiana.  Most, if not all, of the Lamoureauxs of South Louisiana are descended not from an Acadian but from a Foreign Frenchman who came to the Bayou State during the antebellum period:  

Anne-Marie, daughter of Jean-Baptiste Lamoureaux, was baptized at New Orleans in February 1730.  

Descendants of Louis-Ambroise LAMOUREAUX (1799-1849)

One searches the church and civil and records of South Louisiana in vain for another reference to the name until the early 1800s, when 27-year-old Louis Ambroise Lamoureaux of Binic, Côtes-du-Nord, France, married 17-year-old Adèle Julie or Julie Adèle, daughter of Acadian Jean Joseph Boudreaux, at the Thibodauxville church, Lafourche Interior Parish, in July 1826.  Their daughter married a Boudreaux cousin.  Louis Ambroise remarried to another Acadian, Azélie Adélaïde, called Adélaïde, daughter of Hippolyte LeBlanc and widow of Joseph Eugène Aucoin, in a civil ceremony in Lafourche Interior Parish in June 1840; Louis Ambroise was 41 years old at the time of the wedding.  Adélaïde gave him another daughter, who married into the Aucoin family, but no more sons.  Louis Ambroise died in Lafourche Interior Parish in December 1849; he was only 50 years old.  Four of his five sons, all by his first wife, settled on upper Bayou Lafourche. 

1

Oldest son Louis Édouard, by his first wife, born in Lafourche Interior Parish in April 1826, married Rosalie or Rose, daughter of Acadian Joseph Daigle, at the Thibodaux church, Lafourche Interior Parish, in February 1846.  Their son Émile Adam Cosoff was born in Lafourche Interior Parish in September 1849 but died at age 4 in March 1853.  In December 1850, the federal census taker in Lafourche Interior Parish counted a single slave--an 18-year-old black female--on Louis E. Lamoureux's farm.

2

Jean Joseph, called Joseph, by his first wife, born in Lafourche Interior Parish in June 1829, married Lea, daughter of Léandre Bannon Thibodaux and widow of Sylvain Pontiff, in a civil ceremony in Terrebonne Parish in September 1848, and sanctified the marriage at the Thibodaux church, Lafourche Interior Parish, in May 1850; Lea was a granddaughter of former Louisiana governor Henry Schuyler Thibodaux.

3

René Adrien, by his first wife, born in Lafourche Interior Parish in November 1830, married Marie Sylvanie, called Sylvanie, daughter of Acadian Pierre Lamant Lejeune, at the Thibodaux church, Lafourche Interior Parish, in June 1851.  Their son Joseph Adrien was born in Lafourche Parish in May 1855, and Charles Édouard in April 1868.  

4

Jean Édouard, called Édouard or Edward, by his first wife, born in Lafourche Interior Parish in June 1833, married Antoinette Folse probably in the early 1850s.  Their son Jean Ernest Simple was born in Assumption Parish in December 1854.

5

Youngest son Pierre Jules, by his first wife, born in Lafourche Interior Parish in c1837, died at age 2 1/2 in May 1840. 

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Other Foreign-French Lamoureauxs came to Louisiana during the antebellum period.  They probably remained in the New Orleans area:

Jean-François Lamoureaux, a 39-year-old merchant from France, reached New Orleans aboard the ship Luminary out of Cayenne, South America, in December 1820.  With him was his unnamed wife, age 30, and three daughters, also unnamed, only one of them with a recorded age--she was 7. 

Henri Lamouroux, a 33-year-old proprietor from France, reached New Orleans aboard the ship Jane Gladdin out of Le Havre, France, in June 1849.  He was heading to Tennessee. 

CONCLUSION

Louis Lamoureaux dit Rochefort and wife Marie Hébert brought a grown son and a young daughter to Louisiana from France in 1785.  Neither the son nor the daughter seems to have married, so the Acadian branch of this family did not take root in the Bayou State. 

The Lamoureauxs of South Louisiana likely are descended from a Foreign Frenchman, Louis-Ambroise, who came to Louisiana in the 1820s.  He married twice, each time to an Acadian, in 1826 and 1840.  Four of his five sons, all from his first wife, created families of their own.  Three of them also married Acadians.  One of them owned a single slave in the decades before the War Between the States, so the family participated only peripherally in the South's antebellum plantation economy.  No member of the family fought in a Louisiana or Confederate unit during the War Between the States.  Judging by the phone books of Lafourche valley communities today, even this family may have disappeared from the region by the late twentieth century.  

Unlike most Acadian families, the Lamoureauxs spelled their surname with an "x" before they came to Louisiana.  The family's name also is spelled Lamoreaux, Lamoreux, L'Amoureaux, Lamoureux.  

Sources:  1850 U.S. Federal Census, Slave Schedules, Lafourche Interior Parish; Arsenault, Généalogie, 1896, 2122; Brasseaux, Foreign French, 1:315, 3:178; BRDR, vol. 8; Hébert, D., Acadians in Exile, 270; NOAR, vol. 1; Hébert, D., South LA Records, vols. 1, 2, 3, 4; Robichaux, Acadians in Chatellerault, 61-62; White, DGFA-1, 913-14.

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):

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. 

NOTES

01.  Wall of Names, 46 (pl. 12R), calls him Jean-Louis [L'AMOUREAUX], & lists him with his parents & a sister; Robichaux, Acadians in Châtellerault, 61-62, Family No. 120, calls him Jean-Louis [LAMOUREAUX], gives his parents' names, & details the family's participation in the Poitou settlement of the early 1770s; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 70-71, calls him Jean-Louis, son [Louis LAMOUREAUX dit ROCHEFORT's] fils, marin, age 20, on the embarkation list, does not include him on the debarkation list, calls him Jean-Louis LAMOUREAUX, his [Louis LAMOUREAUX dit ROCHEFORT's] son, age 20, on the complete listing, & says he was in the 22nd Family aboard L'Amitié with his parents & a sister.  

As the debarkation list of L'Amitié & the embarkation/debarkation lists of La Caroline reveal, he & his family sailed to LA on the later ship, not the earlier one.  

What happened to him in LA?

02.  Wall of Names, 46 (pl. 12R), calls him Louis L'AMOUREAUX dit Rochefort, & lists him with his wife & 2 children; Robichaux, Acadians in Châtellerault, 61-62, Family No. 120, calls him Louis LAMOUREAUX called ROCHEFORT, details his birth/baptism, does not gives his parents's names but says he was godson of Claude OUDY & Marie CHIASSON, that he was a seaman, details his marriage, including his wife's parents' names, says she was born in c1748 but gives no birthplace, says her father was deceased at the time of the marriage, includes the birth/baptismal record of daughter Marie-Adélaïde, baptized 23 Jun 1774, St.-Jean-L'Evangeliste, Châtellerault, goddaughter of Jean RENAULT & Marie POIRIER, his wife, & details the family's participation in the Poitou settlement of the early 1770s; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 70-71, calls him Louis LAMOUREAUX dit ROCHEFORT, marin, age 44, on the embarkation list, does not include him on the debarkation list, calls him Louis LAMOUREAUX dit ROCHEFORT, sailor, age 44, on the complete listing, says he was in the 22nd Family aboard L'Amitié with his wife & 2 children, details his marriage, gives his wife's but not his parents' names, says they were married in 1763 but gives no place of marriage, & that daughter Adélaïde was born in 1774 but gives no birthplace.  

As the debarkation list of L'Amitié & the embarkation/debarkation lists of La Caroline reveal, he & his family sailed to LA on the later ship, not the earlier one.  

03.  Wall of Names, 46 (pl. 12R), calls her Adélaïde [L'AMOUREAUX], & lists her with her parents & a brother; Robichaux, Acadians in Châtellerault, 61-62, Family No. 120, her birth/baptismal record, calls her Marie-Adélaïde LAMOUREAUX, gives her parents' names, says her godparents were Jean RENAULT & Marie POIRIER, his wife, &, calling her Adélaïde, details the family's participation in the Poitou settlement of the early 1770s; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 70-71, calls her Adélaïde, sa [Louis LAMOUREAUX dit ROCHEFORT's] fille, age 10, on the embarkation list, does not include her on the debarkation list, calls her Adélaïde LAMOUREAUX, his [Louis LAMOUREAUX dit ROCHEFORT's] daughter, age 10, on the complete listing, says she was in the 22nd Family aboard L'Amitié with her parents & a brother, & that she was born in 1774 but gives no birthplace.  

As the debarkation list of L'Amitié & the embarkation/debarkation lists of La Caroline reveal, she & her family sailed to LA on the later ship, not the earlier one.  

What happened to her in LA?

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Copyright (c) 2007-12  Steven A. Cormier