Rick wrote:Curious if you've ever looked for your Comeaux's on the listing in St. Martinsville? Seems a popular pilgrimage.
One of the fun things I've found about the Cajuns is that most any time or place two meet, they start digging into their genealogies and find they're somehow cousins.
My sister did a good bit of research on our family history and found our ancestors had settled along the Bayou Teche near Port Barre. So, I'd assume some made it to St. Martinsville as well. My mom's maiden name was Comeaux and my sister discovered that her and my dad were distant cousins. I always say that I'm a pure breed. I'd like to know how many times I was asked for my mom's maiden name when I was young when filling out forms and such and the reply was no, her maiden name.
I live in what's called Prairie Basse, or low prairie. My house is about a mile or so from a much higher ridge that was once the banks of the Mississippi river flood plain. We are also 12 miles due west of the western levee of the Atchafalaya basin. In the flood of 1927 when the levees failed on the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers to our north there was said to be 4' of water here at my place. I live on the inherited farm property of my grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side, Athanase and Adelle Comeaux. My grandparents on my dad's side were Luce and Azelie Comeaux. They had a dairy farm just a few miles from here.
We had an ancestor that was a major figure in Port Barre. He owned a steamboat shipping company.... I could go on and on.
This is a link to an article on the flood.
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/90-y ... -612915394Bayou Teche (Louisiana French: Bayou Têche) is a 125-mile-long (201 km)[1] waterway in south central Louisiana in the United States. Bayou Teche was the Mississippi River's main course when it developed a delta about 2,800 to 4,500 years ago. Through a natural process known as deltaic switching, the river's deposits of silt and sediment cause the Mississippi to change its course every thousand years or so.
History
The Teche begins in Port Barre where it draws water from Bayou Courtableau and then flows southward to meet the Lower Atchafalaya River at Patterson. During the 18th-century Acadian migration to the area - then known as the Attakapas region - the Teche was the primary means of transportation.[2]
The 14 January gunboat engagement
The second engagement occurred on 14 January 1863. Union general Godfrey Weitzel learned that the J. A. Cotton was planning an attack on Weitzel's forces at Berwick Bay, Louisiana. Once again Kinsman, Calhoun, Estrella and Diana steamed into the Bayou, followed by Union transports. The bayou had been obstructed with debris. The Union gunboats and land-based units engaged the J. A. Cotton and Confederate infantry in rifle pits. During the battle Kinsman hit a mine and unshipped her rudder; the J. A. Cotton was badly damaged, and her crew set her on fire during the night to prevent capture.[3] The Union, however, was unable to hold the Teche, necessitating two more invasions of the Teche country in 1863 and 1864.
After the levees were built along the Atachafalaya River in the 1930s, the Teche and the rice farms located along the bayou suffered a drastic reduction in fresh water. Between 1976 and 1982, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built a pumping station at Krotz Springs to pump water from the Atchafalaya River into Bayou Courtableau.
The etymology of the name "Teche" is uncertain. One hypothesis is that it comes from "tenche", a Chitimacha Indian word meaning "snake", related to the bayou's twists and turns resembling a snake's movement. The Chitimacha tell an ancient story of how the snake attacked their villages, and it took many warriors many years to kill it. Where the huge carcass lay and decomposed, the depression it left behind filled with water to become the bayou.[4] Alternatively, George R. Stewart asserts that it is "probably a French rendering of Deutsch, the name by which the German colonists of the area would have named their stream. Cf. Allemand ['German']."[5]
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2024 4:06 pm
