Today the surname Savoie or Savoy1* is found throughout southern Louisiana with concentrations along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the lower Bayou Lafourche, and in the upper Teche-Opelousas area. Like that of many surnames of Acadian provenience, the present distribution reflects early settlement of Savoie families, all refugees of the 1755 Expulsion from their homeland.

At the time of the Expulsion the large number of Savoie households in Acadia traced ancestry to a single progenitor-François Savoie, native of Martaizé, Poitou Province in France, who emigrated to Port Royal ca. 1643 (m. 1652 Catherine Lejeune).

Although after 1755 most of his descendants were exiled to various points along the Atlantic seaboard of British North America, at least six of his great-grandsons found their way to Louisiana, probably arriving in 1765 with a shipload of Acadian refugees from Halifax.

All six first settled along the Mississippi in St. James Parish. The group consisted of (1) two brothers, Charles (m. 1761 Judith Arsenault) and Joseph (m. ca. 1752 Anne Préjean), both sons of François Savoie and Marie Richard of Port Royal, and (2) four brothers, sons of Paul Savoie and Judith Michel of Chipoudy, Acadia: Charles (m. ca. 1754 Anne Thibodeaux), François (m. 1760 Anne Thibodeaux, widow of Charles?), Pierre (m. 1772 Louise Bourg), and Jean dit Valois (m. ca. 1773 Marguerite Bordelon).

Few of the original Savoie brothers and their descendants remained in St. James, most migrating to either Opelousas and Attakapas districts or to Bayou Lafourche.

Both Charles (m. Anne Thibodeaux) and his cousin Joseph died soon after arrival in Louisiana; perhaps only one son of Charles with Judith Arsenault, Simon-Pierre (m. 1802 Rosalie Duhon), and his descendants carried on the Savoie name in St. James.

Soon after coming to Louisiana the younger Savoie brothers, Pierre and Jean dit Valois, moved to the Opelousas prairies to engage in stock raising.

Pierre settled on Bayou Mallet, Faquetaique prairie, and by 1777 owned 60 cattle and 12 horses;7 his descendants established the Savoie name around Eunice and Church Point.

His brother Jean settled in the Grand Coteau-Carencro area,9 and with other members ofthe clan, such as François, Jr. (son of François with Anne Thibodeaux, m.

1792 Appoline Poitier), made that area one of the main Savoie strongholds of the state through their many descendants.

In 1769 François Savoie, Sr., after his fourth marriage (to Marie Martin), moved from St. James to the Attakapas. There, mainly through his son Hypolite (m.

1800 Marie-Victoire Guilbault), the Savoie name was established along Bayou Teche and in the Côte Gelée area around present Youngsville.

Today about 30 percent of the state's Savoie households live in the TecheOpelousas area.

One of the original six Savoie Acadian refugees in Louisiana-Charles and wife Judith Arsenault-produced four sons, three of whom by 1795 had left St.

James Parish to settle along Bayou Lafourche.

Of these, Amadée (m. 1790 Victoire Bourgeois) ca. 1800 moved farther west into the lower Teche, adding to the Savoie families already living in the Attakapas.

However, his brothers, Joseph (m. 1794 Marie-Françoise Bergeron) and Jean-Baptiste (m. 1796 Rose Landry) remained in the Lafourche area.

It was especially Joseph who, with his five sons, began the largest line of Savoies along the bayou. By the 1890s, twenty-six of his great-grandsons had made homes chiefly from Lockport to beyond Larose,17 most of them probably small farmers, fishermen, or trappers. Others of this line, as well as descendants of Jean-Baptiste and Rose Landry, settled in Terrebonne Parish, some around Houma, others on Bayou Terrebonne as far south as Montegut and Pointe-aux-Chênes