(French) One who had charge of the arsenal where weapons were stored.

Most members of the Arceneaux clan in Louisiana are of Acadian ancestry, descendants of Pierre Arsenault who arrived in Port Royal, Acadia, from France in 1671 and who helped establish a settlement at Beaubassin in that colony.* In 1765 and ensuing years several Arceneaux refugee families, all from Beaubassin and all descendants of Pierre, arrived in Louisiana, settling along the Mississippi in St. James Parish. Prior to the Acadian influx, however, an Arsenault family headed by Michel (m.

Marie-Anne André), a native of Cap de Madeleine near Quebec, was living on the German Coast (St. John the Baptist Parish) at least by 1752.

Thus, although most of the Louisiana Arceneauxs descend from the Acadians, some may trace ancestry from the Canadian source.

The Louisiana census of 1766 listed four Arceneaux families of Acadian origin living in St. James: two brothers, Jean (m. Judith Bergeron) and Joseph (m. Marie Bergeron); and two others, probably cousins: Pierre (m.

Marie Lincourt) and Pierre (m. Anne Bergeron).

All four may have been among the refugees led by Joseph Broussard who arrived in New Orleans in 1765 via St.

Domingue (Haiti), West Indies. Two other Arceneaux families from Acadia apparently arrived later, also settling in St. James: Pierre (m. Marie Bergeron) and Joseph (m. Marie Dupuy).

Several of these families and their descendants remained along the Mississippi as small farmers from whom today's Arceneauxs of St. James and Ascension parishes trace ancestry.

Others moved from the Mississippi to the Attakapas or to the Lafourche during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, establishing the Arceneaux name in those areas.

The Pierre Arceneaux married to Anne Bergeron was one of the several Acadians who in 1765 signed an agreement with the stockman Antoine Bernard Dautrive to raise cattle in the Attakapas.

Although at that time Pierre was granted land in the vicinity of Carencro, north of present Lafayette, he did not move his family there until 1787.

Settling on the edge of the prairies overlooking upper Bayou Vermilion (Arceneaux Settlement), Pierre and his five sons (Louis, Cyprien, Alexandre, Pierre, Jr., and François) were among the leading stockmen-farmers of the Attakapas at the end of the eighteenth century. By the time of his death in 1793, Pierre, Sr., owned a herd of 400 cattle in the Carencro prairies.

His sons obtained land for cattle also in the prairies adjacent to the lower Bayou Plaquemine Brulée near present Crowley.

The Pierre Arceneaux married to Marie Lincourt died about 1768, leaving two sons, Pierre, Jr., and Eusèbe.

Pierre, Jr. (m. 1787 Angélique Bourgeois), remained on the Mississippi until about 1797, when he moved his family to the Attakapas, apparently settling along the Teche near St. Martinville;11 before the Civil War three of his four sons had established homesteads along the Teche, Valentin around Breaux Bridge, Pierre III near New Iberia, and Alexandre near Charenton in St. Mary Parish.

Today's concentration of Arceneaux families in Lafayette, St. Martin, and Acadia parishes (nearly a third of the total households of that name in the state) is represented largely by descendants of the two original Acadian Pierres and their several sons.

Early settlement of the Arceneauxs in Louisiana is further complicated by the movement of some families into the Lafourche area. Eusèbe, second son of the PierreMarie Lincourt union, was taken to the Chetimaches settlement (Donaldsonville) after his mother remarried (Basile Préjean).

There, Eusèbe (m. Rosalie Bergeron) reared a large famly whose members settled in various parts of Assumption Parish.

Eusèbe's nephew, Nicolas Arceneaux, son of Pierre, Jr., mentioned above, established the family name on the lower Lafourche, in the 1820s settling near present Lockport, where many of his descendants remain today.

Finally, Gabriel Arceneaux, a son of the Canadian, Michel, after marriage to Catherine LeBoeuf in 1796, moved from the Mississippi to the Lafourche, taking up land near Houma and along Bayou Black in Terrebonne Parish, where his sons Hubert and Norbert also settled