(French) Descendant of Alcuin (temple, friend).

The Acadian surname Aucoin does not appear in Louisiana until 1785, when 19 families of that name arrived from France with nearly 1,600 other Acadians who had been refugees there for almost 30 years.* Spanish authorities sent about 10 Aucoin families, with many other Acadians, to settle along the "Bayou des Écores" (present Thompson's Creek), a few miles north of Baton Rouge; 6 other Aucoin families went directly to the upper Bayou Lafourche.

Most members of the former group, apparently dissatisfied with farming possibilities at Thompson's Creek, eventually joined their compatriots along the Lafourche, and at least 2 families made their way to the Opelousas area. It appears that the only Aucoin family that remained for any length of time in the Bayou des Écores area was headed by Michel and his wife Élizabeth Hébert. By 1800 most of their children, all born in St. Malo, France, had moved to the Lafourche.

However, one of their grandsons, Augustin Aucoin, took up land at Bayou Sarah, near St. Francisville; according to Fortier, he was the grandfather of Adolph and Kleber Aucoin, prominent citizens of the early twentieth century in the Donaldsonville area.

Among the few early Aucoin families to enter the Opelousas area was Claude and his wife Marguerite Saulnier, two daughters and two sons, Mathurin and Pierre; only Claude was born in Acadia, the rest in St. Malo, France.

The family first settled near Carencro, but by 1800 the sons had acquired properties in the Grande Prairie and along Bayou Mallet, north and west, respectively, of present Opelousas.

By the 1870s, 16 fourth and fifth-generation families of Claude's line occupied farms in the vicinity of Eunice and Ville Platte.

Today probably most of the Aucoins of St. Landry and Evangeline parishes descend from Claude and his family.

In 1789, 6 Aucoin families had settled along the upper Bayou Lafourche, with scores of other Acadians who had come to Louisiana in the 1785 migration.

As it was with so many other families of Acadian origin, the Lafourche area became the main center for the growth and spread of the Aucoin clan. By 1810 the number of Aucoin families along the upper Lafourche had increased to 15, all of whom had land claims confirmed by the U.S.

government.

At that time 3 families from Bayou Lafourche had taken up new lands along Bayou Boeuf, near present Morgan City (where there is still today a large cluster of Aucoin households), and two had penetrated southward to settle along Bayou Terrebonne.

Baptismal and marriage records of the nineteenth century suggest that from the Bayou Boeuf area Aucoin families slowly penetrated northward along Bayou Teche, many taking up land near Franklin and New Iberia. During the 1870s, others settled on the Vermilion River near Lafayette and around Abbeville.

Subsequent migration of Aucoins into the Lake Charles area, the industrial centers of southeastern Texas, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans probably began during World War I and may be still in progress