Today two-thirds of the relatively small number (292) of Authement households in Louisiana are clustered along the bayous of Terrebonne Parish, where families of that name settled around the beginning of the last century.

Little reliable data exist on the progenitors, but at least two persons named Authement were in the state during the early 1800s-Jérôme of Provence, southern France and Joseph, provenience unknown, but probably an immigrant from France. * Apparently unrelated, these two appear to have been the forebears of most of the Authements now living in Louisiana.

In 1810 Jérôme Authement married Adèle Saunier in St. James Parish and by 1820 was living on Bayou Lafourche near Donaldsonville; the 1820 U.S. Census listed him as an "unnaturalized foreigner'' and "engaged in commerce.

Three years later, after the death of his first wife, Jerome had moved down-bayou toward Thibodeauxville, where he married Marie-Thérèse Faube.

By his first wife Jérôme had two sons, Gaspard and Antoine-Gassien. Gaspard (m. 1840 Basilise Bourg) settled along Bayou Lafourche in the vicinity of Raceland and Lockport, where his five sons and their progeny were reared and remained for the rest of the nineteenth century.

Most were small farmers producing sugarcane and rice as cash crops.

Gaspard's brother, Antoine-Gassien (m. Céleste Naquin, 1860 Rosalie Blanchard), settled with his second wife on Bayou Terrebonne near Montegut.

Jérôme's second wife, Marie-Thérèse Faube, also gave him two sons, Jean-Antoine (m. 1853 Rosalie Henry) and Silvere (m. 1858 Elsina Rivet), both of whom reared their families on Bayou Terrebonne near Montegut.

Joseph, the second progenitor of Louisiana's Authements, around 1820 married Marie-Angélique Lirette at Plattenville on the Lafourche.

His son, Joseph-Auguste (m. 1844 Adèline Forest) continued this line of the Authements in Terrebonne Parish, settling along Bayou Petit Caillou south of Houma.

His eight sons, who in turn produced large families, made homes along the Petit Caillou, Bayou du Large, and Bayou Terrebonne.

Living on the narrow banks of the bayous in close proximity to the backswamp and coastal marshes, likely all of Joseph's sons and their progeny were small farmers, fishermen, and trappers, as are many of their descendants today.

Authement families appear to have remained in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes until late in the last century.

Around 1890 one of Jérôme's grandsons, Gesnaire, who had been living on Bayou Lafourche near Raceland, moved with his wife, Lise Rodrigue, and children to the Teche country. Settling first near Franklin, the family later moved upstream to Jeanerette, where Gesnaire's son, Joseph, married Lea Mendoza in 1895.

The few Authement families who today reside in various parts of southwest Louisiana may descend from Gesnaire's line.

Later, in the present century, other Authements from Bayou Lafourche probably migrated into the New Orleans area, seeking opportunities more remunerative than farming