This surname is derived from a nickname. 'Blanchard.' Old French llanchart, whitish. A sobriquet of complexion, and probably used as a fontal name. It was used as the name for a white horse; compare Bayard, for a bay horse.

'Uppon my stede blanchard thu ridest here.' c. 1440, Generydes (H.E.D).

Nicholas Blaunchard, Lancashire, 1332: Lay Subsidy (Rylands).

Gilbert Blanchard, Lincolnshire, Henry III-Edward I: Testa de Nevill, sive Liber Feodorum, temp. Henry III-Edward I.

William Blamchard (sic), Somerset, 1 Edward III: Kirby's Quest.

William Blaunchard, Wiltshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Reginald Blanchard, Yorkshire, ibid.

Robert Blaunchard, Lincolnshire , ibid.

Willelmus Blaunchard, 1379: Poll Tax of Yorkshire.

Elena Blaunchard, 1379: ibid.

1587. Buried — Ann Blanket: Kensington Church.

This last form is imitative, and still lives.

= Blanch (q.v.) + the French in- tens. (or diminutive) suff. -ard. [Teutonic hard/t, hard.]

(French, English) Descendant of Blanchard (white, hard); dweller at the sign of the blanchard (white horse); the light-complexioned or white-haired man.

Cotgrave says, "an order of Friers, who goe ordinarily in white sheets." It had most likely a wider application, to any person who affected white raiment. See Jamieson.

Ralph and William Blanchart were of Normandy, 1180- 95 (Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae). Richard Blanchard, 12th century, witnessed a charter of Roger de Montbegon, York (Mon. ii. 662). Ponce B. held twelve fees in Hants, granted by Richard I., and Gilbert and William B. had estates, Lincoln (Testa de Neville).

(E. and F.), White-complexioned. Blanchteste (French), White head. BlancKe (D. and G.), White.

As a patronym Blanchard occurs among people of either Anglo or French descent,* thus accounting, in part, for its widespread distribution today in Louisiana. Most of the Blanchard families of the northern and central parts of the state are probably of English origin, whereas those of the southern section have French roots.

An example of an Anglo Blanchard family is that descendant from Thomas Blanchard of New England and his wife Amy Newton of Virginia.

After the death of her husband, in 1824 Mrs. Blanchard and her five surviving children (four sons and one daughter) migrated from Virginia to Louisiana, settling in the northern part of Rapides Parish on Bayou Jean de Jean. There the family founded the Roselawn Plantation, and through two of the sons, Edward and Cary H. and their descendants, the Blanchard name was well established along the Red River from Alexandria to Shreveport.

Louisiana's thirty-third governor (1904-8), Newton C. Blanchard (son of Carey H.), was a product of this particular Anglo family.

Other Blanchards of Anglo origin may have settled in the southern part of the state.

Most of the Blanchards of southern Louisiana, however, descend from French ancestors. Early in the 1700s the French government sent several males of that name to the colony, including workers, soldiers, and criminals, but probably few of these formed families.

It remained for Acadian refugees who entered the colony during the last half of the eighteenth century to establish the Blanchard name in southern Louisiana. In Acadia, before the 1755 Expulsion, the Blanchards formed a large clan of many lines. All descended from a single progenitor, Guillaume Blanchard, native of Martaizé, Poitou Province, France, who arrived in Acadia with his wife Huguette Poirier and son Jean sometime before 1640.

As a result of the 1755 Expulsion the Blanchard families, like their compatriots, were scattered to various parts of the British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard; some of those exiled to Maryland and South Carolina eventually reached Louisiana. Other families were taken as prisoners to England and then shipped to France; some of these and their descendants finally joined their relatives in Louisiana in 1785.

The 1766 census of Louisiana listed five Acadian Blanchards living along the Mississippi in St. James Parish.

Among these at least two, Amable (m. ca. 1763 Nathalie Girourd) and Joseph-Pierre (m. 1769 Anne Bourgeois) had arrived probably that same year from South Carolina, where their parents (Pierre Blanchard and Anne Robichaux) had been exiled earlier; also listed were Joseph and Pierre Blanchard (sons of Paul Blanchard and Judith Savoie), but their immediate provenience is uncertain.

In 1767 three Blanchard families arrived from Maryland-René (great-grandson of Guillaume the Acadian progenitor), wife Marguerite Thériot, and their two adult sons, Joseph (m. ca. 1758 Marie-Josephe Landry) and Anselme (m. Esther LeBlanc); all settled with the rest of the Maryland contingent at St. Gabriel d'Iberville on the Mississippi.

Apparently, most of the descendants of both the St. James and St. Gabriel Blanchards were living along the river during the early 1800s,11 but one, Frédéric (m. 1800 Anne Berteau), son of Joseph and Anne Bourgeois of St. James, ca. 1815 moved his family to the northern part of the Attakapas, where he and his six sons began a long line of Blanchards, especially in the Grand Coteau and Church Point areas.

Still another son, Maurice (m. 1800 Marie Fontenot) ca. 1818 left St.

James for the Lafourche, settling below Thibodeauxville, where he and his sons established a branch of the Blanchards now living in Terrebonne Parish and along the lower Lafourche.

In 1785, five Blanchard families arrived in Louisiana with the large group of Acadian refugees from France.

All of these Blanchards were sent to the upper Lafourche-Anne Hébert (widow of Joseph Blanchard) with four sons (Laurent, Pierre, Moîse, and Étie) and two daughters; Jean-Grégoire, wife Marie Livois, two sons (Jean-Baptiste and Pierre-Charles), and two daughters; Charles, widower, with two sons (Sonillac and Charles, Jr.); François, wife Hélène Giroir, one son (Joseph), and three daughters; Bélony with wife Madeleine Forest, two sons (Bélony, Jr., and Joachim) and four daughters.

From these refugees stem a large part of the Blanchards who today live in Assumption, Lafourche, and Terrebonne parishes. Although most of the original settlers remained along the upper Bayou Lafourche, by the 1820s the six sons of Bélony, Jr. (m. Marguerite Trahan) had moved into Terrebonne Parish, settling as small farmers and fishermen along Bayous Terrebonne, Petit Caillou, and du Large

The name of Blanchard or Blanshard, which also occurs in the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, has long been in the county of Lincoln. John Blauncherde of Lowthe gave £25 for the defence of his country at the time of the expected invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (Sp.). Long before this, in the reign of Edward I., we find the name of Blaunchard in the county (H. R.); in the reign of Henry III. the name also occurred in Wilts (H. R.), and, in fact, Blanchard or Blaunchard is also an old Wiltshire name, occurring in the hundred of Warminster in the 16th century (Hoare's "Wiltshire").