Among the ten most frequent French surnames in Louisiana, Breaux (and its variant spellings, all pronounced Brō)* occurs throughout the southern part of the state, with concentrations in the Mississippi River parishes, the Teche country, and in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes.

The few individuals of that surname who came to Louisiana during the early years of the colony apparently left no progeny, and the numerous Breaux families in the state today probably all stem from Acadian refugees who arrived during the last half of the eighteenth century.

In Acadia the Breauxs traced ancestry to one Vincent Brault (native of La Chaussée, near Loudun, present Vienne department, France), who arrived in Port Royal in the mid-seventeenth century, where ca. 1661 he married Marie Bourg.

After the Expulsion of 1755 several Breaux families eventually found their way to Louisiana.

The first to arrive (probably in 1765) were Athanase (m.

1761 Marie LeBlanc) and his distant cousin Jean-Baptiste (m. 1752 Marie-Rose Landry), both settling along the Mississippi River in the Acadian Coast.

Probably accompanying those two families was Firmin Brau, a young bachelor, who in 1766 was in the Attakapas, but a few years later returned to the Acadian Coast.

In 1768 some nine Breaux families arrived in Louisiana with other Acadians from Maryland, where they had been exiled after the Expulsion.

Spanish authorities ordered the entire contingent to settle in the Natchez area, but three of the Breauxs, Aléxis (m. 1745 Madeleine Trahan), his brother Honoré, and a cousin Joseph (m.

Marie-Josephe Landry), managed to join their relatives in St. James.

Dissatisfied with conditions at Natchez, other Breauxs eventually settled in the Acadian Coast.

The Acadian Coast parishes of St. James and Ascension, plus adjacent Iberville, thus became the earliest center of the Breaux families in Louisiana. Although during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a large number of them left their Mississippi River farms to settle anew in the Teche country or along Bayou Lafourche, a substantial group remained.

Some of the latter became prosperous antebellum planters, such as one of the grandsons of Aléxis Braud, Edouard (m. 1816 Marie-Rosalie Clouatre). who operated a plantation near Convent in St. James and in 1860 owned 63 slaves.

Across the river in Iberville Parish Jean-Baptiste Breaux (m.

1838 Margarete Walsh) in the 1850s maintained a plantation near Bayou Goula;11 his son, Joseph Arsène Breaux, a lawyer and educator, was chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, 1904-1914.

However, many of the less affluent Breauxs of the Acadian Coast during the early nineteenth century must have sold out to wealthy Anglo planters entering the state at that time. By 1860 more than half of the Breaux farmers of Ascension Parish were living not on the river, but inland on less fertile terrace land around present Gonzales.

Today the concentration of Breauxs in that area probably reflects that inland movement, and in recent years many families of the river parishes may have elected to live in Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

One of the first Breauxs to move from the Mississippi River to the Teche country was Firmin (m. 1769 Marguerite Breau), mentioned above, who in 1777 was listed as a member of the Attakapas militia.

Settling on Bayou Teche in the "La Pointe" area, near present Breaux Bridge, Firmin and his six sons began the largest line of the Breaux clan in southwestern Louisiana.

Most of Firmin's sons and their immediate descendants remained as small farmers between the Teche and Vermilion Bayou and west thereof, including the area known as Grande Prairie northeast of present Lafayette.

Among these sons was Agricole (m. 1813 Scholastique Picou), who was instrumental in constructing a bridge across the Teche at the present site of Breaux Bridge and after whom the town is named; other sons who remained in the area: François (m. 1793 Céleste Dugas), Pierre (m. 1793 Batilde Broussard), Jean-Baptiste (m. 1800 Marie Giroir).

In 1799, however, son Donat (m. 1793 Anastasie Guilbaut) purchased land at Fausse Pointe near present New Iberia, where his descendants took root,18 and son Joseph (m. 1807 Marcellie Carmouche) and his immediate descendants settled in the Carencro Prairie; by the 1850s at least one of his sons, Valentin (m. 1850 Madeleine Guidry), had penetrated into the area around Church Point.

Between 1800 and 1825 at least ten Breaux families from St. James and Ascension parishes-sons and grandsons of the original Acadian refugees—migrated to the Attakapas, some settling along Bayou Vermilion near present Lafayette, others in the Carencro and Grand Coteau areas, a few in the Côte Gelée and along the Teche near Breaux Bridge, St. Martinville, and New Iberia.

Among the migrants was Joseph Breaux (son of Alexis, of St James Parish), who at the age of 55 (1807) took his third wife, Éléonore Landry; settling in the Côte Gelée near present Broussard, he began a long line of descendants21 many of whom today may live in the same area or in nearby Lafayette. Prior to 1880 several Breauxs began to move out of the Teche country into Acadia and Calcasieu parishes,22 and by the 1920s many had reached southeastern Texas, attracted by opportunities in industry.

The first Breauxs to settle along Bayou Lafourche were among the Acadian refugees who came to Louisiana from France in 1785. Almost immediately after their arrival two of the four Breaux families of that group were sent to the Lafourche: Aléxis and wife Marie Guillot and Joseph with wife Marguerite Templet;23 the former, both in their 60s on arrival, left no male heirs, and after 1798 the latter family moved to St. James Parish.

Thus the Breaux element in the Lafourche-Terrebonne district derives not from the initial 1785 refugees but from members of Acadian Coast families who began to filter into the area in the 1790s. The 1797 census of Lafourche listed two grandsons of Aléxis Breau, one of the early settlers of St. James Parish: Joseph-Honoré Breau (m. ca. 1791 Félicité Trahan) and Hilaire Breau (m. 1796 Rosalie Landry, 1813 Reine Trahan).

The latter settled near present Plattenville, and his descendants occupied land along the Attakapas Canal that joined the Lafourche and Lake Verret.

Joseph-Honoré chose land along the Lafourche near present Thibodaux; before the Civil War his four sons and their descendants had established homes in Terrebonne Parish, some residing on Bayou Terrebonne near Houma, others along Bayou Black.

During the 1820s other Breaux families who left St. James for the Lafourche included Louis (m. 1788 Marie-Anne Bourgeois) and his four sons who settled near Thibodeauxville; by the 1850s and 1860s many of their descendants were living along the Lafourche near Raceland and Lockport.

Still other migrants from St. James were two grandsons of pioneer settler Athanase Breaux: Paul (m. 1815 Henriette LeBlanc), whose offspring settled near Houma, and Victorin (m. 1833 Marie-Elvina Hébert) who took up land around Raceland