The Brignacs of Louisiana stem mainly from three brothers of that name who were born in the Mobile area of Alabama sometime during the first half of the eighteenth century. With other French "Alibamon" families, such as the Fontenots and Bonins, the brothers moved to Louisiana with their widowed mother after the Gulf Coast territory was ceded to England in 1763.* Little is known of the origin of the Brignacs of Mobile; the brothers' father, Jacques-Simon Brignac (m. ca. 1725 Marie Turpin), was a soldier with the French troops at Fort Toulouse in Alabama (where he died in 1754), but his birthplace in France is uncertain. (Today Brignac is not a common name in France and is less so in French Canada.) Although marriage records of the three brothers are lacking, apparently all had wives and two had children on arrival in Louisiana in 1764.

From colonial censuses and baptismal records extant for Louisiana it is known that Jacques Brignac dit Jolie was married to Marie-Denis Silvestre, Michel to Marianne Doucet, and Pierre-Simon to Marie-Louise Fontenot.

Like their father, the three had been soldiers in the French forces, and they had been discharged just prior to their move to Louisiana.

Once in Louisiana, Jacques and Michel (and probably their mother) settled with most of the other Alibamon refugees near Opelousas Post, where the two were listed in the 1766 census as being married, each having been granted 8 arpents (about 1600 feet) frontage along the right bank of a stream, presumably Bayou Courtableau.

By 1777 Jacques already had a sizable family, whereas Michel and his wife were still childless, and both had acquired cattle herds of modest size.

By 1783 both brothers had died, but Jacques's elder son, François, born in Alabama and married to Marie Fontenot, managed to carry on the Brignac name in the Opelousas area by rearing a family of twelve children, including two sons.

Probably most of the Brignacs who still live in southwest Louisiana descend from that line. Both François and his widowed mother, as well as his uncle Michel, held land in the Grande Prairie district (northwest of Opelousas Post),9 which became the main center of Brignac families in St. Landry and Evangeline parishes during the nineteenth century.

The elder Brignac brother from Mobile, Pierre-Simon, by 1770 had founded another branch of the family in St.

John the Baptist Parish (second German Coast), and later, in 1774, in St. James Parish (first Acadian Coast)11 Listed in the 1770 census as having a family of five, he soon acquired farms along the Mississippi River and became a respected member of the St. John and St. James landed gentry.

Likewise his two elder sons, Mathieu and Alexandre, both born in Alabama, held property and slaves in both parishes during the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Between 1807 and 1810 Mathieu (m. 1785 Madeleine Matherne, 1793 Marguerite Vicknair) and his family left St. James to settle along the Amite River at La Côte (present French Settlement).

Later, his brother Alexandre (m. 1790 Agnès Poché) made the same move,15 possibly selling out to Anglo planters who were invading the fertile lands along the Mississippi River at that time. Descendants of Mathieu and Alexandre still live along the lower Amite in Livingston Parish, around Gonzales in Ascension Parish, and along the Mississippi in St. John and St. James, forming a third of the Brignac households in the state, and far outnumbering those of St. Landry and Evangeline parishes. In the past fifty years many Brignac families have left the countryside to reside in Baton Rouge or New Orleans, which now contain another third of the clan