Among the first Acadian families to settle in Louisiana during the mid-eighteenth century, the Broussards today comprise one of the state's largest clans of French origin.

More than half of the Broussards in the state still live in the Teche country-part of the old district of Attakapas — where their ancestors, refugees from Acadia, settled more than two centuries ago.

Most of Louisiana's Broussards trace ancestry from two Acadian brothers, Joseph and Alexandre, both nicknamed Beausoleil.* Joseph (m. 1725 Agnès Thibodeaux) became the leader of Acadian armed resistance against the English after the Expulsion of 1755, but after four years of futile fighting he surrendered his small force, the members and their families being detained in Halifax until 1763.

Shortly thereafter Joseph managed to engage a ship on which he led a group of Acadian refugees, including his own large family and that of his brother Alexandre (m. 1724 Marguerite Thibodeaux), first to St. Domingue in the West Indies and thence to Louisiana, arriving in New Orleans early in 1765.

Through the offices of a retired army captain, Antoine-Bernard Dautrive, who claimed large tracts of land and herds of wild cattle in the Attakapas prairies, the French authorities sent the refugees to the Teche country. There they were granted small parcels of land near the Attakapas Post (St. Martinville), starting the first Acadian settlement in Louisiana.

At the same time several refugees, including Joseph and Alexandre Broussard, signed a contract with Dautrive to raise cattle on the adjacent prairies.

Thus began an occupation that was to become the mark of many Broussards and other Acadian families of southwestern Louisiana. Both Joseph and Alexandre died during their first year in the Attakapas, but by the 1770s their several sons had firmly established the Broussard name in the Teche country.

The initial Iandholdings of the Broussards extended from near St. Martinville on the Teche westward to Bayou Vermilion, including part of the rolling Côte Gelée, where the first Acadian settlement was made at "Camp Beausoleil" near the present community of Broussard.

As early as 1766, one year after their arrival, several sons of Joseph had established households within the section then called "Bayou Tortue," between the Teche and the Vermilion, while three sons and possibly two grandsons of Alexandre were settled near the Teche at "La Pointe" above St. Martinville.

By 1774 most of these families had acquired cattle herds ranging in size from 25 to 80 head, as well as horses and hogs.

The second decade of the nineteenth century saw the Broussards concentrated chiefly in three areas of the Attakapas, all near the site of initial settlement: (1) at Fausse Pointe on the Teche near present New Iberia, where sixteen families had farms; (2) along the Vermilion in Lafayette and Vermilion parishes (thirteen households), and (3) in the Côte Gelée (five families).

In addition, three families lived along the Teche at Grande Pointe near present Breaux Bridge, two near St. Martinville, three along Bayou Petite Anse near Avery Island, and one each at Lake Peigneur and Prairie Sorrel.

The families living along the Teche probably were planters raising food crops, indigo, and cane, but likely all ran cattle in adjacent prairies. In 1812 Pierre Broussard (m. 1776 Marie Melançon), son of Alexandre, worked his plantation on the Teche with 42 slaves, and his cousin, Amand (m. 1771 Hélène Landry), son of Joseph, had 22 slaves on his land at Fausse Pointe.

Several Broussard families continued as planters along the Teche until the Civil War, after which sugar production declined;13 however, the descendants of Pierre maintained the old family plantation, Marie Louise, at Fausse Pointe well into the present century.

Having land near the extensive prairies of southwestern Louisiana, the Broussards who settled along the Vermilion, like many of their neighbors, engaged in both farming and stock raising.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century several Broussard families obtained property along the lower Vermilion north of present Abbeville. For example, two sons of progenitor Joseph Broussard, François (m. ca. 1770 Pélagie Landry) and Claude (m. ca. 1772 Louise Hébert), had settled there in the late 1780s, the former claiming a prairie tract of about 1000 acres as a vacherie, or cattle ranch.

By 1850 Vermilion Parish had become one of the main centers of Broussard habitation in the Attakapas.

At that time several families had moved into Calcasieu Parish, some as farmers along the lower Mermentau River, others as stockmen or graziers on the prairies.

Among the Calcasieu graziers, Dosité Broussard, probably a great-great grandson of progenitor Joseph, was running 1,800 cattle in 1850.

More recently, several Broussards have been instrumental in developing the modern cattle industry in southwestern Louisiana, such as Joseph E. (a sixth generation descendant of progenitor Joseph), who founded the Broussard Ranch at Cow Island, Vermilion Parish.

Although the Teche country formed the core of Broussard settlement in Louisiana, other parts of the colony received a few individuals of that surname during the eighteenth century. In 1769 two brothers, Firmin (age 17) and Jean Broussard (9) were censused on the east bank of the Mississippi in Ascension Parish.

These lads were sons of Jean Broussard and Anne Landry, who had been deported from Acadia to Maryland in 1755.

Just how and when the boys reached Louisiana is unknown.

Both Firmin (m. 1775 Marie Landry) and Jean (m. Marguerite Cormier) began a small branch of the Broussards who remained along the Mississippi in Ascension, Iberville, and St. James parishes well into the nineteenth century.

Two other Broussard families, headed by brothers Charles and Jean (refugees who had been exiled to France), finally reached Louisiana in 1785 with other Acadians.

Charles was accompanied by his second wife, Euphrosine Marriot, and four sons. Sons François and Pierre settled along the Mississippi in West Baton Rouge Parish, where their descendants still held land in 1858;25 sons Jean-Charles and Dominique settled along the Lafourche in Assumption Parish, and descendants of the latter migrated into Terrebonne Parish in the 1820s, but by mid-century their line had died out or moved elsewhere.

The second family from France, headed by Jean Broussard and Marguerite Comeau, reared only one son, Jean-Baptiste, who by 1790 had joined other Broussards in the Attakapas, his progeny settling in Lafayette and Vermilion parishes.

Finally, during the early 1800s a small line of Broussards developed in Avoyelles Parish. One Louis Broussard, possibly related to the Teche country families, first settled in the Grande Prairie area near Opelousas,28 but before 1795 he had purchased land in Avoyelles.

During the 1810s and 1820s three of his sons-Maximilien, Joseph, and Jean-Baptiste-were forming families in that area.

Likely the present-day Broussards of Avoyelles continue that line