Most of the Comeauxs of Louisiana appear to have descended from Acadian forebears who entered as refugees at various times during the last half of the eighteenth century. Several Comeaux families were among the first Acadians to arrive in the colony in the 1760s, some settling along the Mississippi in St. James, Ascension, and Iberville parishes, others in the Opelousas and Attakapas areas. The last contingent of Comeauxs came in 1785 with the large group of Acadians from France, some of these being sent to the Lafourche, others to areas along the Mississippi north of Baton Rouge. The dispersed nature of the initial settlement of Comeaux families might explain in part their rather widespread distribution in southern Louisiana today.

Around 1765 three Comeaux brothers, Michel, Charles, and Victor, sons of Jean Comeau and Madeleine Amirant of Chipoudy, Acadia, reached Opelousas Post, probably via New Orleans. * Victor, by 1766, had settled in the La Manque district, northern part of the Attakapas, and through his only son, Jean, his descendants remained within the Grand Coteau area into antebellum times.

Having been granted land near Opelousas Post, both Michel and Charles eventually became prominent stockmen in the Bellevue district, where in 1788 the two brothers possessed a total of 1,100 cattle and 65 horses.

Most of Michel's descendants remained in the Opelousas area, but by the 1850s many had migrated southward to the vicinity of Grand Coteau and westward toward Church Point.

In contrast, four sons of Charles (Charles-Antoine, Auguste, Jean-Baptiste, and Pierre) and thenfamilies, by the 1790s, had all moved to the Attakapas, settling chiefly in the Côte Gelée district and along the Vermilion River south of present Lafayette.

Later, in the 1840s and 1850s, most of their progeny were living in the prairies west of Bayou Teche from Grand Coteau in the north to New Iberia in the south,7 giving rise to today's concentration of Comeaux families in Lafayette and Iberia parishes (25 percent of the state's total). Substantial migration of Comeauxs out of this core area did not begin until after the Civil War, when several families moved into Vermilion and (what is now) Acadia parishes.

Not until the 1890s did a few Comeauxs venture westward into Calcasieu Parish.

The story of the Comeaux families that settled along the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche is confusing at best. In 1767 a Charles Comeau, widower with four children, was among the Acadians from Maryland who settled at St. Gabriel below Baton Rouge.

Some years later (before 1775) St. Gabriel contained another Comeaux family consisting of the father Aléxis, wife Marguerite Babin, and four sons.

Three of the latter (Pierre, Étienne, and Charles) remained on the Mississippi, whereas a fourth (Joseph and wife Anne Landry) moved to the Lafourche before 1788.

Prior to 1785 another Comeaux family (Mathurin and wife Sophie Hébert) had managed to arrive from England where they had been refugees, and by 1788 they also were settled on the Lafourche.

In the early 1820s their son Jean had migrated to Bayou Terrebonne and there was the founder of the small Houma branch of the Comeauxs.

Finally, four Comeaux families were among the nearly 1,600 Acadian refugees who arrived in 1785.

Two of these (one headed by Simon and wife Marguerite Aucoin, the other by Marie Thériot, widow of Joseph Comeaux) were sent with 53 other Acadian families to Bayou des Écores in the Feliciana country north of Baton Rouge; another (Charles and wife Marie Clausinet) apparently settled in Baton Rouge; the fourth family (Benoît and wife Anne Blanchard) was taken to the Lafourche. Probably most of the descendants of the Comeaux families that settled initially along the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche today live either in Baton Rouge or in New Orleans.

Some also may have joined their namesakes of the Lafayette and Opelousas areas to seek new opportunities in southwest Louisiana and southeastern Texas