(French) The sweet person, a name given an amiable person, sometimes ironically, however.

With the exception of two families that emigrated from Alabama, most of the Doucets who first settled in Louisiana were Acadians. During the 1760s the pioneers from both Alabama and Acadia settled in the Attakapas and Opelousas areas, where the two lines became inexorably mixed. Today descendants of those settlers now live mainly in the prairies of southwest Louisiana, comprising over 60 percent of the Doucet households of the state. Other Doucet families came later in the eighteenth century, the last contingent arriving in 1785 with the Acadian refugees from France.

Probably in 1764, two Doucet families from Mobile, whose ancestry is undocumented, arrived at Opelousas Post with other Frenchmen who had fled the British occupation of the Gulf Coast in Alabama.* By 1766 the household headed by Pierre Doucet and Marie-Françoise Pagot had settled near the post with their three sons and two daughters.

Little is recorded on the other Doucet family from Alabama, headed by Simon (brother of Pierre?), save that it, too, was found near the post in 1766. Records reveal the name of only one of Pierre Doucet's sons-Pierre, Jr.-who by 1777 had marned Thérèse Brignac and by 1796 had established a sizable cattle operation in the prairies near the source of Bayou Plaquemine Brulée (Plaisance district) north of Opelousas Post.

Descendants of the family through the Pierre, Jr., line appear to have remained in that area for most of the nineteenth century.

Although a passenger list unfortunately does not exist for corroboration, a Doucet family from Acadia may have arrived in 1765 with the refugee group that came via Saint-Domingue in the West Indies; many members ot that group settled in the Attakapas and Opelousas areas.

According to the 1766 Louisiana census, an Acadian, Michel Doucet, his wife (probably Marguerite Martin , and four sons were living in the La Manque District, northern part of the Attakapas near Opelousas territory.

The sons and grandsons of Michel settled in various parts of the Attakapas and Opelousas during the latter part of the eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth, some along the Vermilion River near present Lafayette, others along the Teche near St. Martinville, and still others in the prairies near Grand Coteau, St. Landry Parish.

Yet another Doucet family from Acadia, headed by a Joseph Doucet (who probably entered Louisiana in the late 1760s and in 1788 married Anne Thibodeaux) may have settled first in St. James Parish,9 but later moved to the Grand Coteau prairies south of Opelousas Post.

His two sons, Anselme and Joseph, Jr., reared large families in that area, and as early as the 1830s Anselme, Jr., and wife Pauline Bergeau had established a home on the Bayou Pointe-aux-Loups near present Iota in what is now Acadia Parish.

In fact, many of the Doucet families descendent of the two principal Acadian progenitors, Michel and Joseph, were among the French-speaking pioneers who opened the western sections of old St. Landry Parish.

Those movements of the mid-nineteenth century probably account for the concentration of Doucet families in Acadia Parish today. By the early 1890s several Doucet families were living in the Jennings-Mermentau area,13 and subsequent migrations took many to Lake Charles and into southeastern Texas.

The final arrival of Doucet families in Louisiana came in 1785 with the mass entry of Acadians from France.

Among them were three Doucet families,14 but reliable information exists on only one, that headed by widow Doucet (Marie-Anne Precieux) and her two sons, Jean-Baptiste and François. Established on the upper Lafourche by 1788, the two sons became the progenitors of most of the Doucets who now live along the bayou below Thibodaux.

By the 1860s the descendants of Jean-Baptiste (m. 1789 Marie-Barbe Doublin) had moved to the vicinity of Lockport and Larose on the lower Lafourche, whereas those of François (m. 1802 Marie Anglibeet) remained around Thibodeauxville