The Falgoust (Falgout) families of Louisiana descend from a single progenitor, Louis-Marseille Falgoust, a native of the town of Beaumont, north of Tours, France.* He arrived in New Orleans about 1737 and settled on the German Coast along the Mississippi in St.

Charles Parish, where in 1742 he married Marie-Jeanne Castan, daughter of an established planter in the area.

Well educated with some training in medicine, Louis-Marseille was appointed Royal Surgeon Major of the German Coast, a post that he held from 1748 until 1762, when Spain took control of Louisiana.

He also held land along the river near present Hahnville and frequently participated in local public affairs.

The doctor's three sons, Jean-Louis, Georges, and Charles, married and remained in the German Coast until sometime after their father's death in 1780, but between 1783 and 1789 the eldest son, Jean-Louis, and his wife Marie Roy moved upriver to the vicinity of Vacherie in St. James Parish.

There he (and later his son Augustin, 1789-1866) began a line of sugar planters.

In 1876, for example, six of Augustin's sons and his widow, Jeanne-Arthemise Hymel, each operated small sugar plantations around Vacherie.

Although sugar production in that area has today given way to livestock and industry, nearly 50 Falgoust families still reside in the Vacherie and St. James communities.

About 1808, Georges and Charles Falgout and their families moved from St. Charles to Lafourche Parish, where they settled near present Lafourche Crossing, a few miles down-bayou from Thibodeauxville.

These two families began the Lafourche-Terrebonne branch of the Falgoust-Falgout clan, which today comprises a third of the households of that name in Louisiana. Most of the sons and grandsons of the two brothers gradually moved down Bayou Lafourche, settling near Raceland and Lockport;9 all of them were probably small farmers raising rice, corn, and sugarcane. By the 1870s some Falgouts had reached Larose and later a few penetrated as far as Golden Meadow.

However, the elder son of Charles Falgout, Louis-Marcel, his wife, Marie-Louise Beauvais, and their offspring chose to live along Bayou Terrebonne in the vicinity of Houma.

After the Civil War several families of Charles's line moved farther down the Terrebonne toward Montegut and along Bayou du Large probably as far as the present community of Theriot.

According to the U.S. Federal Census, as early as 1850 about 70 percent of the Falgout-Falgoust families of Louisiana were concentrated in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes.

During the 1870s and 1880s baptismal and marriage records indicate that a few Falgout families from Terrebonne Parish began to move into the lower Teche area, settling near present Morgan City, Franklin, and Jeanerette.

By the end of the century some members got as far as Abbeville and Lafayette, but very few went farther into southwest Louisiana.

Since World War I it appears that New Orleans has been a Mecca for a goodly number of Falgouts from the farming areas. Today approximately 135 families (25 percent of the total in the state) live in the city, engaged mainly in services and industry