As in the late eighteenth century, today the prairies of southwestern Louisiana contain most of the state's Frugé families. All probably descend from a single progenitor-Pierre-François Frugé, who may have arrived from France shortly prior to his marriage to Catherine DuMoulin Duplantier in 1754 at St. Charles Church on the First German Coast.* Five years later the couple had moved to Pointe Coupee, where several of their children were born, but by the mid-1770s Pierre-François had settled in the Prairie Faquetaique, near the present site of Eunice, as one of the pioneer farmer-stockmen in the western part of old St. Landry Parish.

By 1777 he had acquired 30 cattle and 14 horses on a farm located along Bayou Cannes a few miles north of present Eunice,3 and later may have obtained a holding to the east along Bayou Plaquemine Brulée, where his widow lived after his death in 1784. In 1796 five of his sons, then married, were living in the Faquetaique district,5 which to this day has remained the center of Louisiana's Frugé clan.

Of Pierre-François' six sons, only three (Pierre-Antoine, Augustin, and Jean-Pierre) carried on the Frugé name in Louisiana. Nicolas and Joseph had no sons who survived to adulthood, and François, who had moved to Avoyelles Parish by 1813, had only one son, who in turn produced no male progeny.

Pierre-Antoine (m. Susan Burns) and Augustin (m. 1804 Louise Marcantel) both had large families, with four sons each, whereas the line of Jean-Pierre (m. 1790 Éléonor Olivier) was much smaller.

Although most of the members of these three Frugé lines remained in the Eunice area well into the present century, church records suggest that before the Civil War several families had moved southeastward to the Church Point district (probably settling along Bayou Plaquemine Brulée) and eastward in the prairies north of Opelousas.

However, fairly early migrations westward from the Eunice area were also undertaken by several Frugé families. The U.S. Census of 1850, for example, listed eight Frugé heads of households in Calcasieu Parish.

Whether such data indicate permanent or temporary settlement is uncertain; at that time some Frugés may have been involved with cattle drives from Texas into Louisiana along the Old Spanish Trail, which passed through Calcasieu Parish. By the late 1880s and early 1890s, many Frugé families had moved into the Crowley, Iowa,'and Jennings areas,10 possibly attracted by the large-scale rice industry in progress there at that time.

Prior to the Civil War at least two Frugé families of the Eunice area are known to have migrated to the vicinity of Liberty in southeastern Texas. One was headed by Jean-Pierre Frugé (a great-grandson of the progenitor Pierre François) and wife Céleste Bergout, the other, By Onésime Frugé (a grandson of the progenitor) and wife Elizabeth Savoie; both left a number of descendants in Texas.

In the 1870s several Frugé baptisms and marriages were recorded in the St. Anthony Catholic Church in Beaumont, indicating the growth of the Texas contingent of the clan.

Today no Frugés remain in Liberty, but several families live in Beaumont (17), Houston (33), and in the industrial towns on Lake Sabine (15), many of them likely descendants of the early Texas settlers