Today nearly half of Louisiana's Gautreaux families live in the river parishes with concentrations in the cities of Gonzales, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. This distribution may stem partly from initial settlement of Gautreauxs along the Mississippi River, but more probably results from recent migrations of rural folk into urban areas.

Although at least one Gautreaux household from France resided in New Orleans in 1722, shortly after its founding,1* most of today's families descend from Acadian refugees who entered the colony during the last half of the eighteenth century, some in the 1760s more in the 1780s All Acadian Gautreauxs descended trom a single progenitor - one François Gauterot, native of Martaizé, near Loudun, west-central France.

Arriving in Acadia ca. 1636, François shortly thereafter married Edmee Lejeune who bore him six sons, thereby starting a large Gauterot clan.

After the expulsion from their homeland in 1755, two Gautreau families made their way to Louisiana. One headed by Simon (great-grandson of progenitor François) and wife Marie-Madeleine Breau, arrived probably in 1765- the other, that of Amand (possibly Simon s brother) and wife Marie Landry, came shortly before 1769.

Both families settled along the Mississippi in the first Acadian Coast (St. James Parish).

Amand's only son Jéröme, however, by the turn of the century had moved to the Attakapas, whereas Simon's seven sons and most of their descendants remained in St. James and Ascension parishes where they firmly established the Gautreaux name.

Through grant and purchase Simon acquired a plantation of some 500 acres on the west bank of the Mississippi above the present community of Welcome.

Called St. Joseph, the property remained in the family for more than a century as a producer of sugarcane, and before the Civil War it was worked with 64 slaves.

In the 1790s Simon's apparent brother, Amand, was dealing in land on the upper Bayou Vermilion in the Attakapas;9 ca. 1802 his son Jérôme with wife Mane-Sophie Dugas had moved to that area, establishing a new line of Gautreaus in southwestern Louisiana.

Jérôme's five sons remained in the border area between the Attakapas and Opelousas districts; Jérôme, Jr., and Onésime settled in the Grand Coteau area, Piene and Symphoriem on the Teche near Breaux Bndge, and Joseph near Church Point. In addition, one of Simon's grandsons, Alexandre of St. James (m. 1829 Euphemie LeBlanc), by mid-century had migrated to the Opelousas area, where all of his sons, Adolphe, Dozélien, and Joseph married into the LaMorandière family.

In 1785, nine Gautreau families, Acadian refugees from France, entered Louisiana, most of whom were sent to Bayou Lafourche.

From these grew a large number of descendants, to the extent that by the 1880s Assumption and Lafourche parishes had become the main locale of the Gautreaux clan in the state.

Of the 1785 arrivals the family of Joseph and Anne Pitre, with their five sons, produced the largest line of Gautreauxs along Bayou Lafourche.

By 1860 several of their descendants were planters living near Labadieville, such as grandson Eusélien (m. 1839 Céleste Boyer); others had moved into the lower Lafourche, such as grandson David (m. 1832 Marie-Gertrude Honoré), where their sons by the 1870s had made homes near Lockport and Larose; still others setted along Bayou Tenebonne near Houma and Montegut