Although of French origin, the surname Guillory today is not common in either France or French Canada, but it is among the more frequent names in southwest Louisiana.* Guillory families of Louisiana trace ancestry to a single progenitor-Joseph-Grégoire of Mobile, who moved from the Gulf Coast with his five sons to the Opelousas area in 1764, following the transfer of West Florida to England the year previous.

Joseph-Grégoire's grandfather, Simon Guillory, native of the village of Chartre-sur-Cher in central France (present department of Loire-et-Cher), emigrated to Canada in 1646; Joseph-Grégoire's parents, François Guillory and Jeanne Monfort, ca. 1707 moved from Montreal to the Mobile area, where their son was reared and where, in 1739, he married Marie-Jeanne LaCasse, who died just before the move to Louisiana.

In Opelousas, Joseph-Grégoire and his sons joined many of their Alabamian compatriots, such as the Fontenots and LaFleures, who had arrived a few months previously.

The Guillory s first settled north of Opelousas Post, where in 1765 Joseph-Grégoire was granted land between Bayous Courtableau and Boeuf, probably north of present Washington in the Grande Prairie district.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century his five sons, Pierre (m. ca. 1774 Marianne LaFleur, ca. 1783 Marie-Josephe Fontenot), Jean-Baptiste (m. ca. 1775 Marguerite Hayers), Claude (m. ca. 1784 Marie-Jeanne Brignac), Joseph (m. ca. 1777 Marie-Claire Fontenot), and Jean-Louis (m.

ca. 1776 Marie-Jeanne Fontenot), obtained land and established families in the same area.

All of the Guillory sons, except Claude, reared large families, but the most prolific of the clan was Jean-Louis and wife Marie-Jeanne Fontenot; by 1860 their male descendants included 9 sons and 21 grandsons, most of them married and with families, living in the Grande Prairie area and in the vicinity of Ville Platte in present Evangeline Parish.

Like many of the pioneer French settlers of old St.

Landry Parish, most of the early Guillory s became stockmen-farmers, raising cattle and horses on the open prairies and cultivating corn, rice, and sweet potatoes for subsistence around their homesteads. As early as 1773 Joseph-Grégoire had acquired 66 head of cattle and 37 horses,8 and four years later his son Jean-Baptiste owned 40 cattle and sons Louis and Joseph, 25 and 30, respectively.

By the turn of the century several families probably had moved westward into the prairies near present Ville Platte and Eunice, an area that later became the main center of the Guillorys in southwestern Louisiana, as it is today. Census data of 1810 and 1820 for old St.

Landry suggest that some of the Guillorys in the western part of the parish devoted their livelihood almost exclusively to stock raising, using slave and freed blacks as herders.

In addition to their holdings in the Grande Prairie area, both Joseph and Louis Guillory in 1811 claimed large tracts of land along Bayou Nezpique on the Calcasieu frontier, property that was likely used for raising livestock.

Moreover, that nearly 30 members of Guillory families had registered cattle brands in St. Landry Parish between 1812 and 1822 further attests to the importance of stock raising among the clan.

Although most of the early Guillorys remained in old St. Landry, one of progenitor Joseph-Grégoire's sons, Jean-Baptiste, during the early 1790s moved part of his family into Avoyelles Parish.

As sergeant of the local militia and substantial landholder in the area, Jean-Baptiste became a respected citizen of Avoyelles.

He and his sons Joseph (m. 1805 Marie Tassin), Auguste (m.

1805 Marie-Louise Landreneau), Julien (m. 1806 Pauline Guillot), Jean-Baptiste, Jr. (m. 1815 Céleste Guillot), and Cyprien (m. 1815 Émilie Roy) settled in the western part of the Avoyelles prairies in the vicinity of present Hessmer and Belledeau.

However, by the late 1830s and early 1840s, children of Auguste and Julien had left Avoyelles to live in St. Landry.

Nonetheless, by midnineteenth century Avoyelles had become a secondary center of the Guillorys in Louisiana, and most members of the clan who still live in that parish probably descend from Jean-Baptiste and his wife Marguerite Hayers.

As was the case among many colonial French families who owned slaves in Louisiana, the Guillorys on occasion freed some of their chattels, particularly when they may have been offspring of white males in the family and slave women. For example, the Guillory progenitor, Joseph-Grégoire, in 1770 claimed to have freed a faithful black slave Marguerite and her four mulatto children, all of whom took the Guillory surname, including the two sons, Jean-Baptiste and Joseph.

Although that particular emancipation was contested in court by the legitimate sons of Joseph-Grégoire, apparently the two male freedmen, Jean-Baptiste and Joseph Guillory, began mixed-blood families in old St. Landry Parish;18 members of such families were recorded as free persons of color in the church and civil documents of the time. By the mid-nineteenth century such records suggest that a sizable mixed-blood element carrying the Guillory surname had evolved in St. Landry, some families living in the Grande Prairie area, others along Bayou Malette south of present Eunice.

Other mixed-blood families in the area included the Papillons, Simiens, and Thierys, with whom the mulatto Guillorys often intermarried.

Regardless of racial make-up, few Guillory families of southwest Louisiana appear to have ventured out of old St. Landry Parish before the beginning of the present century.

Some who established homes in Calcasieu Parish during the 1910s and 1920s became prosperous rice farmers, such as Louis Guillory of Bell City, southeast of Lake Charles.

The large number of households now in the Lake Charles area (nearly 400) and in southeastern Texas (some 450) probably stem from migrations out of St. Landry and adjacent parishes that occurred during and after World War I . Those of New Orleans (175) may descend from recent migrants from the countryside and from an influx of Guillorys (35 individuals) from Haiti that occurred in 1870