Today the surname Guillot is widely distributed m Louisiana with concentrations in the New Orleans area, in Avoyelles Parish, along Bayou Lafourche, and in the Teche country. French migrants of that name appeared during the early colonial period in New Orleans and Pointe Coupee (the latter area being the source of the Guillots in Avoyelles); later, those from Acadia settled the Lafourche and Teche areas.

Various early censuses recorded individuals and families called Guillot in Mobile and New Orleans, but there is no evidence that they left descendants.* The 1805 directory of New Orleans recorded only one Guillot family, whereas that of 1855 listed 5; that of 1878, 16; and that of 1900, 28.

Possibly most of the Guillots living in New Orleans during the nineteenth century were recent migrants from France, or were progenies thereof; although substantiating records are lacking or unavailable, it is likely that many of the city's present 250 Guillot households can trace ancestry from them.

As early as 1743 a Jean-Pierre Guillot dit La Rose was in Pointe Coupee with wife Marie-Anne Poché,3 but data on his provenience and descendants are lacking. Later, in the 1750s a Pierre Guillot dit Dufresne, native of Rheims, France, and wife Marguerite Richard were living in Pointe Coupee, where their three sons, Joseph (m.

Françoise Dardenne), Georges, (m. 1787 Marguerite Landreneau), and Mathurin (m. Françoise Juneau), were born and reared.

By 1785 all three sons and their families had migrated northward to the Avoyelles prairies, there becoming the forebears of the Guillots of that area.

Likely, the numerous Guillot families currently residing in Alexandria descend from the Avoyelles branch.

A large part of Louisiana's Guillots, now localized chiefly in the Lafourche and Teche areas, are Acadian in origin. The three Acadians of that name arrived in 1785 with the large contingent of refugees from France.

One was Charles-Olivier Guillot (who had been exiled to St. Malo, France, in 1759), his wife Madeleine Boudreaux, and three children; another was Fabien Guillot, a youth of 23, who in 1786 married Anne Giroir;8 the third was Pierre Guillot (m. 1792 Élizabeth Pitre), another youth, probably a cousin of Fabien.

All three were settled along Bayou Lafourche, Fabien obtaining a 6 x 40 arpent tract of land near present Napoleonville; Charles-Olivier received a tract of equal size probably farther down-bayou, as did Pierre.

Remaining in the Napoleonville area, Fabien's four sons (Fabien, Jr., Joseph.

Jean-Baptiste, and Louis-Giles) all became substantial antebellum sugarcane planters;11 some of their descendants probably still reside in the same area today.

Charles-Olivier and his two sons, Simon (m. 179.

Anastasie Dugas, 1799 Rose Comeaux) and Jean-Michel (m. 1789 Marie-Rose Pitre), were responsible for the largest line of Acadian Guillots in the state.

The two sons and most of their descendants settled along the Lafourche in the vicinity of Thibodeauxville and Lafourche Crossing as small farmers cultivating sugarcane and rice as cash crops.

Church records suggest that during the nineteenth century at least two of Jean-Michel's six sons migrated farther south along Bayou Terrebonne as far as Montegut, and that before the Civil War some of the descendants of other sons had established homes along Bayou Chacahoula, northwest of Houma.

After the War, in the late 1860s, at least eight great-grandsons of Charles Olivier had migrated into the lower Teche country, where they established a new branch of Guillot families.

Some settled near present Jeanerette and Lydia, others near Loreauville, and one went into the Carencro area north of Lafayette.

Today about 15 percent of the state's Guillot households live in the Teche area, whereas less than 10 percent reside along the Lafourche, the initial home of those of Acadian origin