Common in Pointe Coupee during colonial times, the surname Jarreau is still today confined largely to that parish and to nearby Baton Rouge. The early settlers of that name came from Bordeaux, France, one Pierre Jarreau arriving in Louisiana probably in the early 1760s, and Jacques Jarreau, a sea-captain, coming in the 1780s, possibly accompanied by his father, Ursin, and his brother, Jean.* Although their relationship is uncertain, Pierre may have been Jacques' uncle;2 nonetheless, the two seem to have been the progenitors of the Jarreau families in Louisiana.

Soon after his arrival in the colony Pierre Jarreau settled in Pointe Coupee, where in 1763 he married Marie-Anne Gueho.

Two of his sons, Pierre-Célestin (m. 1799 Dorothée Labbé) and Pierre-Rosémond (m. 1805 Céleste Vitrack) remained in Pointe Coupee,4 probably becoming small farmers along the inner bank of False River (Isle de Fausse Rivière). Insufficient data in the published church and civil records of the parish preclude tracing the descendants of this branch of the Jarreau family through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, but it has been suggested that most of the Jarreaus living in Pointe Coupee today stem from Pierre and his progeny.

A recent well-known figure of the area, Elie Jarreau (1886-1969), a prosperous local merchant and planter (after whom the community of Jarreau in Pointe Coupee is named),6 could well have been one of those descendants.

Despite incomplete and often conflicting data, the history of Jacques Jarreau's descendants is somewhat clearer than that of the supposed uncle. In 1788 Jacques purchased land on the Mississippi at the site of present Donaldsonville, but three years later he sold the property and presumably settled in Pointe Coupee, where in 1799 he married Marie-Hélène Tournoir.

His elder son, Jean-Ursin (m. 1823 Octavie LeBlanc de Villeneuve), acquired a tract of more than 900 acres fronting on the Mississippi at the eastern end of False River Island.

Later known as Pecan Grove Plantation, the tract was planted to sugarcane, and after Jean-Ursin's death in 1847 it was operated by his widow; in 1857 the property passed from the Jarreau family into other hands.

Jean-Ursin's sons, Jacques-Émile (m. Louise-Corinne Mazureau), Jean-Ursin, Jr. (m. Rose Mazureau), and Léon (m. 1869 Merced-Emma Seré; ca. 1882 Hélène-Virginie LeBlanc de Villeneuve) all moved to New Orleans after the Civil War, there beginning another branch of the Janeau family.

A second son of Jacques Janeau, Joseph-Bernard, founded still another branch of the family in Rapides Parish. About 1828 Joseph-Bernard moved from Pointe Coupee to Alexandria, where he became prominent in steamboat transport on the Red and Mississippi rivers.

In 1832 he married Claire-Zulma Baillio, of a local Rapides family, who bore him thirteen children. One of his sons, Jean-Baptiste-Bernard, owner of Lodi Plantation, became a successful cotton farmer in Rapides Parish, while another son, Auguste, and his wife Lucy Huie established a printing firm in Alexandria, starting around 1883 the local newspaper Town Talk.

Two of Auguste's sons, Rolla C. and Auguste-Hunter Jarreau continued the publication of the newspaper until their deaths in recent years.

Through migration to other parts of the country the Jarreau family in Rapides, however, has practically disappeared