The Lavergne families of Louisiana comprise a number of lines, each having a different origin. The most renowned is composed of the few remaining de la Vergne families of New Orleans and Covington, who trace ancestry supposedly to ancient French nobility.* Their Louisiana progenitor, Pierre (de) la Vergne, came to New Orleans ca. 1766 as a young officer in the French army and later was awarded military honors as Chevalier de St. Louis.

At age 38, in 1789 he married Élizabeth DuVerger who bore him an only son, Hugues La Vergne.

In time the latter acquired a large plantation along the Mississippi in Plaquemines Parish adjacent to property of his in-laws, the rich Villeré family.

Among Hugues's descendants was his grandson, Hugues-Jules de la Vergne (1867-1923), a noted lawyer and leader in New Orleans society,5 a role still played by the family members.

Other lines of the Louisiana Lavergnes had much more humble origins. Some were begun by Canadians who settled as farmers along the Mississippi above New Orleans in the late 1720s or early 1730s. A census of 1731 listed a LaVergne, "the Canadian" (likely Jean and wife Françoise Tournelle) living at Anse-aux-Outards on the river's west bank near present Ama; and another Canadian from Quebec (probably Louis and wife Élizabeth Thomelain) at Cannes Brulées, near present Kenner.

Several other LaVergne families residing in New Orleans, along the lower Mississippi, and elsewhere in Louisiana were noted in various eighteenth-century church and civil records; the origins of most, however, remain uncertain.

For the majority of the Lavergnes now living in Louisiana the most important early family was that of Louis LaVergne and Élizabeth Thomelain of Cannes Brulées.

Louis died ca. 1750, leaving two minor sons, Louis, Jr., and Jean-Baptiste.

About 1770 Louis, Jr., married Marie-Anne LaCaze of Mobile and later moved upriver to St. John the Baptist Parish.

By 1788 he and his growing family had migrated to the Opelousas area, settling in the Bellevue district south of the post.

Today some 85 percent of the Lavergne families of Louisiana reside in the southwestern part of the state, and most probably descend from Louis, Jr., and his seven sons. All rearing large families, the sons and their offspring remained as small farmers in the Bellevue-Church Point-Grand Coteau area of old St. Landry Parish until well after the Civil War. As early as 1811, however, one son, Célestin Lavergne (m. 1800 Louise Henry) claimed a large tract of land (2,700 acres) on both sides of Bayou Nezpique beyond the western frontier of settlement,12 but apparently neither he nor his sons settled there until late in the century. Judging from church records, few Lavergnes ventured outside their St. Landry homeland into the Calcasieu until the mid-1890s.

The many Lavergne families who resided along the lower Mississippi during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries either died out or their descendants moved elsewhere. For example, little is known of the descendants of Jean Lavergne, wife Marie-Jeanne LaClef, and their four sons who were prominent farmers in St. John the Baptist Parish during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Again, one Acadian family headed by Pierre Lavergne, arriving as refugees from France in 1785, settled in the St. Gabriel-Baton Rouge area,15 where some of their descendants may live today