(French) The White, Fair [French le, the; Latin ille + French blanc, white; O.H.Ger. blanc(h (Ger. blank]

French "the White." Arms granted 1753.

As the fourth most frequent surname of French origin in Louisiana today, LeBlanc is distributed widely over the southern part of the state, with concentrations in the river parishes, in the Teche country, and along Bayou Lafourche-all areas where LeBlanc families settled more than two centuries ago. Most LeBlancs within the state descend from Acadian forebears who arrived as refugees during the last half of the eighteenth century.

But not all of the early LeBlancs in Louisiana were of Acadian origin. Being widespread in France, the surname was represented by many of the earliest immigrants into the colony, but the subsequent lineages of most are uncertain.* However, an early non-Acadian named LeBlanc who left several descendants in the state was one Alexandre-Paul-Balthazar LeBlanc de Villeneuve, a native of Dauphiné Province, southeastern France, arriving in New Orleans ca. 1750 as a young officer in the French army.

Married to Marie-Jeanne Avart in 1758, he spent most of his time in New Orleans and afield, but eventually settled in Pointe Coupee, where one of his sons, Louis-Alexandre (m. 1785 Charlotte Allain) had acquired a large plantation along the Mississippi River in what is now West Baton Rouge Parish.

Many of the latter's descendants carried on as planters in the area,4 and probably some of the present-day LeBlancs within the Baton Rouge area and in New Orleans belong to this line.

Before the Expulsion of 1755 the LeBlancs formed one of the largest clans in Acadia. Today they comprise perhaps a tenth of all Acadians in North America, all members ofthe clan being descendants of a single couple, Daniel LeBlanc and Françoise Gaudet of La Chaussée, Loudun area, France, who settled near Port Royal in 1650.

Of the large number of LeBlanc families expelled from their homeland after 1755, comparatively few reached Louisiana. By 1766 three families had settled along the Mississippi River in the Acadian Coast (St. James and Ascension parishes) and two more were living in the Attakapas.

Having arrived probably in 1765, the Acadian Coast families were headed by Joseph LeBlanc (m.

1742 Élizabeth Gaudet), his nephew Marcel (m. 1760 Marie-Josephe Breau), and Joseph's second cousin, Étienne (m. 1742 Élizabeth Boudreau).

By 1767 these families had been joined by ten or more LeBlanc households, including Marcel's parents, Jacques LeBlanc and Catherine-Josephe Forest, and other relatives.

At least five of the new arrivals came from Maryland, where they had been exiled after the Expulsion.

Among the latter, Désiré (m. ca. 1740 Marie-Madeleine Landry) and sons Isaac, Benjamin, and Grégoire, produced a large number of progeny and were thus responsible for a major increase in LeBlanc families in Ascension Parish during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Bought out by Anglo planters during the early 1800s, many LeBlancs from the Acadian Coast filtered into the upper Lafourche area between Donaldsonville and Napoleonville; by midcentury Assumption, Ascension, and Iberville parishes still formed the main center of LeBlancs in Louisiana, as that area had been since the late eighteenth century.

But within the past 100 years, owing largely to out-migration, those parishes have lost preeminence as the LeBlanc nucleus within the state.

Much earlier, in 1785, a large group of LeBlancs, composed of sixteen families and several single males, arrived in Louisiana with the contingent of Acadian refugees from France.

At least three of those families and two single males were sent to the Lafourche, the others probably being assigned to the Acadian Coast.

By the early 1800s, sons and grandsons of the Lafourche group of LeBlancs had begun to migrate downstream to settle near Thibodeauxville and along Bayou Terrebonne. For instance, the two sons of Claude LeBlanc (one of the single men, m. 1794 Marguerite Comeau), Simon-Pierre and Joseph Rosémond, in the 1820s settled with their families near Thibodeauxville; by the 1850s descendants of the latter had migrated farther south along Bayou Terrebonne as far as Montegut.

Again, Jean-Martin LeBlanc, the only son of the 1785 arrivals, Moise LeBlanc and Angélique de la Forestrie, by 1805 had married Marie-Céleste Pitre and settled in Lafourche Parish; some of his offspring remained in the Thibodeauxville area, but others ventured farther south to reside near Houma and Chacahoula.

LeBlancs from Ascension and St. James parishes, descendants of the early settlers, also helped to populate the lower Lafourche. Étienne LeBlanc (m. 1809 Marguerite Melançon), grandson of Étienne and Élizabeth Boudreau, by the early 1820s had moved to the Lafourche below Thibodeauxville, where his six sons and their progeny developed land around Raceland and Lockport.

The LeBlancs of southwestern Louisiana began with two members of the Acadian clan, Simon and René, who were listed in the Attakapas census of 1766. Simon arrived with his first wife, Catherine Thibodeau (d. 1765 at Attakapas Post) and son Cosme (Come), and after his second marriage to Marguerite Guilbeau ca. 1766, he settled along Bayou Carencro in the northern part of the Attakapas.

René, younger brother of Étienne of the Acadian Coast, apparently was a lad of only 13 or 14 in 1766 when he was living on Bayou Tortue, west of Attakapas Post; about 10 years later he had married Marguerite Trahan.

Cosme LeBlanc (m. 1781 Élizabeth Broussard), Simon's son by his first wife, obtained land at Fausse Pointe, near New Iberia; there most of his six sons reared families during antebellum days, some ofthe progeny eventually settling along the lower Teche near Franklin and Charenton.

Four of Simon's sons by his second wife and most of their descendants remained in the northern Teche country: Frédéric (m. 1794 Louise Thibodeau) became a stockman-farmer in the Carencro Prairie, his offspring obtaining farms around Grand Coteau and Breaux Bridge; Agricole (m. 1793 Céleste Savoie) and his children also settled in the same area, as did Sylvestre (m. 1806 Pérosine Duhon) and François (m. 1812 Marguerite Dugas).

Their brother, Pierre (m.

1802 Hortense Broussard), however, resided on Bayou Vermilion near present Lafayette, but some of his descendants eventually settled near Abbeville and New Iberia.

After his marriage in 1776, René LeBlanc moved his family to Bayou Vermilion; there his sons, Julien (m.

1809 Scholastique LeBlanc) and Jean (m. 1821 Denise Duhon) remained, but by mid-century the latter and most of his sons had moved into Vermilion Parish near Abbeville.

To complicate even more LeBlanc history in the Attakapas, during the early 1800s several members of the clan living in the Acadian Coast migrated westward to join relatives in the Teche country. One of these was René's cousin Joseph LeBlanc (m. 1784 Marguerite Duhon, 1801 Marguerite Bernard), son of Jean-Pierre with Osite Melançon of St. James Parish.

After his second marriage Joseph moved to Fausse Pointe on the Teche, but by the 1850s most of his descendants had occupied land in the northeastern part of Vermilion Parish.

Another Acadian Coast migrant to the Attakapas was Simon dit Gros LeBlanc (son of Jean-Charles with Judith Landry, Maryland refugees), who in the late 1790s moved with his wife Anne-Marie Hébert to Vermilion Bayou, where descendants of his five sons remained for most of the nineteenth century.

Today the Teche country and adjacent Vermilion and Acadian parishes contain nearly a third of the state's LeBlanc households.

Like many of their French-speaking neighbors, several LeBlancs continued to migrate farther westward during the mid- and late nineteenth century. By 1850 three LeBlanc planters were established in the Mermentau area of eastern Calcasieu Parish, and 10 years later four families of that name were censused near Lake Charles, and two near Hickory Flat on the upper Calcasieu River.

Earlier, during the 1840s and 1850s, at least seven LeBlanc families from Louisiana had settled in southeastern Texas, five of them as pioneer farmers in Liberty County