(French) One who was younger than another with whom he was associated.

Although confined to the southern part of the state, the surname Lejeune presents a complex distribution characterized by several areal concentrations, each of which was begun by immigrants of that name who settled in Louisiana at different times during the last half of the eighteenth century. Pointe Coupee was the first area permanently settled by Lejeunes; later, old St. Landry Parish became the focus of Lejeunes from Acadia, whose descendants now reside throughout the southwestern part of the state; still later, other Acadian Lejeunes settled near Baton Rouge and along Bayou Lafourche.

During the earliest years of the colony several Lejeunes came to Louisiana as indentured workers,1* but none appeared to have remained for long, save one-Michel Lejeune, a young Swiss who in 1724 was attached to a concession along the Mississippi above New Orleans.

It is thought that Michel eventually left for Illinois, where in 1740 he married Marie-Madeleine Enet at Fort de Chartres.

In 1764 he sold his land in Illinois and with his family returned to Louisiana to settle along False River in Pointe Coupee.

He and his two sons, Michel Jr. m . 1770 Catherine Barra), and Charles (m. 1798 Felicité Langlois), were the progenitors of the Pointe Coupee Lejeunes, some of whom became prosperous antebellum planters.

The Marine general, John Archer Lejeune of World War I fame, descended from the line of Michel Jr.,6 and today several Lejeune families remain in Pointe Coupee Parish.

Lejeunes were among the early French settlers in Acadia, one family of that name having been recorded there before 1646.

The Lejeune refugees from Acadia who came to Louisiana after the Expulsion of 1755 consisted of two groups, one arriving probably in the late 1760s or early 1770s, the other in 1785. The first may have comprised only three young Lejeune brothers, possibly orphans-Blaise, Joseph, and Jean-Baptiste, sons of Jean-Baptiste Lejeune and Marguerite Trahan of Pisiguit, Acadia.

All three settled in St. Landry Parish, and were the progenitors of the largest branch of Lejeunes in Louisiana.

Blaise (m. 1773 Marie-Josephe Breaux) obtained land on both the upper Bayou Plaquemine Brulée (southwest of Opelousas Post) and in the Faquetaique Prairie (near present Eunice),9 both areas becoming centers of this, the largest line of Lejeune descendants, further propagated by his five sons.

Before the Civil War one of Blaise's great-grandsons, François-Alcide (m. 1858 Joachime Frugé), was well established with several relatives as far west as the Iota area in present Acadia Parish. Blaise's brothers, Joseph (m. ca. 1781 Patsy Hayes of North Carolina) and Jean-Baptiste (m. ca. 1778 Élizabeth Outre), produced a relatively small number of descendants.

The former settled also in the Faquetaique area along Bayou des Cannes,13 but by 1785 the latter had migrated to Avoyelles Parish, there establishing another small branch of the Lejeune family.

The second group of Acadian Lejeunes to arrive were among the many refugees who had been taken to France after the Expulsion and had finally reached Louisiana in 1785 in seven ships. Aboard Le Bon Papa were two brothers, Eustache and Grégoire Lejeune, plus a married son of the former, Jean-Baptiste, and their families, all of whom were settled in the Baton Rouge area, chiefly on the west bank of the Mississippi.

Many of the Lejeunes now living in West Baton Rouge Parish and in the city of Baton Rouge probably can trace ancestry trom those progenitors. Aboard the ship St. Remi were two other Lejeune families, one led by Anastasie LeBrun, widow of Amand Lejeune, the other by Jean Lejeune and wife Félicité Boudreau.

Both families, including Anastasie's grown son, Joseph (m. 1785 Marie-Bonne Landry), were settled along Bayou Lafourche.

By the early 1800s several of their descendants had moved to the vicinity of Thibodeauxville along the bayou, accompanied by two grandsons of Eustache Lejeune from Baton Rouge.

By the 1870s descendants of the latter were living farther down-bayou near Raceland, Lockport, and Larose.

Few of their posterity, however, now live along the Lafourche, the line having died out or members having moved elsewhere