(French-Latin-Greek) The Monk [French le, Latin ille; moine, ult. from Greek μόν-ος, alone, solitary]

(French) The Monk [French le, the + moine, monk; Latin *moni-us; from Greek μόν-ος, alone]

LEMOYNE: Old French, "The Monk."

Two of the most illustrious personages of colonial Louisiana have immortalized the patronym Lemoine, or LeMoyne, in the state's history-brothers Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d'lberville, founder of the province of Louisiana in 1699, and Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur de Bienville, founder of New Orleans and the guiding spirit of the colony during the first half of the eighteenth century. But not one of the many Lemoine families in Louisiana today can trace ancestry to those two men.* Rather, the progenitors of the state's Lemoines were others of far more humble origin.

Being a common patronym in France, the name Lemoine was represented by several early arrivals in the colony-sailors, soldiers, workers, vagabonds-but little is known of the descendants of most of them.

One of these early migrants, however, one Guillaume Lemoine dit le Normand, a ship captain with the Company of the Indies, became the progenitor of the Lemoine families of Point Coupee and Avoyelles, the latter parish being today the main center of the clan in the state. Of less importance was Charles Lemoine of Illinois, who settled in Natchitoches during the mid-eighteenth century.

A native of Le Havre, the main port of Brittany, France, Guillaume Lemoine ca. 1723 arrived in New Orleans, where he married Marie Saumerine dit l'Este, who bore him eleven children, including six sons.

In 1731 he moved his famly to Pointe Coupee, purchasing land on False River and, later, on the Mississippi at Raccourci above present Morganza.

Before his death in 1771 Guillaume had married two more times (without issue), and most of his property may have gone to sons Simon (bachelor) and Jean-Baptiste (m. 1760 Catherine Simon), the latter being the only male of the family to carry on the Lemoine name.

By 1785 Simon had moved northward to the Avoyelles prairies where he tried farming, but later apparently turned voyageur.

Sometime later Jean-Baptiste moved his family to Avoyelles and there he and his nine sons (including three from a second marriage) began the large Lemoine branch of that area, which today contains more than a third of the state's households of that name. First obtaining land on Bayou Rouge near present Cottonport, during the nineteenth century the Lemoine families spread to other parts of Avoyelles, chiefly along Bayou des Glaises.

Most were probably small farmers, but at least one of Jean-Baptiste's sons, Pierre (m. 1790 Lucile Bordelon) became a planter of some wealth and by 1820 owned 55 slaves; his son, Pierre, Jr. (m. 1817 Doralise Dufour) owned 30.

Apparently only one member of Jean-Baptiste's extended family broke away early from the Avoyelles contingent-his grandson Joseph who by the time of his marriage to Louise Dubuisson in 1819 had moved to the Opelousas area. There his descendants remained, probably accounting for today's Lemoine households in Ville Platte and possibly many of those of Lafayette.

The Lemoines of the Natchitoches-Cane River area formed a line much smaller than the Avoyelles group.

The progenitor, Charles Lemoine of Kaskaskia, Illinois, came to the Natchitoches Post sometime prior to his marriage to Élizabeth Dupré in 1754.

Settling in the Isle de Brevel section south of the post, Charles and his wife reared three sons, all of whom produced families in the same area. After the Civil War their descendants apparently dwindled in number, possibly through out-migration.

Today only a handful of Lemoine households live in Natchitoches