The widespread distribution of Mire families in southern Louisiana today reflects a complicated series of migrations from an original center of settlement along the First Acadian Coast (St. James Parish). The progenitors of probably all the Mire families in the state appear to have been three brothers, sons of Pierre LeMire, a native of Paris who migrated first to Acadia (probably in the 1730s) and thence to Montreal sometime before the Expulsion of 1755. 1* Pierre married twice, first (ca. 1736) to Marie-Josephe Forest who bore his first son, Béloni-Joachim, and second (1738) to Élizabeth Thibodeau, who gave birth to sons Joseph, Simon, and David.

Three of Pierre LeMire's sons were among the first Acadian settlers in Louisiana, Béloni-Joachim and Simon arriving probably in 1765, Joseph coming soon thereafter, all settling on the east bank of the Mississippi in St. James Parish.

It is unclear whether the sons departed from Acadia or Montreal, but once in Louisiana they apparently dropped the "Le" from the surname, establishing the Louisiana form, "Mire." 4 Married to Madeleine Melançon in Acadia (1760), Béloni-Joachim Mire reared five sons on his St. James farm, four of whom (Paul, Benjamin, Joseph, and Jean-Baptiste) remained in the general area,5 where many of their descendants live today, especially in neighboring Ascenston Parish. Jean-Baptiste established a sizable plantation, called Arcadia, near present Welcome in St James, and he and his son, Évariste, became well-known antebellum sugar planters.

Béloni-Joaquim's fifth son, Pierre (m. 1796 Henriette Bernard), after living many years near his relatives on the east bank, about 1820 moved to the Lafourche, settling with his large family on Bayou Guillot, just west of present Thibodaux.

There, he and his five sons established the Lafourche branch of the Mire clan, and many of their descendants still reside in that area.

Béloni-Joachim's brother, Joseph Mire (m. 1786 Marie-Marguerite Daigle), also contributed to the Lafourche branch through his son Jean-Baptiste (m. 1817 Artémise Bergeron), who migrated from St. James, settling in the Thibodeauxville area about the same time as his cousin Pierre.

An earlier and more significant Mire migration from St. James was that of Béloni-Joachim's brother, Simon (m. 1766 Madeleine Cormier), who by 1783 had moved his family to the Attakapas, settling in the rolling Côte Gelée area west of Bayou Teche between St. Martinville and present Lafayette.

The southern part of the Côte Gelée, between Bayou Tortue and the prairies around present Youngsville, remained a center for the Mire families descended from Simon during the first half of the nineteenth century. By 1850 some of his descendants had settled along the Vermilion River near Abbeville and by the 1870s others had migrated northwestward into present Acadia Parish near Rayne and along Bayou Blanc near the present site of Crowley.

Church and civil records suggest that by the 1880s the northeastern part of Vermilion Parish and what is now Acadia Parish had both become secondary centers of settlement for Mire families in Louisiana.

Unlike many of their French-speaking compatriots, the Mires did not migrate in large numbers into Calcasieu Parish or into southeastern Texas.

However, many of the St. James branch have moved into Baton Rouge, Gonzales, and New Orleans, probably in the past 50 years