The Naquins of Louisiana stem from the families of two Acadians of that surname, Ambroise and Charles, who arrived in New Orleans with their children in the 1785 migration of exiles from France.* The two were cousins, grandsons of Jean-Baptiste Naquin dit l'Étoile who came to Acadia from France around 1690.

Sent by Spanish authorities first to the Acadian Coast (Ascension Parish), the Naquins eventually settled along Bayou Lafourche.

By 1788, Charles Naquin (widower of Anne Doiron) and his children, as well as one of the sons of Ambroise — Pierre (m. 1787 Anne Robichaux)-had made homes along the bayou; by 1795 Pierre's twin brother, Joseph (m. 1787 Marie-Josephe Arcement) had joined him on the Lafourche.

The descendants of Pierre and Joseph settled along the central part of the bayou, especially from present Thibodaux southward in Lafourche Parish, whereas those of Charles Naquin established farms mainly along the various bayous in eastern Terrebonne Parish.

Today nearly half of the approximately 900 Naquin households in Louisiana still reside in those two parishes, chiefly in the cities of Thibodaux (130) and Houma (86).

Like other early settlers in the Lafourche area, the Naquins were small farmers. Charles Naquin was one of the first Acadians to take up land along Bayou Terrebonne, the main distributary that branches southward from the Lafourche; in 1795 he obtained from the Spanish government a grant of about 400 acres, probably around the present city of Houma.

After the Civil War an increasing number of Charles's descendants (stemming mainly from his son, Jean-Charles [m. 1800 Madeleine LeBoeuf]) were registering baptisms and marriages in the church at Montegut, indicating settlement in the lower part of Bayou Terrebonne and likely along Bayou Petit Caillou immediately to the west.

At least by the early 1900s, and possibly earlier, several Naquin families were residing along Bayou Pointe-aux-Chênes (Pointe-au-Chien) within the coastal marshes of extreme southeastern Terrebonne.

Probably most of these, like other Acadians of that area, were part-time farmers and trappers; apparently none of the Naquins of Terrebonne became large sugar planters.

Before the Civil War another movement of the Naquins of Lafourche and Terrebonne, along with other French-speaking families, took place along Bayou Black westward from Houma toward the lower Teche; by the late 1850s many were using the church at Chacahoula, northeast of Bayou Black, for recording baptisms and marriages.

This movement continued into the Bayou Teche area during the 1870s and 1880s, for during that period several Naquin families that once resided near Thibodaux and Houma were recorded as living near New Iberia and farther up the Teche at Cecelia and Arnaudville. One family from Houma (Michel-Leufroy, great-grandson of Charles Naquin and Anne Doiron, and wife Aimée Butler) even settled as far north as Ville Platte in the early 1880s.

The relatively few Naquins who now live in the Teche country and the parishes of St. Landry and Evangeline are the descendants of those migrants. Unlike many of their Acadian compatriots, few Naquins settled in the rice country of southwestern Louisiana; recently many probably have been attracted more by jobs in the industries of New Orleans and Baton Rouge than by similar opportunities in more distant southeastern Texas