Prior to the 1850s the surname Auzenne in Louisiana was generally spelled Ozenne, or Ozanne, the original French forms that occurred among some of the early eighteenth century inhabitants of the colony.* The earliest permanent settler of that name was Jacques Ozenne, a native of St. Loo, Normandy, who was in New Orleans by 1726, employed as a cooper by the Company of the Indies.

Extant records suggest that he and his son Jacques-François, may have been the progenitors of most of the Auzenne families in Louisiana today.

Having married Charlotte-Julie Moreau in 1727, Jacques Ozenne remained in New Orleans as a wine and liquor merchant, as well as the official barrel-maker for the King's warehouse, until his death about 1743.

Soon thereafter his widow married Trenaunay Chaufret, a rich planter of Pointe Coupee.

There, the children of her first marriage also settled, the only son, Jacques-François Ozenne marrying Marguerite Decuir in 1766 and rearing a family of twelve, including five sons.

Although he and his family resided on False River for many years, Jacques-François' major interest appears to have been in running livestock in the Attakapas, particularly in the Côte Gelée area west of St. Martinville.

There, in the 1780s, he claimed two tracts of land fronting on Bayou Tortue, one encompassing a low hill later known as Ozenne's Island, where he subsequently established his home.

Despite his early business in the Attakapas, Jacques-François' family, including several in-laws, probably did not move into the Côte Gelée area until the late 1790s.

Little is known about most of Jacques-François' sons; there are no extant records of the marriages of François, Jr. (1767-1815), Antoine-Edmond (1783-1829), Joseph (1784-?), and Joseph-Antoine (1786-?). However, in his succession papers (1829), Antoine-Edmond was said to have been the father of four natural children, apparently mulattoes, who were classed as "free persons of color."11 Although contrary to the French Code Noir, unions of whites and blacks occurred in colonial and antebellum Louisiana, usually outside the Church, giving rise to the well-known mixed blood element of the population.

Church records reveal that a sizable number of free persons of color who carried the Ozenne surname were living in both the Attakapas and Opelousas areas during the antebellum period.

Records do exist for Jacques-François' youngest son, Ursin, who in 1828 married Julie Picard of Pointe Coupee.

With his two sons, Jacques-François and Sosthene, Ursin carried on the Ozenne name in the Attakapas, he and his brother Antoine-Edmond purchasing from their father one of his holdings on Bayou Tortue.

Ursin's son, Jacques-François (m. 1857 Madeleine Wiltz), continued to live in the Côte Gelée area, while his brother Sosthene (m. 1849 Céleste Donato, apparently a free woman of color) moved to the Opelousas area, where he helped to establish the Ozenne name in St. Landry Parish.

Despite the early establishment of the name in the colony, today the Auzenne-Ozenne families of Louisiana number only between 200 and 250. Less than 20 percent of the present number still live in the old St. Martin area, where the family was once firmly based, whereas 35 percent reside in St. Landry Parish, a secondary area of settlement for the family