This surname is derived from a nickname. 'Prudhomme.' An old name for a superior craftsman: 'a good and true man, a man well versed in any art or trade': Sadler. Green (History English People), speaking of the conflict between the Merchant Guilds and the Crafts Guilds, says: 'It is this struggle, to use the technical terms of the time, of the 'greater folk' against the 'lesser folk,' or of the 'commune,' the general mass of the inhabitants, against the 'prudhommes,' or 'wiser' few, which brought about ... the great civic revolution of the 13th and 14th centuries.' The surname was common at the same period.

John Prodhome, Devon 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Richard Prodham, Buckinghamshire, ibid.

Geoffrey Prudhomme, or Prodomme, Buckinghamshire, ibid.

Many other early instances might be given, but these are sufficient. Pruden doubtless is a corruption. Pridham is found as Prudham in the 13th century.

Symon Prudham, Norfolk, 1277: History of Norfolk.

1789. Married — Richard Bunn and Elizabeth Prudden: St. George, Hanover Square.

(Anglo-French-Latin) Upright, Honest Man; Expert [Anglo-French Old French prudhom(m)e, prodhom(m)e (French prud'homme); apparently from a syncopated form *prud-us of Latin prouid-us, foreseeing + Latin homo, man] Geoffrey Prudhomme.—Hundred Rolls

An obsolete French word, signifying "a good and true man; a man well versed in any art or trade." Sadler. In H.R. Prodhomme, Prodomme, Prodome, Prudhomme, &c.

Although relatively small in numbers, most of the Prudhommes of Louisiana are found today in two regions of the state: (1) the Red River area between Natchitoches and Shreveport, and (2) the southwestern prairies from Opelousas and Lafayette to Lake Charles. This distribution reflects clearly the early settlement of two unrelated Prudhomme families that emigrated from France in the eighteenth century.* Jean-Philippe-Pierre Prudhomme, a native of St. Romans in Dauphiné province, southeastern France, and his wife, Marie-Catherine Meillier of Paris, came to the French outpost of Natchitoches about 1726.

Of their four sons, Jean-Baptiste (1735-1786) was the most renowned, being appointed the "royal surgeon" of Natchitoches Post and acquiring several tracts of fertile farmland in the area now called the "Cane River country" in the Red River Valley below the post.

Jean-Baptiste and four of his five sons began the line of wealthy Prudhomme planters, who in antebellum times were among the richest in Louisiana. One of the sons, Jean-Pierre-Emmanuel (1762-1845), is said to have been the first in the state to grow cotton successfully on a large scale.

In 1860, seven Prudhomme planters in the Natchitoches area, all descendants of Jean-Baptiste, held between them a total of 3,600 acres of prime alluvial land in cultivation, worked by over 700 slaves.

The Civil War and its aftermath, however, ended the fortunes of most big planters of the area. Besides their plantations in the Cane River country, several Prudhomme families in the 1780s and 1790s had obtained from the Spanish government large land grants in the Bayou Pierre area and the "Neutral Ground" northwest of Natchitoches for raising cattle.

The Prudhommes who now live around Mansfield in Desoto Parish can probably trace their ancestry from those settlers.

Most of the Prudhommes of southwestern Louisiana can definitely trace their ancestry to Jean-Michel Prudhomme of Strasbourg, Alsace, in northeastern France, and his second wife, Marie Snaider.

He may have initially settled in Louisiana with his first wife, Catherine Andeymistre, in St. John Parish, for in 1766 a Michel Prudhomme was recorded as living on the upper German Coast of the Mississippi.

If so, by 1777 (or possibly by 1774) he had moved his family to the Opelousas area.

By 1788 he had married a second time and was living on the Bayou Plaquemine Brulée, just west of Opelousas Post, where he had a herd of 80 cattle.

Although not as prosperous as his Natchitoches counterparts, Michel Prudhomme and his elder son, Michel, Jr., were relatively well off. In the 1790s the latter had acquired several properties on Bayou Mallet in present Acadia Parish, and in 1796 his father donated a plot of nearly 100 acres for the site of the St. Landry Church in Opelousas Post, and all of the cypress lumber for its construction.

Michel, Jr., and his wife, Sidonie Derbonne, produced four sons to carry on the Prudhomme name, two of whom (Michel III and André) begot especially large families.

In the nineteenth century most of the Prudhomme families in southwestern Louisiana were small farmers and stockmen, as most of their descendants are today. In the late 1890s, like many of their neighbors in St. Landry Parish, a few Prudhommes migrated westward into the rice country of the Calcasieu area, where their children and grandchildren live today