The present distribution of Rachal families in Louisiana reflects the initial settlement locale of the bearer of that name in the Natchitoches area two and a half centuries ago, and the subsequent spread of descendants therefrom along the Red River. The progenitor of probably all Rachal families in the state appears to have been one Pierre Rachal dit St. Denis, a native of the Île d'Oléron off the coast of Saintonge (St. Onge) Province, west-central France.* A corporal in the French marine, Pierre was detached to serve in the militia at Natchitoches Post, where he and his wife, Marianne Benoist of Paris, arrived sometime before 1722.

In addition to his military duties Pierre was able to engage in some fanning, by 1726 having obtained a grant of land probably in the upper Isle Brevelle south of Natchitoches Post.

A part of the fertile flood plain of the several former courses of the Red River, including present Cane River, the Isle Brevelle remained the home of the Rachal families from the early eighteenth century to the late nineteenth-some 150 years. Pierre's three sons, Louis dit Blondin (m. 1753 Marie LeRoy), Barthélemy (m. 1758 Marie Lamalaty), and Jacques (m. ca. 1760 Ursule Castel), reared their families in Isle Brevelle; Louis and Barthélemy both produced many children, each having four to five sons who carried on the Rachal name in the Brevelle (or Cane River) area well into the nineteenth century; in contrast, Jacques appeared to have sired only one son, whose posterity is uncertain.

Although large in numbers, few of the early Rachal families became wealthy planters, in contrast to some of their neighbors, such as the Prudhommes and the mulatto Metoyers. With tobacco the main cash crop during the eighteenth century and cotton during the nineteenth, only one Rachal family possessed more than 20 slaves prior to the Civil War; many had none.

As did many farmers of the area, several Rachals raised livestock for the New Orleans market, with vacheries along what is now Cane River and the Rigolet du Bon Dieu (since 1836 the main course of Red River).

Like members of other neighboring French families, at least one of the early Rachals contributed to the mixed-blood, or mulatto, population so common in the Cane River area today.

The Rachals de couleur, who now comprise a small but integral part of the Cane River mixed bloods (now, as in the past dominated by the Metoyer families) appear to stem from the union of Jean-Baptiste (son of Barthélemy Rachal and Marie Lamalaty) with Marie-Françoise, a mulatto slave, later freed.

One of the offspring of that union was Jean-Baptiste-Espallier Rachal (m. 1817 Marie-Suzanne Metoyer), who became a prominent quadroon cotton planter of the Cane River area during antebellum times.

Members of the Rachal families did not begin to move out of their Isle Brevelle homeland until the mid-nineteenth century. Of the 61 Rachal households officially censused in Louisiana in 1850, 3 lived in Alexandria (Rapides Parish), one in Bienville Parish, the rest (57) in Natchitoches Parish.

In 1880, 57 Rachal households in the state were officially censused, with 3 again in Rapides, but 2 in Avoyelles, one each in Caddo, Red River, and Sabine parishes, the remainder (49) being in Natchitoches Parish. The present distribution of Rachals along the Red River from Shreveport to Alexandria and Avoyelles, and along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, has evolved chiefly since 1900