(French, English) One who made and sold sauces, mustard, etc.; one in charge of that department of the kitchen where sauces were made in large households.

Saucier is one of the oldest French surnames in Louisiana, and the history of its distribution in the state and adjacent areas is quite complex. Jean-Baptiste Saucier was among the Canadians recruited by LeMoyne d'lberville to help establish a French colony along the Gulf Coast in 1699.* At Mobile, in 1704, Jean-Baptiste wed Gabrielle Savary, one of the girls transported in the ship Pelican from France as potential wives for the male colonists.

He and his three sons who established families-Henri, Jean-Baptiste, Jr., and François-probably were the forebears of most of the Saucier families that now live in Louisiana, along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, and, likely, many of those that still reside near the sites of old French posts in Illinois and Missouri.

Having lost three husbands in the Mobile area, about 1725 widow Gabrielle Savary and her family, including four grown sons by her first marriage (Jean-Baptiste Saucier, Sr., d. before 1719), moved to New Orleans;4 by 1731 she had been granted land along the Mississippi River below the city.

At various times, from the 1730s to the mid-1750s, three of the Saucier sons migrated to the Illinois country, Henri temporarily, Jean-Baptiste and François permanently.

Each was responsible for establishing the Saucier name in various areas of the Louisiana colony.

Apparently Henri Saucier was the first to depart for Illinois, where in 1732 he married Barbe LaCroix, native of St. Philippe near Fort de Chartres.

By 1745, however, he and his family had returned to Mobile and later settled on the Saucier holdings below New Orleans; there, in 1770, six sons of Henri were living with their widowed mother.

Of these, Henri, Jr., François, Jean-Baptiste, and Julien-Juste, plus most of their descendants, remained in the New Orleans area, whereas Crétien and Philippe later moved back to Mobile.

Philippe (m. Marie-Louise Nicaise) obtained (ca. 1780) a large tract on the northeastern shore of Bay St. Louis, and there became a prominent stockman and syndic of the area.

The present concentration of Saucier families along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi probably is composed mainly of descendants of Philippe and Crétien (Savary), grandsons of Jean-Baptiste Saucier, the progenitor.

To further complicate the history of Henri Saucier's family, two of his grandsons (sons of François) wandered from New Orleans to other parts of Louisiana. Around 1820 François, Jr., went to the Avoyelles country where he married Cunegunde Joffrion to begin the Avoyelles branch of the clan;12 a few years earlier Louis-Gustave and his wife Azélie Durocher migrated to Natchitoches,13 but by 1825 they had returned to New Orleans where most of their children were born.

After his marriage to Marie-Rose Girardy in New Orleans (1740),14 Jean-Baptiste Saucier, Jr., also left for Illinois, where he died seven years later, leaving two minor children, Jean-Baptiste IH and Marie-Rose.

When grown, Jean-Baptiste III appears to have been a wanderer, perhaps in keeping with a Saucier tradition.

After marrying Catherine Desmarets in Pointe Coupee in 1765,16 he and his wife lived for a time at the Arkansas Post and later at Ouachita Post.

By 1777, however, his widow and three sons, Joseph, Simon, and Louis, had finally settled down near Opelousas Post, probably in the prairies in the western part of old St. Landry Parish.

Marrying into the Fontenot, Fusilier, DeVille, and other local families, the three Saucier brothers and their offspring began the St. Landry branch of their clan.

François Saucier became a surveyor by trade. Educated in Paris as an engineer, François served under Bienville as surveyor and explorer of lands between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers. In 1743 he wed Marie-Jeanne Fontaille in Mobile and ten years later was sent to Illinois to plan the construction of a stone fort at Chartres.

There he remained with his family, and his children (the elder ones bom in Mobile) became the ancestors of many of the Saucier families of Illinois and Missouri