Since the late eighteenth century the abode of most Trahans in Louisiana has been centered in the Attakapas country, chiefly in the present parishes of Lafayette and Vermilion, where some of the families of that name first settled in the 1760s. In 1880, 70 percent of the Trahan households in the state still lived in those parishes, but today, mainly because of migrations westward during the past 100 years, that percentage has been reduced to about 40.* Practically all of Louisiana's Trahans descend from Acadian refugees who entered the colony from 1765 through 1785. In Acadia the clan was started by one Guillaume Trahan, a toolsmith from Bourgueil in the Loire Valley, west-central France.

Arriving in Port Royal with his wife Françoise Charbonneau, Guillaume sired a large family; four generations of his many descendants established farms near Pisiguit and Grand-Pré.

After the Expulsion of 1755, the Trahan families, like their compatriots, were deported to various of the British North American colonies, as well as to England and France, and some escaped into Canada, where today their descendants live chiefly in the province of Quebec.

According to available records, the first Trahans to enter Louisiana probably arrived in 1765 with a group of Acadian exiles from Halifax. Among them were Jean Trahan and family, his recently married son, René, and his brother, Michel and family.

All went directly to the Attakapas with other Acadian refugees, Jean Trahan and wife Marguerite Broussard settling first along the Teche area below Attakapas Post (St. Martinville), while René (m. 1765 Élizabeth Broussard) and Michel Trahan, with wife Euphrosine Vincent and four children, set up households on Bayou Tortue near Cypress Island, west ofthe post.

Still another brother of Jean and Michel, Athanase (m. ca. 1770 Madeleine Thibodeaux), who may have entered Louisiana sometime after 1765, also obtained land near Cypress Island, as did Michel's son, Paul, after his marriage to Marie Duhon in 1772.

By the mid-1770s, however, most of the brothers and their sons had moved to Bayou Vermilion; their nephew René in 1776 was granted a large tract on both sides of the Vermilionsome 2,780 acres, much of which he later sold.

On the Vermilion most of the Trahans became farmer-stockmen, as did their progeny, some with moderately sized cattle herds.

From Athanase and Michel, especially, descended two long lines of Trahans in Lafayette Parish, many of whom by the mid-nineteenth century had settled in Vermilion Parish north and west of Abbeville.

Between 1768 and 1785 a large number of Trahan families, all related in various degrees to the earlier arrivals, entered Louisiana, greatly complicating the history of the clan. By 1776 a Pierre Trahan (m. ca. 1765 Anne-Rose Brasseaux) and a distant relative, Honoré Trahan (m. ca. 1746 Anne Corporon) were living on the upper Bayou Plaquemine Brulée in the Bellevue Prairie near Opelousas Post;11 some years later both were reported in the Grand Coteau area near the Attakapas-Opelousas border, where most of their progeny lived for two generations.

The time of their arrival is uncertain, but it is known that Honoré and his family were exiles from Maryland.

Honoré's brother, Joseph (m. ca. 1766 Élizabeth Aucoin) also came to Louisiana at an uncertain date, and the latter's son, Joseph, Jr. (m. 1783 Françoise Pitre), by the late 1770s had settled on the Vermilion in Lafayette Parish.

Another Maryland exile, Charles Trahan (m. ca. 1748 Brigitte Landry, 1765 Marguerite Thibodeaux), came in 1768 with the Acadian group destined for Natchez, but he later settled in Ascension Parish.

By the early 1790s, however, his son, Charles, Jr. (m.

1798 Marie Landrot), had migrated to the Attakapas to live on the Teche near St. Martinville; there, most of his descendants lived well into the nineteenth century.

Most of the Trahans who settled in the Attakapas before 1785, and their descendants, must have been small farmers.

Apparently, the clan's only big planter of antebellum days was Charles Trahan (m. 1807 Marie-Louise LeBlanc; grandson of Honoré of Maryland), who in 1860 held 65 slaves, grew cotton and cane, and grazed some 250 head of cattle and 55 sheep on his 740-acre tract in Lafayette Parish.

In 1785, the largest contingent of Trahans arrived in Louisiana-13 families and 5 single individuals, all Acadian refugees from France.

Four of the families were immediately assigned land in the Attakapas; the remainder were sent either to the second Acadian Coast or to Bayou Lafourche.

The Attakapas families probably blended easily into the subsistence economy of the area, many of their descendants by the 1840s settling in Vermilion Parish; later in the nineteenth century several migrated westward into Calcasieu and Cameron parishes, and during the present century into southeastern Texas.

Some of the Trahans who arrived in 1785 were assigned land along the Mississippi in Ascension Parish; for example, the family headed by Simon-Pierre and Marie-Josephe Granger settled on the east bank near St.

Gabriel; others, like that of Jean-Paul with Marie-Josephe Lejeune, by the 1790s had left the east bank to make home in present West Baton Rouge Parish, where some of their offspring were well established in the early 1800s.

Among the five or more Trahan families sent to the Lafourche were Chrisostome Trahan and wife Anne Granger, as well as Marin Trahan and spouse Marguerite LeBlanc.

One of Chrisostome's sons, François (m. 1804 Madeleine LeBlanc) joined other Trahans in West Baton Rouge Parish, whereas two sons, Joseph (m.

1800 Marguerite Doveron) and Jean-Baptiste (m. 1802 Madeleine Guidry) apparently obtained land near their father's property along the Lafourche in Assumption Parish.

By the 1820s one of Jean-Baptiste's sons, Trasimond (m. 1826 Virginie Carmouche) had migrated down-bayou to the vicinity of Lockport, and in the 1830s his brother, Simonette (m. 1835 Émilite Trahan), had settled along Bayou Black in Terrebonne Parish, where his descendants remained or took up land farther south along Bayou du Large.

Progeny of Marin Trahan also migrated into Terrebonne, several of his grandsons establishing small farms along Bayou Terrebonne as far as Montegut in antebellum days.

Still another Trahan, Étienne (m. 1806 Anne-Marie Daigle), son of Pierre Trahan and Anne Brasseaux who in the 1770s had settled in Opelousas, chose the Lafourche as home; during the 1830s both of Étienne's sons, Charles and Augustin, and their descendants, settled in Terrebonne Parish, along Bayou Black near Houma and, after the Civil War, along Bayou du Large near Theriot, joining their distant relatives who belonged to the lines established by the 1785 refugees.

Today few Trahans are left along the Lafourche in Assumption, but a large group remain in Terrebonne Parish, probably descended from the families mentioned above