Long time between Christmases It was just a week before Christmas in 1940 when several hundred young men from Lafayette, New Iberia, Breaux Bridge, and other parts of Acadiana boarded a train that would take them to Fort Blandi...
Sailor was among first casualties The governor and a host of other dignitaries were at the graveside when 23-year-old Sidney Gerald Larriviere was buried in November 1941 in Youngsville. He had been killed a month earlier in the fr...
Where was Bowie knife made? Campbell's Ferry isn't much more than a memory now, but it has been argued that the river crossing in Vermilion Parish is the real birthplace of Jim Bowie's legendary knife.
The ferry (name...
An Article of Faith I cannot but agree with David Barton when he writes, “When one observes President Obama’s unwillingness to accommodate America’s four-century long religious conscience protection through his attem...
It began with a fiddle You'd never guess it today, when half the world comes to south Louisiana to listen to the sounds of a Cajun fiddle, zydeco accordion, or saxophone wailing out a swamp pop lick, but there wasn't a g...
Chenieres have romantic history The word cheniere is unique to the Cajun coast, as are the little islands it describes. The word comes from the Acadian word chene, meaning "oak," and describes groves of live oak trees bent by the...
Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée may have been first The earliest European community in what is now Acadia Parish was probably on Bayou Plaquemine Brulee. Some historians say this was the earliest American settlement in south Louisiana (the other ear...
St. Mary native raced Nellie Bly around the world When Nellie Bly died in 1922, the New York Evening Herald called her "the best reporter in America." She pioneered investigative journalism, feigning insanity to get herself committed to an asylum...
Plus ça change More than a third of the nation's oysters come from Louisiana waters and I think the oyster promotion people are dead right when they proclaim, "The Louisiana oyster. There's nothing quite like it....
V12 program kept school open During World War II, Joel Fletcher, president of Southwestern Louisiana Institute (UL today), was forced to consider closing the school as more and more young men left the campus to go off to war. ...
Fabacher influential rice farmer Roberts Cove is known as the home of a substantial settlement of German emigres who helped to create the commercial rice industry in southwest Louisiana. But they were not the only Germans to settl...
Duson brothers were pioneer builders C. C. (Curley) Duson and his brother, William W. Duson, would likely be remembered in Acadiana even if they hadn't been colorful characters. They founded four towns--Crowley, Iota, Eunice, and Mamo...
