Joseph (Beausoleil) Broussard

• Death Notes
  • He died on Sept. 5, 1765, during an epidemic that swept the countryside. His brother, Alexandre, had died 13 days earlier.

• General Notes
  • In late November or early December 1764, Joseph Broussard chartered a schooner and set sail with his family and 6,00 other Acadians for Santo Domingo. Tropical heat and epidemic quickly took a heavy toll among them, however, and no more than 200 survivors arrived in Louisiana in February 1765, too weary to go on to Illinois.
    
    The Louisiana governor said he would try to place Broussard and his followers on the right bank of the Mississippi "as close to (New Orleans) as possible." But the site selected flooded frequently, and was covered with dense hardwood forest. The Acadians would have to build levees and clear the land before even thinking about becoming self-sufficient and feeding themselves. It would take too long and be too expensive.
    
    Some of Broussard's band would settle upriver at St. James, but most of them would cross the Atchafalaya Basin to the Atytakapas country--by then a developing post to which several Creole families had recently migrated from Fort Toulouse and Mobile (which had been ceded by the French to the English by the Treaty of 1763.)
    
    There were only a few white men in the region then. The Poste des Attakapas (as St. Martinville was first called), had been opened some years before as part of a French plan to form a chain of forts to "protect the northern and eastern district bordered, neighbored and enclosed by Louisiana." In addition to forts in the northern reaches of the province, the French planned military stations at "Opelousas, Attakapas, and along the frontier of Old Mexico."
    
    The Poste des Attakapas, when the Acadianas got there, consisted of a small church, shabby barracks for the handful of soldiers garrisoned there, and a small store where the scattered settlers of the neighborhood traded.
    
    The treeless Attakapas prairies could be settled quickly and their broad grasslands already supported huge herds of wild cattle. The governor needed beef to feed the growing population in New Orleans, and he needed a place to put the Acadians, who had experienced raising cattle. It seemed a natural.
    
    At this time, Jean Antoine Bernard d'Hauterive, a retired military officer, held extensive lands on the east side of Bayou Teche. Broussard and his band would settle on lands nearby, making a living by "sharecropping" cattle for d'Hauterive.
    
    In April 1765 Joseph and Alexandre Broussard were among the Acadian representatives who signed a compact with d'Hauterive, under which he would provide each Acadian family with five cows with calves and one bull for each of six consecutive years. At the end of six years, the Acadians were to return "the same number of cows and calves of the same age and kind, that they received initially, the remaining cattle and their increase surviving at the time (to) be divided equally between (the) Acadians and (d'Hauterive)."
    
    At about the same time, Joseph Broussard was commissioned a captain in the Louisiana militia, because of the "honorable testimonials which the Marquis de Vaudreuil and other Governors General of Canada have accorded him in consideration of his wounds and of the courage he has given proof of in different affairs against the enemies of his majesty." He was also named "Commandant of the Acadians, who have come with him...to settle on the land of the Acutapas (Attakapas)." 

Click here for details of Beausoleil's family with Agnes Thibodeaux

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