Lafayette Parish is a parish located in the state of Louisiana. Based on the census, the population was , The parish was founded in The parish seat is Lafayette. The parish was named in honor of Marquis de la Fayette, the French general who rendered assistance to the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War.
Lafayette Parish was created on January 17, , from St. Martin Parish and the parish was named in honor of Marquis de la Fayette. The Parish seat is Lafayette. Early historians report that a few trappers, traders and ranchers were present in the region prior to the Spanish occupation of The first settlement in south-central Louisiana, known as Petit Manchac, was established by the English who used it during the Revolutionary War as an outpost.
It constituted a small trading post on the banks of the Vermilion River where the Old Spanish Trail crossed the bayou about where today's Pinhook Bridge is located. The village also came to be known as Pin Hook, a name about which many stories of origin exist.
The historical event which had the greatest cultural impact on Lafayette was the migration of the Acadians from French Canada after "Le Grand Derangement" in Porter, whom I met at Brandywine? He was a brave man. He had with him there a young man, a relative I think, whose name I have forgotten. They fought very nearly together. Not long after that meeting, he traveled to the Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont, where the idea of founding a college at Easton first came to mind.
The concept gained further traction when Porter visited the grounds of Dartmouth College, the liberal arts college founded in Hanover, New Hampshire in The enthusiastic attorney returned to Easton to begin building the foundation for his dream. It is likely that Mr. Porter, who so recently had been singled out by Gen. Lafayette and shown personal attention, suggested the name at the same time as he suggested the establishment of the college.
William C. Cattell, President of Lafayette from , made his own investigations in France. It was a one-story brick structure with slate floors. In , the State Legislature established the corporate limits of the town of Vermilionville and a town council of 5 members. By , the town became large enough to warrant a branch office of the Union Bank of Louisiana, located on the corner of Saint John and Vermilion Streets. Also in , a group of concerned citizens founded the Vermilionville Academy on the corner of Jefferson and Vermilion Streets.
They were Basil C. The school operated until , at which time it was sold and the proceeds were used to support free public schools in the parish. Also contributing to the growth of the middle class in Lafayette was the growth of the city of New Orleans. Between and , due to the influx of overflow of immigrants from Germany, France and Ireland, New Orleans had doubled in size and was second only to New York as a port of entry into the U.
Since the very fertile land in Acadiana had already been taken by Acadian planters, the new immigrants either settled on less productive land north of the town center, or became merchants, artisans and manufacturers in town. Unlike on large plantations, it was less economically feasible for each separate small plantation to employ fulltime, the skilled laborers regularly needed, such as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, etc. Therefore the need for trades grew and increased the demand for merchants and skilled artisans and craftsmen.
Michel Eloi Girard born in France became a prominent attorney in Vermilionville. Jewish merchants such as the Plonskeys, Levys, Falks, and Wises found Lafayette to be a warm and friendly place, and since as Germans they were already familiar with the French language, they found it easy to establish mercantile outlets.
Vermilionville had an atmosphere that spoke of opportunity for material advancement, as there was an increasing need for products services and skills. Because the area was populated with many small plantations and because of the increased urban middle class population, the Union forces during the Civil War were far less destructive in Lafayette Parish than in neighboring areas of much larger plantations.
Comparatively speaking, rebuilding after the Civil War in Lafayette Parish was done more quickly and with far less effort. Between and the town of Vermilionville grew from a population of people to a total of people. During that same time period, the population of Lafayette Parish grew from 6, to 13, people. In June of the first professional medical group formed in Lafayette. Its members were Dr. F Beauchamps, President, and Drs. The group included other doctors from several neighboring communities and indicated that Vermilionville was moving toward firmly establishing itself as a major growth center in the Attakapas country.
Photo courtesy of Louis J. Perret, Clerk of Courts, Lafayette Parish. In , the town of Vermilionville changed its name to Lafayette, Louisiana. It had grown to 2, people based on the Census of , which was more than double the population from the previous Census in There are a few buildings that were downtown at that time that still exist today.
Those structures are:. It quickly became a thriving upscale suburb of Downtown, as was the area on Garfield Street between Jefferson and Johnston Streets, called Mansion Row. Everything else was rural, agricultural land. Between and , Vermilionville enjoyed a prosperous economy resulting mainly from the increasing immigrations, the many small plantations that encouraged the healthy growth of an urban middle class and the fertile land that sustained the growing population.
Growth slowed during the Yellow Fever epidemic of and due to the Civil War and reconstruction period that followed between and
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