SECTION 1A - Introduction and design of this book (updated 2002)

(page 6)

Section 1A - Introduction and design of this book (updated 2002) and possible reasons why and how the Poussons moved from France to Louisiana

I would like to thank all of you who purchased my first book - The Pousson Families of Louisiana - printed in 1997. I had 250 copies printed - one copy was given to the Acadia Parish Library in Crowley, Louisiana, I kept two copies for myself, and 247 copies were sold to our Pousson family, cousins, and friends.

 

I now have enough new Pousson family information (documents, pictures, etc.) to justify printing a second book - The Pousson Families of Louisiana - Updated 2002. This second book has ALL the information found in the first book plus the new family information I have assembled in the last few years. I have tried to keep the arrangement (format) of this book the same as the first book:

 

Copyright page (i)

Contents (ii)

List of Exhibits (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) (new exhibits will be highlighted)
Section 1 Introduction
Section 1A Introduction and design of this book (Updated 2002) and possible reasons why and how the Poussons moved from France to Louisiana
Section 2  Early Pousson family in France
Section 3 Jean Bertrand Pousson
Section 4 Bertrand Cadet Pousson
Section 5 Mathieu Pousson
Section 6 Guillory and Jeansonne (Johnson)
Section 7  List of descendants of Jeannet Pousson and Marie Lafosse

In order to help find the new information (documents, pictures, etc.) I have highlighted (bold and italic) the new exhibits in the “List of Exhibits”.

 

One of the first new exhibits is the bad news I received in March 1998 (ref. exhibit 4 and 5). The civil records for the city of St. Gaudens were burned at the end of the last century - most of the records before 1737 were destroyed.

Due to this fire, I do not know of any way of doing any additional genealogy research for the time before 1737. Perhaps someone will be able to find additional information by going to St. Gaudens and/or Toulouse and researching land records, notary documents, etc. I have written to the Archives in Toulouse, France requesting additional information concerning Jeannet Pousson and Marie Lafosse - I hope they may have married in a town near St. Gaudens such as Bordes de Riviere.

(page 7)

{exhibit 4}

Letter, 24 March 1998, from Director General - Archives department - Haute Garonne - Toulouse, France - see exhibit 5 for English translation

Director General

Archives department

Haute Garonne

Toulouse - 24 March 1998

(page 8)

Mr. Willmer Philip Pousson

101 Wilbourn #307

Lafayette, La. 70506 USA

Mr.

Following your last letter, I regret to inform you that microfilms previous to 1737, for the city of Saint Gaudens, do not exist.

Unfortunately, the archives for the civil (state records) of this city (St. Gaudens) were burned at the end of the last century and the documents reveal very many gaps.

The photocopy you attached to your letter concerns a death - the age of about 65 years of Jean Pousson widower of Marie Lafosse, he was a tenant farmer on a small farm called “the poor/needy” this death took place October 3^rd of the year above. The witness did not sign because they did not know how to sign. The act was recorded by Barthe.

I ask you to accept, Mister, the expression of my distinguished greetings.

The Director,

s/Bernadette Suau

Note - The attached document referenced to in this letter is from microfilm the Latter Day Saints Church sent me - Family History Center film 2062446 (4E 1865).

Part of this film was from the year 1782 - “the year above” referenced to in this letter. See exhibit 6 - for the microfilm document showing the death of our common ancestor Jean (Jeannet) Pousson.

{exhibit 5}

English translation of exhibit 4 - letter of 24 March 1998


(page 9)

{exhibit 6} see arrow - seven lines

St. Gaudens (Toulouse Archives)

Parish registers - Haute Garonne - France

Family History Center film 2062446 - (4E 1865)

Item 3 - 1781 - 1791

Year 1782

Jean Pousson, widower of Madam (Marie) Lafosse, of Bordes - died at the age of about 65 - he was a tenant farmer on a small farm called “the poor/needy” his death took place October 3^rd of the year above (1782). He was exposed and taken to the cemetery. The witness did not sign because they did not know how to sign. The act was recorded by Barthe.

 


(page 10)

Possible reasons why and how the Poussons moved from France to Louisiana

 

 

　

The actual events, conditions, travels, etc. of our ancestor’s reasons for coming to Louisiana may never be known. The following is my best guess as to why they may have migrated to Louisiana and how they traveled and under what conditions based on historical events and conditions of the times.

 

Conditions in France in the 1840’s and 1850’s - at the time of our ancestor’s migrating to Louisiana and possible reasons for their move:
 

 Working our way to the 1840’s and the 1850’s of French history we will start with Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), his selling of the Louisiana Territory to the US, his defeat at Waterloo, his exile to St. Helena, and his death in 1821. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to assist Ambassador Robert Livingston in his attempt to buy from France (Napoleon Bonaparte) the then-French port of New Orleans. To their astonishment, they were offered the entire “Louisiana Territory” of more than 800,000 square miles. Although lacking the authority to do so, Livingston and Monroe made the purchase and were backed later by Jefferson and finally the Congress. In so doing they had practically doubled the size of the United States at a cost of roughly five cents per acre.

 

Believing that Russia was planning an alliance with England, Napoleon invaded Russia, defeating the Russians at Bordolino, before entering Moscow, but was forced to retreat, his army broken by hunger and the Russian winter. In 1813 his victories over the allied armies continued at Lutzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, but he was routed at Leipzig, and France was invaded. Forced to abdicate, he was given the sovereignty of Elba (1814). The unpopularity which followed the return of the Bourbon King motivated him to return to France in 1815. He regained power for a period known as the Hundred Days, but was defeated by the combination of Wellington’s and Blucher’s forces at Waterloo. He fled to Paris, abdicated, surrendered to the British, and was banished to the remote south Atlantic island of St. Helena where he died in 1821.

After Napoleon abdicated, the Bourbon monarchy was restored with Louis XVIII as king. Louis XVIII died in 1824 and was succeeded by his brother, Charles X. In July of 1830 Charles X issued an ordinance aimed at ending representative government and abolishing liberty of the press. That move enraged the people of Paris and for three days barricades choked the narrow streets. The King fled, to settle ultimately in Edinburgh. When Charles X abdicated, Lafayette had taken over the Hotel de Ville (City Hall). Although republicans had directed the new revolution, France remained a monarchy. Europe would not tolerate a French republic so the Duke of Orleans, a distant cousin of Charles X and a descendant of Louis XIII was urged to accept the vacant throne. He was proclaimed Louis-Philippe I, King of France in August of 1830. Despite eighteen years of peaceful and prosperous rule, the “July Monarchy” had failed to establish a broad base of support with the French population. Only the French bourgeoisis supported the constitutional monarch, but this support was undermined by the self-serving and reactionary administration of Minister Francoise Guizot, who alienated Louis-Philippe’s main constituency. Coinciding with this loss of political support was the onset of the economic crisis of 1846 and widespread human suffering that it engendered.

 

The result was the Revolution of 1848, which toppled the “July Monarchy” and replaced it with a

(page 11)

weak and indecisive provisional government. A new constitution was produced by the National Assembly providing for universal male suffrage and an elected president. In 1852 Louis Napoleon (future Napoleon III and nephew of Napoleon I) captured the French Presidency. Louis Napoleon was elected for a single four-year term of office but he said his election was a mandate for political change in the form of a type of constitutional monarchy, with himself as “prince-president,” Louis Napoleon, acting through the National Assembly, attempted to amend the constitution to extend his term to ten years. The conservatives, who controlled the National Assembly, defeated the proposed amendment. Louis Napoleon dissolved the National Assembly and ordered the arrest of approximately 26,000 political opponents. Another election was held to approve Louis Napoleon’s elevation as emperor of France. Ninety-seven percent of the voters approved the elevation and in December of 1852 Louis Napoleon officially assumed the title Napoleon III, and the Second Empire was born.

 

We must remember that during and between each monarchy, empire, republic, etc., clashes between these groups kept tensions high and a need for each group to have their own armies. We can assume, most of the soldiers were “recruited” from the peasant population.

 

The political turmoil produced corresponding instability in the national economy, for it retarded France’s industrialization and the creation of a growing job base.
 

The pace of industrialization was slowest in the South of France largely due to the area’s economic conservatism and primitive communications system. Only in the region’s inefficient textile industry was their rapid change, often at the workers’ expense. In mills that were unable to compete effectively, workers were forced to endure longer working hours for less pay: in mills which attempted modernization, workers were displaced by machines. These deteriorating working conditions sparked violet labor disputes in Aude (1828) and Lodeve (1839). This economic instability was felt most intensely in the country’s agricultural sector. As late as the 1860’s, over sixty percent of all French workers were employed in agriculture. Agriculture, however, was in a state of crisis. In the late 1840’s and early 1850’s, France’s peasant population was the largest in western Europe, and the countryside was inhabited more densely than it had ever been. This dense farming/agricultural population was subjected not only to intense competition for land and jobs caused by overpopulation, was also to the tremendous economic pressures. The problems/trials of 1846-50 were among the most severe that European agriculture had ever experienced. After 1850 “vast numbers” of French peasants, most of whom were landless sharecroppers, consequently began to leave French farming areas. Many of these migrants went to nearby towns and cities, but many others eventually made their way across the Atlantic to American Ports of entry.

 

Bertrand Cadet is shown as a “farmer” on the ship passenger list (ref. exhibit 7), Mathieu is shown as a “laborer”, and Jeanne is shown as a “band box maker” (ref. exhibit 8). As of today, I have not located Jean Bertrand on any passenger list. The parents and grandparents of the Poussons that came to Louisiana, according to birth and death records, are shown as farmers, tenant farmers, laborers, spinners, and weavers (ref. exhibit 13, 14, 17, etc.). One of the death records, death of Jeannet Pousson widower of Marie Lafosse, shows he was a tenant farmer on a small farm called “the poor/needy” (ref. exhibit 6) . We can therefore assume the reason for their move must have been for economic reasons and/or to get away from some type of military service.

 

(page 12)

 

　　　　　　　

{exhibit 7}

Film M 259 roll 35

USL - Lafayette, Louisiana

Ship - Radius

Port of Bordeaux to

Port of New Orleans

Arrival - 20 March 1852

Passenger 8 - B. Pousson age 22 - Farmer. “Our” Bertrand Cadet was born 7 May 1829, this would make him 22 in 1852

(page 13)

.

　　　

{exhibit 8 - also see next page}

(page 14)
 

　

　

　

{exhibit 8}

Film M 259 roll 42

USL - Lafayette, Louisiana

Ship - Minnesota

Port of Bordeaux to

Port of New Orleans

Arrival - 22 Nov 1855

Passenger 32 - Jeanne Pousson age 35 - Bandbox maker. This Jeanne Pousson is listed as a “male” but Jeanne is a feminine name in French. I think this is Jean Bertrand and Bertrand Cadet’s sister - “Our” Jeanne was born on 25 May 1818 and would make her about 37 in 1855. (Note: Band box - a light paper box for collars, caps, hats, muffs, or other light articles.)

Passenger 34 - Mathieu Pousson age 29 - Laborer. “Our” Mathieu was born on 27 Dec 1826, this would make him 29 in 1855.

　

Our ancestors traveled from the St. Gaudens area of Haute Garonne to Bordeaux, a distance of about 100 miles. From the port of Bordeaux, France they traveled to the port of New Orleans.

　

Sailing from Bordeaux, France to New Orleans, Louisiana:

The devastation of French agriculture contributed to the torrent of European emigration. A total of 1,486,758 European immigrants are known to have entered the United States between 1849 and 1852. As during the 1840’s, New York and New Orleans were the leading ports of entry for European immigrants, but, because of the persistence of its large Francophone community, New Orleans attracted a large number of French immigrants.

The floodtide of French immigration, augmented by refugees from the Revolution of 1848, continued unabated into the early 1850’s. The French immigrants of the early 1850’s sought a haven from the economic and political instability of their native land following the wake of France’s 1848 revolution.

French immigrants generally traveled to the Crescent City by one of three routes. The vast majority sailed to New Orleans directly from three French ports: Le Havre, Bordeaux, and Marseilles. Two-thirds of these immigrants, however, sailed from Le Havre alone.

Note: Missing passenger manifests for the months of February 1850, June 1851, and December 1851 would have had about 700-900 immigrants. Compounding the loss of pertinent ship lists is

(page 15)

the perennial problem of undercounting by federal immigration authorities. It is estimated that in 1854 fully one half of all immigrants at the port of New Orleans went unreported.

Shipboard life 1844 style - - -

This was part of a report given before a Parliamentary Committee, London in 1844 when conditions had, unbelievably, improved. "It was scarcely possible to induce the passengers to sweep the decks after their meals or to be decent in respect to the common wants of nature; in many cases, in bad weather, they would not go on deck. Their health suffered so much that their strength was gone, and they had not the power to help themselves. Hence the between decks were like a loathsome dungeon. When hatchways were opened under which people were stowed the steam rose and the stench was like that from a pen of pigs. The few beds they had were in a dreadful state, for the straw, once wet from the sea water, soon rotted, besides which they used the between decks for all sorts of filthy purposes. Whenever vessels came back from distress, all these miseries and sufferings were exhibited in the most aggravated form. In one case it appeared that the vessel, having experienced rough weather, the people were unable to go on deck and cook their provisions: the strongest maintained the upper hand over the weakest, and it was even said that there were women who died of starvation. At that time the passengers were expected to cook for themselves and from their not being able to do this, the greatest suffering arose. It was naturally at the commencement of the voyage that this system produced its worst effects, for the first days were those in which the people suffered most with sea-sickness…"

　　　

　

The levee at New Orleans in the 1850’s, from Charles MacKay, Life and Liberty in America (New York, 1859).

(page 16)

 

New Orleans from the Lower Cotton Press, lithograph by D. W. Moody from sketches by J. W. Hill & Smith, 1852.

　

 

Travel from New Orleans to Opelousas - Waterways were the first ‘highways’ in Louisiana

After our ancestors arrived from France, they had to travel from the port of New Orleans to the Chataignier/Opelousas/Washington area. Jean Bertrand Pousson originally lived in Chataignier and Bertrand Cadet and Mathieu Pousson married ladies from the Chataignier area so we can assume they may have stayed there before they settled in the Iota area.

Back in the 1840’s and 1850’s the journey from New Orleans to the town of Opelousas was not very easy. The most common mode of travel was by boat due to the fact that most of the roads were nothing more than mud trails. The town of Washington, only a couple of miles from Opelousas, was once the most important steamboat port between New Orleans and St. Louis. For nearly 70 years, between 1832 and 1900, passengers heading for the American West disembarked there to climb onto Wells Fargo stage coaches for the rest of the journey.

We can assume our ancestors made the trip from New Orleans to Washington/Opelousas by boat.

As the Opelousas area flourished, merchants needed reliable navigation between the Opelousas prairies and the Mississippi River, the highway to the outside world. The water route east from St. Martinville and other places in the Attakapas district to the south of Opelousas was Bayou Teche. It flowed into Berwick Bay at what is now Morgan City, and gave access to the Mississippi through Lake Chitimacha. Some steamers also used the Atchafalaya River, which intersects the Teche in lower St. Mary Parish.

(page 17)

But the Tech was too far south for the people in the Opelousas district, and it was not reliably navigable north of Breaux Bridge. They had to take Bayou Courtableau, which ran into the Atchafalaya, and then connected to a maze of rivers, bayous, lakes, and bays that would finally give access to the Mississippi or to the Gulf.

In 1818, geographer William Darby published an “Emigrant’s Guide,” an early version of a road map for people coming to south Louisiana. Darby’s “Guide No. 14, New Orleans to Opelousas by Water,” described one of the routes used by to cross the Atchafalaya Basin by boat during the early days of steamboats. According to his guide, points along the way were:

*Efflux of Bayou Plaquemine
*Blake’s (this was probably a store)
*Mouth of Plaquemine into Atchafalaya
*Outlet into Lake Chetimacha (sic) (now called Grand Lake)
*Outlet of Lower Tensaw (probably the outlet of Big Tensas, though it could be Little Tensas or even Bayou Pigeon)
*Cow Island Lake (the lake was bigger then than it is today)
*Lower raft (This is apparently the barrier raft that was to be removed though it may have been moved enough to no longer be a problem.)
*Mouth of Courtableau River
*Mouth of Bayou Bigras (probably Bayou de Grasse)
*Efflux of Bayou Fordoche
*Efflux of Bayou Fusilier (Today’s Bayou Fuselier does not run out of Bayou Courtableau and may not be the same one the Darby names here. Fuselier de La Claire, first commandant at the post (Opelousas), had extensive land holdings in the area and this may have been a stream named for him or one running across his land.)
*Bayou Derbane (Bayou Darbonne)
*Barre’s first Prairie and settlement (Port Barre)
*Wickoff’s Prairie north, and Alabama Prairie south
*Mouth of Bayou Wauksha
*Bayou Carron (an extension of Bayou Courtableau named for the Carron family plantation)
*Opelousas Landing (This is Washington today. From here, traffic had to go overland to what is now Opelousas)
*Opelousas Town

The trip from New Orleans to Opelousas usually took three or four days but things did not always go as planned. Consider the travails of the editor of the St. Landry Whig, who took 13 days to get from New Orleans to Opelousas in November 1844. He told his readers:

“It is notorious to every one that Opelousas in certain seasons is almost entirely shut out from the world, and nearly inaccessible, either for business or pleasure. We were so unfortunate as to be absent from the Parish a few weeks since, and in our return left New Orleans expecting to reach home in three or four days from the time we embarked. The sequel proved that the time was exactly thirteen days!

“After leaving New Orleans, we got going pretty well until we reached the mouth of Red River, where the current runs with such felicity, and the water usually is so low, that it is impossible for boats to get up. (Note: During very low water, boats could not use Bayou Plaquemine and had to ascend the Mississippi River to the Red River, pass through Old River, and then descend the Atchafalaya.) Seven steamers lay within a half mile of each other at the same time, - none of which could get through the current and mud, without the help of hawsers, which were spliced

(page 18)

together and cast a mile ahead, by which means, and all the steam that could be put on, the boats, one by one, pulled over by their windlasses. The current very often was so great as to break the lines, and the boat was driven over into the mud. Not one crossed however without dragging.

“Having finally overcome this difficulty, and passed through the Atchafalaya with much trouble, we were brought up at the mouth of the Courtableau in no water: or next to it for navigable purposes, and were again forced to work through the mud with rope and steam. After getting in, it was almost as bad to get up further. But by dint of perseverance the boat was enabled to reach as high as the Wakshee. From thence to Washington, skiffs were
our conveyances.

“No person, unless on the boats, could conceive of the trouble and inconvenience of such travel. Luckily for us, our captain was a determined man, else we should have been dropped at the mouth of Courtableau, as were some of our friends before us from another boat.”

Another story tells us of men shooting alligators from the decks of steamboats as they traveled through the Louisiana swamps and bayous.

 

(page 19)

Sketch of the Opelousas courthouse - our ancestors made several trips to this building - record marriages, record purchase and sale of land and slave, record citizenship papers, etc.