Arceneaux House
Hamshire, Jefferson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Typical "daubed" house in which lower walls are plastered with moss, mud and sassafras strips. Built by Moise Broussard about 1856 when he brought to it his bride, Mary Gadrac Arceneaux, great-great-graddaughter of Louis Arceneaux, the "Gabriel" of Longfellow's poem "Evangeline." 1880 -- house passed to brother, Athenas Arceneaux, area pioneer in rice planting, and his heirs. Trees here came from acorns of oak shading "Evangeline" grave. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built about 1856, this is a rare Texas survival of a "daubed" house, its lower walls plastered with a mixture of moss, mud, and sassafras. Moise Broussard raised it for his bride, Mary Gadrac Arceneaux, whose family the marker ties to Louis Arceneaux — said to be the model for Gabriel in Longfellow's poem "Evangeline." The house later passed to Athenas Arceneaux, an early figure in the region's rice-planting, and the oaks around it were reportedly grown from acorns of the tree shading the fabled Evangeline grave.
Why it matters
The house links the Acadian (Cajun) heritage romanticized in "Evangeline" to the real settlers who carried that culture to the Texas coast and pioneered its rice country.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the mid-1850s, the Texas Gulf Coast around Jefferson County was drawing settlers who brought their building traditions with them. This house, raised about 1856, dates to Texas's early years of statehood — a time when the coastal prairie was being turned from open country into farmland, and when a family's first home was built from whatever the land itself could provide.
That is why the construction matters. The house is a rare surviving example of a "daubed" dwelling, its lower walls plastered with a mixture of moss, mud, and strips of sassafras. This was frontier ingenuity — a way of making solid walls from the materials at hand, a technique with deep roots among the French-descended settlers of the Gulf region. Houses like it were once common and are now nearly gone, which is what makes this one worth marking.
The deeper backdrop is the Acadian story. The families tied to this house descend from the French-speaking Acadians of Canada, who were scattered in the eighteenth century and resettled in the Gulf South, where their culture took root and endured. This little house is one thread connecting that heritage to the Texas coast.
People & events
The house was built about 1856 by Moise Broussard, who raised it for his bride, Mary Gadrac Arceneaux. According to the tradition the marker records, Mary was a descendant of Louis Arceneaux — the man said to be the model for Gabriel in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's beloved poem "Evangeline." That is a striking claim, and worth reading with care: "Evangeline" is a work of fiction from 1847, and the identification of a real person behind its hero is a cherished family and regional tradition rather than a settled historical fact. The marker preserves that tradition, and so should we, without overstating it.
In 1880 the house passed to Mary's relative Athenas Arceneaux, described as an early figure in the region's rice planting, and then to his heirs. That detail places the family at the leading edge of an industry that would reshape the Gulf coastal prairie, as farmers learned to turn the flat, wet land to profit.
There is one more piece of family lore attached to the property: the trees here are said to have been grown from acorns gathered at the oak that shades the fabled "Evangeline" grave. Like the Gabriel connection, this is the kind of story a family carries lovingly across generations. Whether or not every link can be documented, together these traditions show how a poem became woven into the identity of the real people who claimed its world as their own.
Its place in the American story
Longfellow's "Evangeline" did more than any history book to fix the Acadian story in the American imagination — a tale of exile, endurance, and lost love that generations of readers took to heart. This house is a place where that famous poem meets the flesh-and-blood settlers who lived the culture it romanticized, and who carried that heritage westward to the Texas coast.
The building itself is nationally meaningful as a survivor. Vernacular houses built from mud, moss, and local wood were once ordinary and are now vanishingly rare; each one that stands is a physical record of how ordinary people housed themselves before sawmills and hardware stores reached the frontier. Preserving it keeps a whole way of building from disappearing entirely.
And the rice connection ties the family to a genuine transformation of the American landscape. The rise of rice farming on the Gulf prairie turned a difficult, waterlogged country into productive farmland — an early-figure role in that shift is a real mark left on the region, quite apart from any poem.
If you visit
Treat this as a place to look closely and tread lightly. Historic homes like this are often private property, so admire it with respect and don't assume access — the reward here is in the details you can appreciate from the marker rather than in going inside.
What to look for, if you can see the structure, is the humble genius of its walls: the daubed construction of moss, mud, and sassafras that made a permanent home from the raw materials of the coastal country. It is easy to walk past a small old house without registering how unusual its survival is; the marker exists to slow you down and let that sink in.
Most of all, savor the layering of fact and legend. You are standing where a real family's history brushes up against one of the most famous poems in American letters — the "Evangeline" story made local. On a Gulf Coast road trip, this is a quietly romantic stop for anyone who loves the places where literature and real life overlap, best enjoyed with the marker's own careful wording as your guide to what is documented and what is treasured tradition.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Moise Broussard
- · Mary Gadrac Arceneaux
- · Athenas Arceneaux
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Mayumi Legacy
Beaumont, TX
In the early 1900s, as the Rice Growers Association of America courted experienced Japanese farmers, banker and landowner Yoshio Mayumi left Mie prefecture and bought more than 1,700 acres near Taylor Bayou. He brought fifteen workers from his hometown and built a small farming community—complete with a family house, workmen's quarters, and a dance hall—that raised rice alongside hogs, cattle, and working stock. The experiment showed early promise, but economic troubles and increasingly hostile immigration laws forced the family to sell out in 1924.
Site of The Kishi Colony
Vidor, TX
In 1908, Kichimatsu Kishi—a Japanese native and veteran of the Russo-Japanese War—founded an agricultural colony here, bringing Japanese tenant farmers who found the wet Orange County soil ideal for rice. The settlers became American citizens and adopted Western ways while keeping their homeland's traditions, and Kishi gave land for a church, a school, and a cemetery as Mexican and French Louisiana workers joined them. Falling prices and the Depression broke the colony in the 1930s, though many families stayed and their descendants remain in Southeast Texas.
Orangefield
Orange, TX
A shallow well drilled near Orange in 1903 struck no oil, but deeper drilling into the Gulf Coast salt domes changed everything: Rio Bravo Oil Company's 1913 "Wonder Well" was briefly the deepest in Texas, and Humble Oil's 1921 gusher opened the Orange oil field to a wave of wildcatting. A boomtown of stores, hotels, cafes, and theaters rose overnight—served by a six-mile plank road and eight buses—and even drew a Japanese agricultural colony and petroleum company that logged a record-deep rotary well in 1922. A 1923 fire, a tornado, and dwindling crews later thinned the town, which today centers on its school district, churches, and homes.
Hamshire House
Hamshire, TX
Built in 1859 of Louisiana cypress on land patented to William H. Smith, who died at the Alamo, the Hamshire House is a fine example of the ranch dwellings of early Southeast Texas. It was raised for Emil Broussard, and here grew up J. E. Broussard, who went on to build the first rice mill in Texas — a crop that would transform the coastal prairie. The widowed Azema Broussard later married Lovan Hamshire, and the couple donated the land for the area's first Catholic church.