Old Catholic Cemetery
Abbeville, Vermilion Parish, Louisiana
Marker Inscription
Old Catholic Cemetery. On July 25, 1843 Père Antoine Désiré Mégret purchased 160 arpents from Joseph LeBlanc for a church, rectory, and cemetery. Joseph LeBlanc was buried here in 1854. The oldest marked grave is of Eufemie Broussard 1852.
Erected by Jean Lafitte Historic Park and Preserve
The Story
On July 25, 1843, Père Antoine Désiré Mégret — the French priest who founded Abbeville — purchased 160 arpents from Joseph LeBlanc to establish a church, rectory, and cemetery. LeBlanc himself was buried here in 1854, and the oldest marked grave belongs to Eufemie Broussard, who died in 1852. The ground holds the earliest generations of the town's Catholic community.
Why it matters
This cemetery is among the founding sites of Abbeville, preserving the first chapter of French Catholic settlement in Vermilion Parish.
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Related people
- · Père Antoine Désiré Mégret
- · Joseph LeBlanc
- · Eufemie Broussard
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ancien Cimetiere Catholique
Abbeville, LA
In the summer of 1843, the missionary priest Père Antoine Désiré Mégret purchased 160 arpents of land along the bayou to establish a church, a rectory, and a burial ground — the seed from which the town of Abbeville grew. The oldest surviving grave belongs to Eufemie Broussard, laid to rest in 1852, with the land's seller, Joseph LeBlanc, buried here two years later. The cemetery preserves the French Catholic roots of Louisiana's Acadian country in stone and inscription.
Saint Mary Magdalen Church
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Four successive churches dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalen have stood on this Abbeville ground since Père Antoine Désiré Mégret bought the land from Joseph LeBlanc in 1843 — the same French priest who founded the town itself. The present church was raised in 1911 under the pastorate of Père Laforest. The continuity of the site marks more than a century and a half of Catholic worship in the heart of French Louisiana.
Église Ste. Marie Madeleine
Abbeville, LA
This marker, in the Cajun French still spoken in Acadiana, records that four churches dedicated to Sainte Marie Madeleine have stood in succession on land Père Antoine Désiré Mégret bought from Joseph LeBlanc in 1843. The present church was built in 1911 under Père Laforest. The French inscription is itself a testament to the living French Catholic culture of Abbeville.
Judge Émile Édouard (Edward) Simon, 1824 - 1914
St. Martinville, LA
A St. Martinville native, Émile Édouard Simon studied law at Harvard under the celebrated jurists Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf, earning his degree in 1846, and went on to serve as 14th Judicial District Judge — the second of four generations of judges in his family. Family tradition holds that while both were at Harvard, Simon described the Acadian exiles' 1765 settlement of the Teche country to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was then composing his epic poem Evangeline. The plaque honors him as a distinguished son of the Acadian community.