Bill Decker

Louisiana

Editor's note: The original version of this story said Gregoire Villejoin sought a divorce from his second wife. The divorce was, in fact, from his first wife. The copy has been changed to reflect the correction.

KAPLAN –The Villejoins of Vermilion Parish knew there was a story behind their name. But they knew only pieces of that tale.

The first sheriff of Lafayette Parish was said to have been a Villejoin. But the Villejoins didn't know much about him. And there was supposed to be some connection between that sheriff and Haiti. Again, the nature of the connection wasn't clear.

"Everybody said this had happened," said J.D. Villejoin, 70, who lives outside Kaplan with wife Mary. "But there was no proof until I was able to go into the sheriff's office in Lafayette."

That was in 1984. Villejoin received permission to look in the archives.

There it was: an official document dated Oct. 6, 1824, the year after the Legislature lopped off the western portion of St. Martin Parish to form Lafayette Parish. The document was signed "G. Villejouin, Sheriff."

And that was just the start of the story. The story of Gregoire Villejoin — his family name, which isn't really his family name, is spelled three or four different ways — is a story about the early days of Lafayette. But it's also about ethnic cleansing, world war and the hardships endured by refugees.

One more thing: The Villejoins of Kaplan may be descended from French nobility.

"I don't suppose that'll do me any good at the bank," J.D. Villejoin said.

Colonial administrators

According to research by J.D. Villejoin at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Louisiana Room, and duplicated in most details by the acadiansingray.com website by Stephen Cormier, the family story begins in Blois in north central France. In records, the members of a family named Rousseau are referred to as "sieur," or "sir" and as being "de Villejouin," from Villejouin, a small area outside Blois. Together, those things could add up to noble birth for the Rousseaus. According to Cormier, the title was passed along to the oldest son for a few generations.

In one document, the baptismal certificate for his second son, Gregoire Villejoin signed his name "Gregoire Rousseau Villejoin," keeping the name associated with the title but dropping the "de."

The Rousseaus, or Villejoins, were also military men. In the days before the Seven Years War, Gregoire's great-grandfather was sent to Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, part of Acadie. His son, Gregoire's grandfather, became the commandant of Île de St. Jean on Prince Edward Island.

Acadian refugees swelled Îlle de St. Jean's population during the fighting with the British, who won the war with the French. In 1758, the British ordered the deportation of the Acadians, including Gregoire's grandfather, to France.

Half the Acadian exiles from Île de St. Jean died on the voyage to France, and the survivors had to rely on the king's charity. But Gregoire's grandfather was apparently welcomed home. He was promoted, and his son, Gregoire's father, was named governor of Île de la Désirade in the West Indies.

A takeover of the island by Guadeloupe forced the Villejoins to move to Haiti in the 1760s. There, Gregoire's father married a local woman, served the crown as a military officer and lived as a planter, too. Gregoire was born there in 1777.

More misfortune followed. Gregoire's father died in 1799, near the end of the great slave revolt in which Toussaint l'Ouverture took part. The Villejoin family left the same year for Cuba. They stayed until 1809, when Spain, fearing Napoleon, threw the French exiles off Cuba. Most went to New Orleans, and most stayed there. But not Gregoire.

Now in his 30s and accompanied to Acadiana by a brother and a sister, Gregoire surfaces in the historical record in St. Martin Parish, when he married Marguerite Jeannot of Carencro in 1812 at St. Martin des Tours Church. Gregoire bought land in Côte Gelée, near what is now Broussard, and did pretty well for himself.

Valuable man

Gregoire seems to have been an educated man and to have known what to do with this learning. Even aside from his appointment as sheriff, J.D. Villejoin said, Gregoire was a valuable man in the small community.

"He'd represent people as their attorney," J.D. Villejoin said. "He'd buy land. He'd sell land. He'd buy slaves. He'd sell slaves."

Gregoire was affluent enough to afford slaves of his own. He still had nine at the time of his death.

In 1823, the Legislature approved the creation of Lafayette Parish, which then included what is now Vermilion Parish, too. In September 1824, Gregoire's name turns up as a witness on the document by which Jean Mouton, who had already given the land on which St. John the Evangelist Church was built, donated more land as a home for Vermilionville.

The 1824 document that J.D. Villejoin found in the courthouse archive appears to be a jury summons. Interestingly enough, it's written in English, not French. By then, Gregoire was sheriff. He would have been appointed by Gov. Henry Johnson.

In 1832, a second appointment expanded Villejoin's powers to include tax collection.

Gregoire would have been sheriff at a time when Lafayette was bustling. Between 1830, the first Census year after Lafayette Parish was formed, and 1840, Lafayette Parish grew from about 5,600 people to about 7,800. Slaves made up about 40 percent of the parish's population. Cattle and sugar cane were among the main products, and the Vermilion remained important as a trade artery.

Leaving Lafayette

In 1834, J.D. Villejoin said, Gregoire wrote to notify a local judge that his domicile was no longer in Lafayette Parish. He'd moved to New Orleans and was in the middle of a contested divorce.

His estranged wife complained that despite his considerable wealth, Gregoire didn't provide her with enough money or with the house she wanted. She also alleged that Gregoire sometimes beat her or ordered his slave to beat her.

"At the end of the divorce," J.D. Villejoin said, "when they were finished, she didn't get either one — no money and no house."

Gregoire died soon afterward in New Orleans in his mid-50s.

On July 2, J.D. Villejoin joined Farrel and DeWitt Villejoin, more of Gregoire's descendants, at the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office. They're presenting Sheriff Mike Neustrom with a drawing of what Gregoire Rousseau Villejon may have looked like. A New Orleans artist did the drawing based on the appearance of Gregoire's descendants.

"I feel fine being recognized," J.D. Villejoin said. "Someone in the family is finally being recognized.

"It makes you feel good. To know that someone in the family was first at something, the very first sheriff of Lafayette Parish, is an honor."

Reach Bill Decker at 337-289-6327, bdecker@gannett.com or @BillDeckerTDA.