St. Landry Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 82,540. The parish seat is Opelousas. The parish was established in 1807.
Natchitoches Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,515. The parish seat is Natchitoches. The parish was formed in 1805.
Evangeline Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,350. The parish seat is Ville Platte.
Avoyelles is a parish located in central eastern Louisiana on the Red River where it effectively becomes the Atchafalaya River and meets the Mississippi River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 39,693. The parish seat is Marksville. The parish was created in 1807, with the name deriving from the French name for the historic Avoyel people, one of the local Indian tribes at the time of European encounter.
Donaldsonville is a city in, and the parish seat of Ascension Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located along the River Road of the west bank of the Mississippi River, it is a part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area. At the 2020 U.S. census, it had a population of 6,695.
Opelousas is a small city and the parish seat of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, United States. Interstate 49 and U.S. Route 190 were constructed with a junction here. According to the 2020 census, Opelousas has a population of 15,786, a 6.53 percent decline since the 2010 census, which had recorded a population of 16,634. Opelousas is the principal city for the Opelousas-Eunice Micropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 80,808 in 2020. Opelousas is also the fourth largest city in the Lafayette-Acadiana Combined Statistical Area, which has a population of 537,947.
Acadiana, also known as the Cajun Country, is the official name given to the French Louisiana region that has historically contained much of the state's Francophone population.
Established in 1994, the Cane River Creole National Historical Park serves to preserve the resources and cultural landscapes of the Cane River region in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Located along the Cane River Lake, the park is approximately 63 acres and includes two French Creole cotton plantations, Oakland and Magnolia. Both plantations are complete in their historic settings, including landscapes, outbuildings, structures, furnishings, and artifacts; and they are the most intact French Creole cotton plantations in the United States. In total, 65 historic structures and over a million artifacts enhance the National Park Service mission as it strives to tell the story of the evolution of plantation agriculture through the perspective of the land owners, enslaved workers, overseers, skilled workers, and tenant farmers who resided along the Cane River for over two hundred years. This park is included as a site on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Louisiana Creoles are a Louisiana French ethnic group descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of both French and Spanish rule. They share cultural ties such as the traditional use of the French, Spanish, and Creole languages and predominant practice of Catholicism. Some mistakenly think the term is a racial designation, while in fact people of European, of African, and of mixed ancestry have all been termed "Creole" since the 18th century.
Marie Thérèse Coincoin, born as Coincoin, also known as Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin, and Marie Thérèse Métoyer, was a planter, slave owner, and businesswoman at the colonial Louisiana outpost of Natchitoches.
The Creoles of color are a historic ethnic group of Louisiana Creoles that developed in the former French and Spanish colonies of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwestern Florida, in what is now the United States. French colonists in Louisiana first used the term "Creole" to refer to people born in the colony, rather than in France.
Oakland Plantation, originally known as the Jean Pierre Emmanuel Prud'homme Plantation, and also known as Bermuda, is a historic plantation in and unincorporated area of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Founded as a forced-labor farm worked by enslaved Black people for White owners, it is one of the nation's best and most intact examples of a French Creole cotton plantation complex. The Oakland Plantation is now owned by the National Park Service as part of the Cane River Creole National Historical Park.
Magnolia Plantation is a former cotton plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001, significant as one of the most intact 19th-century plantation complexes in the nation, as it is complete with a suite of slave cabins and numerous outbuildings and period technology. Included in the Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Magnolia Plantation is also a destination on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. It is one of two plantations in the park; the other is Oakland Plantation.
Melrose Plantation, also known as Yucca Plantation, is a National Historic Landmark located in the unincorporated community of Melrose in Natchitoches Parish in north central Louisiana. This is one of the largest plantations in the United States built by and for free blacks. The land was granted to Louis Metoyer, who had the "Big House" built beginning about 1832. He was a son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, a former slave who became a wealthy businesswoman in the area, and Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer. The house was completed in 1833 after Louis' death by his son Jean Baptiste Louis Metoyer. The Metoyers were free people of color for four generations before the American Civil War.
St. Augustine Catholic Church and Cemetery, or the Isle Brevelle Church, is a historic Catholic parish property founded in 1829 near Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. It is the cultural center of the Cane River area's historic French, Spanish, Native American and Black Creole community. It is also the oldest surviving Black Catholic church in the United States.
Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site, located in St. Martinville, Louisiana, showcases the cultural significance of the Bayou Teche region. It is the oldest state park site in Louisiana, founded in 1934 as the Longfellow-Evangeline State Commemorative Area. Evangeline was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's enormously popular 1847 epic poem about Acadian lovers, who are now figures in local history. In the town center, the Evangeline Oak is the legendary meeting place of the two lovers, Evangeline and Gabriel. A statue of Evangeline marks her supposed grave next to St. Martin of Tours Church. The state historic site commemorates the broader historical setting of the poem in the Acadian and Creole culture of this region of Louisiana.
The LaBranche Plantation Dependency House is located in St. Rose, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. From many accounts, LaBranche Plantation in St. Rose, Louisiana, was one of the grandest on the German Coast until it was destroyed during the American Civil War. All that remained was the dependency house, known as a garconnière.
The Badin-Roque House is a historic house located along Louisiana Highway 484, about 6.6 miles (10.6 km) southeast of Natchez in the community of Isle Brevelle.
The Venus House is a historic house located in Opelousas, Louisiana in the United States. The house is named after its former owner and occupant, a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus. It is one of the oldest houses of its kind in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Today, the house serves as the center piece of the Le Vieux Village.
Isle Brevelle is an ethnically and culturally diverse community, which began as a Native American and Louisiana Creole settlement and is located in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. For many years this area was known as Côte Joyeuse. It is considered the birthplace of Creole culture and remains the epicenter of Creole art and literature blending European, African, and Native American cultures. It is home to the Cane River Creole National Historical Park and part of the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
