My Journey into Cajun Genealogy

I am obsessed with my family's history. I believe that the person I am was created by each of my ancestors. I was shaped by my parents, just as they were shaped by their parents, and so on back through the generations.

About ten years ago, I found out my great-grandmother had been born in Louisiana. I was more interested in another family line at that time, so I filed that bit of information away in my mountains of files.

Asking the Question

I recently read an article that mentioned the Cajun people of Louisiana. I'd heard of the term "Cajun" before, but I had no idea what it meant. After some light reading, I started to wonder if my great-grandmother had been Cajun. My grandfather had claimed to be part French, after all.

My great-grandmother was born in Abbeville, Louisiana. Since that was all I knew, I started there. The website for the City of Abbeville boasts about its, "proud Cajun heritage". From the website, I learned that Abbeville is in Vermillion Parish, so I hopped over to the website of the parish that claims to be, "the most Cajun place on earth."

Now my hunch was more like a theory. I knew that my mother's family was supposedly part French. I knew that they had lived right in the middle of "Cajun country". Now I needed some hard proof. Unfortunately, I live 1,300 miles from Abbeville.

Investigating my Cajun Genealogy

I have maintained a family tree on Ancestry.com for a few years. So, I decided to take a look over there. A distant cousin of mine also has a family tree there, so I glanced at her work. Luckily, she had the information I was looking for. Some more digging revealed online sources to back up our family trees.

There it was, the proof I needed. My great-great-great-great-great grandparents had been born in Acadia, Canada. Yes, Canada. It surprised me, too. During my research, I learned that the Cajuns of Louisiana are actually the Acadians from Canada. They are descendants of the French people who settled in Nova Scotia. They were later evicted by the British in 1755. Some eventually settled in Louisiana. Some of these people became my ancestors.

Learning More About Cajun Genealogy

Surprisingly, there are several online resources devoted to Cajun genealogy. The Cajuns of Louisiana, like the Acadians of Canada, lived in a fairly small area. I have found that, if you go back far enough, many Cajun families are related somehow. This makes it fairly easy to expand a Cajun family tree once you find that first Cajun ancestor.

Sources

Ancestry.com
http://www.cityofabbeville.net/
http://www.vermilion.org/