Bourgeois Homeplace / Site Familial des Bourgeois

Jacques Bourgeois reached Nova Scotia in 1642 and married Jeanne Trahan, who was fourteen. About four generations later the British expelled the family with the rest of the Acadians, in 1755. Descendants arrived on this first Acadian Coast in the fall of 1765, then spread along the River Parishes and into Lafourche and Terrebonne. After the Civil War a large group moved to the Beaumont and Houston area of Texas. A 1999 reunion expected about 1,200 relatives, and a Laura Plantation historian put the family's descendants near 150,000.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Whitney Plantation — 5.6 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Laurel Valley Village — 16 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 16 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.
• E. D. White Historic Site — 17 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.

More markers nearby

• Colonel Leopold L. Armant Historical Marker — 1.1 mi
• Vacherie — 1.3 mi
• "Le Petit Versailles" Historical Marker — 1.3 mi
• James Mather — 1.5 mi