St. Joseph's Catholic Church & Cemetery

St. Joseph's began in 1872 under Archbishop Napoleon Perche, with a first church on a ridge between Pouppeville and Castille, on the Valsin LeBlanc plantation. Its first pastor, the Jesuit Joseph Anthonioz, also served Church Point and Mermentau. When the new railroad drew Rayne's growth a mile away, he had the church raised onto wooden wheels and drawn by about 120 oxen, a trip of weeks. The bell in the present tower is inscribed "Pouppeville Louisiana 1880" and still rings. The churchyard's north-south rows have no agreed explanation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 16 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 20 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 22 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 24 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.

More markers nearby

• Louisiana Frog Company — steps away
• Jacques Weil Company — 0.2 mi
• Rayne Depot Square — 0.2 mi
• Pouppeville — 0.5 mi