New Iberia was founded by a handful of Spaniards in the spring of 1779. In the more than two hundred years that have elapsed since that event, the town, now city, has experienced a rich and stimulating history.

The present volume seeks to relate many of the episodes that have occurred along New Iberia's historical path to the present. Presented in twenty-seven essays, the work focuses on the people who have fashioned the town. Here, in detail, are found the stories of the early Spanish settlers, the French Creoles and their Cajun neighbors, the Anglo-Americans and the...

This anthology constitutes the first attempt to fill comprehensively one of the most enduring lacunae in Louisiana historiography--the French-Antillian migration to the lower Mississippi Valley. Generations of Louisiana historians have neglected this influx, involving more than 10,000 Saint-Domingue refugees between 1792 and 1810. These newcomers were subsequently joined by far smaller numbers of French citizens from Guadeloupe and Martinique. Not only were these immigrants largely responsible for the establishment and success of the state's sugar industry, but they also gave New Orleans...