Lafayette, Louisiana: Sixty Years as Vermilionville

For its first 60 years on paper, Lafayette, Louisiana, was Vermilionville. It took the same name as its parish, which honors the Marquis de Lafayette, only in 1884.

Mouton’s town by the bayou

The town began as land laid out by Jean Mouton near Bayou Vermilion. On February 7, 1824, the Louisiana legislature passed an act saying that the town “laid off by Jean Mouton, near the Bayou Vermilion, in the parish of Lafayette, should be known as Vermilionville,” as Alcée Fortier’s 1914 reference work on the state sums it up. Around the same time, the parish seat moved there from a place called Pin Hook. Fortier adds that John M. Mouton donated the land the courthouse stands on.

So the town had a name that matched the bayou beside it, while the parish around it already had Lafayette’s. That split lasted a long time.

1884: the town catches up

Vermilionville was incorporated in 1836 and reincorporated in 1869, Fortier says. Then, in 1884, the town’s charter was amended, and “the name was changed to Lafayette.” Fortier doesn’t say who pushed for it or why, and neither do the other sources we checked, so we won’t guess.

If you look up the town in the federal place-names database, you’ll find another date in the mix: it says “Incorporated 1866,” with no source. Fortier’s charter dates are 1836 and 1869, so take the 1866 with a grain of salt.

A parish named for a general

Lafayette Parish came first. Fortier says it was created in 1823 and that, at the start, it also took in what is now Vermilion Parish. Henry Gannett’s 1905 list of U.S. place names, put out by the U.S. Geological Survey, lumps it in with a long row of counties and towns across the country “named for Marquis de Lafayette, who served in the American Army during the Revolutionary war.” Fortier adds that Lafayette rose to major general in the American army.

The timing is a little funny. The parish carried his name two years before his 1825 visit. Fortier describes the visit: on April 10, 1825, the steamer Natchez landed Lafayette at Chalmette, and he was welcomed at the house where Andrew Jackson had kept his headquarters in January 1815. By then there was already a whole parish in Louisiana with his name on it, and it would be almost 60 more years before its main town took the name too.

Sources & further reading

• Alcée Fortier, ed., Louisiana, vol. 2 (1914). The 1824 act naming the town Vermilionville, Jean Mouton, the move from Pin Hook, the 1836 and 1869 charters and the 1884 change to Lafayette (p. 21); the creation of Lafayette Parish in 1823 and John M. Mouton’s courthouse land (pp. 21–22); Lafayette’s career and his arrival at Chalmette on April 10, 1825 (pp. 22–23).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). Lafayette Parish among the places “named for Marquis de Lafayette” (p. 178).
• GNIS feature 1629965 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Lafayette: “Incorporated 1866.”