[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Page 4138]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   BICENTENNIAL OF ST. MARTIN PARISH

 Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, today I wish to acknowledge the 
bicentennial of St. Martin Parish. As one of the original 19 parishes 
created from the Territory of Orleans, St. Martin will celebrate its 
200th anniversary in 2007.
  St. Martin Parish was initially established in 1756 by the French 
Government as the ``Postes des Attakapas.'' It was originally the site 
of an Indian trading post and was later turned into a Spanish military-
administrative center. In 1807, when the Territory of Orleans was 
divided into the original 19 parishes, St. Martin Parish was the last 
to be created. The parish at that time included the present parishes of 
St. Martin, St. Mary, Lafayette, Vermillion, and Iberia.
  The structure of St. Martin Parish has remained virtually unchanged 
since 1868. It is divided by an arm of Iberia Parish into the upper and 
lower portions of the parish. The upper portion consists of the 
communities of St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Parks, Henderson, and a 
portion of Arnaudville. The lower portion borders the East Atchafalaya 
Basin Levee and consists of the unincorporated areas of Stephensville 
and Belle River.
  A population rich in diversity and cultural theory calls St. Martin 
Parish home. In the late 1700s, 3,000 French Canadians fled British 
persecution, finding refuge in south Louisiana. The birth of Acadiana 
can be attributed to the settling of 200 of these refugees in present 
day St. Martinville in 1765. There, the Acadians were introduced to 
enslaved Africans tending cattle for French landowners.
  Refugees fleeing the French Revolution as well as Spanish-speaking 
Malagans also arrived in the settlement. Creole families from New 
Orleans and Mobile along with Anglo-Americans soon followed. German 
wheat farmers trying to find a place in the rice industry, along with 
Italian merchants and Irish workers building the railroads began to 
call St. Martin Parish home in the 1880s. These founding cultures, 
French, Acadian, African, Italian, and Spanish, have maintained their 
cultural identities while simultaneously blending together to form one 
culture that is uniquely St. Martin Parish.
  St. Martin Parish encompasses the copious and picturesque regions 
that extend from the Bayou Teche to the Atchafalaya Basin. An 
agriculturally prosperous area, St. Martin Parish is comprised of sugar 
cane fields, low-lying swamps, and majestic waterways. Regal oak trees 
draped with moss frame passageways throughout the parish. With its 
distinctive cultures and striking scenery, St. Martin Parish has come 
to embody the definition of the Louisiana way of life.
  Today, I would like to applaud the good people of St. Martin Parish 
on the bicentennial and wish them continued prosperity.

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