Jim Bradshaw: Poupeville's namesake didn't stay long

Before Rayne was Rayne it was Poupeville, named after Jules Poupeville who had a store in the area. Before it was Poupeville, it was Queue Tortue.
There’s no record of when the community became known as Poupeville, or if that name was known outside of the immediate area of the store. Queue Tortue was used as the legal name for the area well after the Civil War.
Jules opened for business at Queue Tortue probably about 1850.
His store became a stop for stage coaches crossing the prairie, and a Poupeville post office was established on Aug. 5, 1858, with Octave P. Bonin as postmaster Octave may have been named to the position because Jules had been strongly encouraged to leave the area by that time. It seems that Mr. Poupeville may have been something less than scrupulous in his business affairs.
That’s certainly the impression given in an account in the Opelousas Courier in the spring of 1856. “
It appears that a man by the name of Jules Poupeville was met … on Thursday of last week … by a certain number of individuals, attacked, and so badly treated that his life is in the greatest danger; he having received several wounds from pistol shot, and several buck shot having penetrated his breast,” the newspaper reported.
“We may add that a few months before, Poupeville had been accused of having stolen or purchased stolen hides, belonging to stock owners of Plaquemine Brulee.”
For several months, according to the account, “stock owners had perceived that their cattle and hides were rapidly diminishing … and employed men to … surprise the scoundrels. It is probably in the exercise of their duty that the men met with Poupeville.”
I don’t know what eventually happened to Jules. Gene Thibodeaux says in his history of Rayne only that “Poupeville did not remain long in the area.” ("Rice, Railroads and Frogs: A History of Rayne, Louisiana," Plaquemine Brulée Press, 2001)
I assume that Jules had been long gone by the 1880s, when the Poupeville community was also forced to move.
A church had been built there in 1877 and a school shortly thereafter; homes and businesses had sprung up.
But the railroad that crossed the south Louisiana prairies in 1880 was built several miles to the north of Poupeville, and towns that were skipped by the railroad had little future.
That’s why the enterprising people of Poupeville decided that if the railroad would not come to them, they would go to the railroad.
An ox team dragged the church to a site nearer the tracks, followed by stores operated by J. D. Bernard, M. Arenas, and Francois Crouchet. Houses soon followed, and the relocated Poupeville became the village of Rayne in May 21, 1881, when the new post office was given the name of railroad executive B.W.L. Rayne.
The editor of the Courier visited “the thriving little city” in the spring of 1885, and reported that he had heard of its rapid growth, but “was not prepared for the wonderful development that he had seen.”
He said: “Now it is an incorporated town whose limits cover a mile and a half square, with commodious business houses fronting on each side of the Louisiana Western Railroad and neat residences spreading in every direction, facing well-graded streets and forming the pleasant home of about 600 as hospitable, energetic, and thrifty inhabitants as occupy any country.”
He said he met people from Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Mississippi during his visit to Rayne.
Many of them had been grain farmers who were lured to the prairie by the growing rice industry. The first rice mill in Acadia Parish was built in Rayne in 1887.
In 1907, Rayne civic leaders listed the town’s assets in the Christmas edition of the Crowley newspaper.
They included two railroads, a cotton oil mill, four cotton gins, two rice mills, two machine shops, one grist mill, two lumber yards, a brick plant, two churches, three schools, two banks, a waterworks and light plant, a military company, and a fire company.
They hadn’t come up yet with the idea of turning the frogs that lived in their rice fields into an international business, but merchant Mervine Kahn was already busy changing south Louisiana music by selling accordions that could be heard even in the rowdiest dance halls.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.