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Staff Report
Fourth-grade student Cambrey Ruffin at Holy Cross Elementary has read over 1 million words during the first month of the 2017 school year earning her the top spot in the Holy Cross Elementary School Millionaires Club.
After reading each book, she was tested through the Accelerated Reader Program on classroom or library computers, verifying her accomplishment.

The Cleco Community Fund, a fund of Community Foundation of Acadiana, is accepting grant applications from nonprofit organizations whose focus areas are education, health and wellness, low income and youth programming.

“Cleco has a long history of philanthropic involvement in the communities it serves,” said Peggy Scott, board chair and interim CEO of Cleco Corporate Holdings.

“The Cleco Community Fund will award $100,000 through multiple grants to Acadiana nonprofits doing critical work in the region.”

The grant cycle is open to organizations who are established as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization.

Funding is available to support programs and projects serving Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary or Vermilion.

The Cleco Community Fund does not make grants to individuals, private business ventures or partisan political organizations.

Funding will not be awarded for ongoing, recurring budgetary items.

To submit a grant application, visit www.cfacadiana.org/clecogrant. Applications must be submitted by 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 11.

For more information or assistance, call Lauren Breaux, civic leadership coordinator at Community Foundation of Acadiana, at 337-769-4851 or by email at lbreaux@cfacadiana.org.

The following are the radio dispatch logs from the Morgan City Police Department. To report unlawful or suspicious activity, call the police department at 985-380-4605.
Thursday, Sept. 7
8:18 a.m. 900 block of Youngs Road; Vehicle accident.
8:26 a.m. 800 block of Victor II Boulevard; Officer stand by.
9:20 a.m. 2400 block of Maple Street; Reckless driver.
9:40 a.m. U.S. 90 East; Reckless driver.
10:04 a.m. 1100 block of Marguerite Street; Theft.
11:07 a.m. Glenwood Avenue; Complaint.
11:13 a.m. 200 block of Canary Street; Complaint.
12:20 p.m. 7400 block of La. 182 East; Disturbance.
1:10 p.m. 7300 block of La. 182 East; Drunk.
2:19 p.m. U.S. 90 West; Stalled vehicle.
3:07 p.m. 200 block of Pecos Street; Disturbance.
3:09 p.m. Elm and Pine streets; Vehicle accident.
3:11 p.m. U.S. 90 West; Officer stand by.
3:35 p.m. 700 block of Myrtle Street; Officer stand by.
3:48 p.m. Wren Street; Fight.
4:23 p.m. 100 block of Front Street; Assistance.
5:35 p.m. Seventh and Florence streets; Vehicle accident.
5:40 p.m. 6400 block of La. 182 East; Vehicle accident.
5:44 p.m. 300 block of Louisa Street; Com-plaint.
6 p.m. 1100 block of Fourth Street; Theft.
7:25 p.m. 2100 block of Cedar Street; Theft.
8:36 p.m. 7200 block of La. 182; Narcotics complaint.
9:50 p.m. Fourth and Freret streets; Narcotics complaint.
9:57 p.m. 2000 block of Keith Street; Disturbance.
10:56 p.m. 400 block of Garber Street; Theft.

The St. Martin Parish Courthouse sits on land that was once part of a big plantation owned by Jean-Baptiste Berard, who built what became the Castillo Hotel as his home, and who was one of the leaders in a dispute that helped set the way many of the area’s early settlers regarded each other.

Berard was a native of France, ran a business in St. Louis for a while, and came to the Attakapas country about 1760. He became a prominent planter and man of some influence, and was a leader in a confrontation in the early 1770s, most notably with early cattle barons Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, who are sometimes referred to as the Flammand brothers because of their Flemish ancestry.

They were the sons of Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg, was one of the first settlers of the area, who had himself had a little run-in with new settlers.

When the Acadians first arrived in the Attakapas region in 1765, he was happy to sell cattle to them, but he got upset when the Acadians tried to claim land at Fausse Pointe that he regarded as his.

Shane Bernard points out that “Grevemberg himself had no clear title to the land,” (Teche: A History of Louisiana’s Most Famous Bayou, University Press of Mississippi, 2016).

He got a ruling in his favor when he wrote to the government in New Orleans asking for confirmation of his ownership, but the colonial officials, who had sent the Acadians to the Teche country in the first place, did nothing to force the them to move. Grevemberg eventually had to be content with just 20 square miles of land

His dispute set the stage for further confrontation over property rights in the Attakapas country, where, as historian Carl Brasseaux points out (The Founding of New Acadia, LSU Press, 1987), four or five “French-born and Creole cattle barons, the original settlers, considered the exiles trespassers, though they had been settled in the area by virtue of a gubernatorial decree.”

The later dispute arose because the Flammand brothers, as had their father, let a huge herd of cattle roam the prairie unattended. As the Acadian herds began to grow, some of the Flammand’s wild cattle inevitably got mixed up with Cajin domesticated cattle. Things came to a head when the brothers began to claim some of the Acadian cattle as part of their herd.

Upset Acadians protested to Gov. Alexandre O’Reilly, and he said fences had to be put up to separate the wild and domestic cattle — and, adding salt to the wound, said some of the wild cattle had to be slaughtered to cut down the size of the herd (and incidentally help bring cheaper beef to New Orleans).

That upset the Flammand brothers, who immediately protested to Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire, the man in charge at the Attakapas post.

He postponed the slaughter. That upset the Acadians and also upset their allies Jean-Baptiste Berard (who was married to an Acadian, Ann Broussard) and Andre Claude Boutte, who were apparently rivals of the Grevembergs.
Berard and Boutte defied de la Clare and began butchering wild cattle.

That upset the Grevembergs. They wanted de ls Claire to arrest Berard and Boutte. He refused.

This particular feud eventually calmed down from a boil to a simmer, but it helped form a lasting sentiment among some of the earliest French settlers here that the Acadians were interlopers, and helped to reinforce the idea among Acadians that they were better off keeping to themselves as much as they could.

That friction between the old settlers and the new arrivals didn’t always evolve into open clashes like the cattle feud of the 1770s, but it remained as a not always subtle undertone that influenced the history of French Louisiana well into modern times.

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.