LAFAYETTE, La. — Acadiana has always had more than its share of remarkable women. Family isn’t a backdrop here. It’s the center of everything: Sunday dinners that stretch all afternoon, cousins counted like second siblings, and mamas who carry households on their shoulders like it’s the most natural thing in the world. This Mother’s Day, it’s worth looking at the women from right here in South Louisiana who took that tradition and carried it somewhere the rest of the country could see.
Some of them are famous in their own right. Some became famous by raising someone who is. A few did both. And one of them has been famous for nearly 300 years without anyone being able to confirm she existed.
Download the KPEL-FM Mobile App Now
Evangeline: Acadiana’s First and Most Famous Mother
She may be the most famous woman in the history of South Louisiana, and historians still argue about whether she was real. The Evangeline story — the Acadian woman separated from her family during the British expulsion of 1755, who spent the rest of her life searching for the people she loved — isn’t exactly a story about motherhood in the literal sense. But it’s the story that defines what Acadian womanhood means: resilience, devotion, and an absolute refusal to give up on family, no matter what stands in the way.
The legend points to a real woman named Emmeline Labiche, whose name is on a grave marker beside St. Martin de Tours Church in St. Martinville, on the banks of Bayou Teche. Whether Emmeline actually existed is a question scholars have debated for more than a century. What’s beyond debate is what she represents. Thousands of Acadian women were torn from their families during Le Grand Dérangement, separated from children, husbands, and parents, and scattered across the Atlantic world. Evangeline, whoever she was, became the face of all of them…