Glenn R. Conrad

Glenn R. Conrad
Born	(1932-09-03)September 3, 1932 New Iberia, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	June 4, 2003(2003-06-04) (aged 70) New Iberia, Louisiana, U.S.
Education	Georgetown University (B.S., 1953; M.A., 1959)
Occupations	Historian, archivist, professor, editor
Employer	University of Southwestern Louisiana (1958–2003)
Known for	Founding the Center for Louisiana Studies; Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History
Awards	Humanist of the Year, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (2001); Living Legend, Acadian Museum (2003)

Glenn Russell Conrad (September 3, 1932 – June 4, 2003) was an American historian, archivist, professor, and editor whose life's work transformed the documentary foundation of Louisiana historical scholarship. Born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana, he founded the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1973, served as Managing Editor of Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association for twenty years (1973–1993), and conceived and oversaw The Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History — a 19-volume, 26-book series totaling 17,008 pages that stands as the most comprehensive single-publisher documentary history of any American state ever produced. He is widely regarded as the preeminent historian of south Louisiana culture and the history of colonial Louisiana.

Early life and education

Glenn Russell Conrad was born on September 3, 1932, in New Iberia, Louisiana, the seat of Iberia Parish in the heart of Acadiana — the French-speaking region of south-central Louisiana whose cultural identity is rooted in the forced exile of the Acadian people from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755. New Iberia's deep French Catholic heritage and its proximity to the Attakapas District — one of the oldest continuously settled regions of Louisiana — shaped Conrad's lifelong scholarly focus on the documentary history of south Louisiana.

Conrad attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service in 1953 and a Master of Arts in History in 1959. Following his undergraduate degree, he worked as an editor for the Federal Bureau of Investigation before returning to academic life. In 1958, he joined the faculty of Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI) in Lafayette, embarking on a 45-year tenure with the institution through its successive transitions — to the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) in 1960, and ultimately to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (Louisiana) in 1999.

By 1954, at approximately 21 years of age, Conrad had already begun serious archival documentary work, preparing draft historical writings for St. Peter's Church in New Iberia, Louisiana — the earliest confirmed evidence of his historical research. His earliest known standalone published book, The Germans in Louisiana in the Eighteenth Century, appeared in 1967, published by the Louisiana Historical Association — six years before he founded the Center for Louisiana Studies.

The French Colonial Records Project

Beginning in 1965, Conrad spent three years planning what would become one of the most significant archival undertakings in Louisiana history. As he wrote in the introduction to Volume I of the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in 1995:

In 1968, after three years of planning, I implemented a project designed to microfilm copies of French archival materials pertaining to the French experience in the Mississippi Valley and deposit these in Southwestern Archives of the University of Southwestern Louisiana. The main reasons for this endeavor, as I saw them, were, first, the fact that the colonial history of the state had been quite neglected by historians during the first half of the twentieth century.

— Glenn R. Conrad, The French Experience in Louisiana, 1995

The project required international diplomatic engagement at the highest levels. Conrad negotiated access to the Archives nationales in Paris through a consortium that included the Library of Congress. French officials brought the matter to the attention of President Charles de Gaulle, who gave the project his blessing. The consortium that carried out the French Colonial Records Project comprised four institutions: the Library of Congress, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Loyola University of the South, and Memphis State University.

By 1995, the French Colonial Records held at USL represented more than one million frames of microfilm — one of the largest collections of French colonial documentary material outside of France itself.

Center for Louisiana Studies (1973–2003)

In 1973, Conrad founded the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in collaboration with the university's president. He served as the Center's director from its founding until his death in 2003 — thirty years of continuous institutional leadership. Under his direction the Center became a self-sustaining university press issuing multiple academic titles annually on Louisiana history, architecture, botany, and poetry, and housing on the third floor of the Edith Garland Dupré Library one of the most significant collections of French colonial archival material in North America.

Prior to founding the Center, Conrad had already established the USL History Series at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, with Allen E. Begnaud and Mathé Allain as co-general editors — a publication program that served as the institutional precursor to the Center.

Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association

Conrad served as Managing Editor of Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association from 1973 to 1993 — twenty years at the helm of the most important scholarly journal devoted to Louisiana history. He subsequently served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Louisiana Historical Association from 1993 until his death. With Carl A. Brasseaux, he co-compiled four comprehensive indexes to the journal covering forty continuous years of publication (1960–1999).

A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography

Among the most enduring reference works Conrad produced during his Center years is A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography (2 vols., Louisiana Historical Association / Center for Louisiana Studies, 1988; ISBN 978-0940984370), a two-volume reference containing over 2,500 biographical sketches of prominent figures in Louisiana history. It remains a standard reference work for Louisiana historical research.

The Attakapas District Land Records

Conrad's compilation of the Land Records of the Attakapas District represents his most widely used contribution among legal professionals, petroleum landmen, historians, and genealogists. The Attakapas District encompassed the heart of what is now Acadiana, and its land records form the primary documentary chain of title for a vast region of south-central Louisiana. The series comprises three volumes:

The Attakapas Domesday Book: Land Grants, Claims, and Certifications in the Attakapas District, 1764–1826 (Vol. I, 1990)

Land Records of the Attakapas District: Conveyance Records of Attakapas County, 1804–1818 (Vol. II, Part 1, 1992)

Land Records of the Attakapas District: Attakapas–St. Martin Estates, 1804–1818 (Vol. II, Part 2, 1993)

National Historic Preservation

Conrad served as chairman of the state review committee of the National Register of Historic Places and participated in the Louisiana Historical Preservation and Cultural Commission (1988–1998), contributing to the nomination of Louisiana buildings, sites, and districts to the National Register.

National and international scholarly recognition

Conrad's reputation extended well beyond Louisiana. He published peer-reviewed work in three of the most prestigious historical journals in the United States and Canada: The American Historical Review (Vol. 80, December 1975), The Journal of Southern History (Vol. 60, November 1994), and the Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française (Vol. 28, March 1975). He also published a French-language monograph — L'immigration Alsacienne en Louisiane, 1753–1759 (Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique française, Montreal, 1975) — for the international francophone scholarly community.

Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History

Conrad's most ambitious and enduring achievement was the conception, organization, and general editorship of The Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History — a 19-volume series comprising 26 physical books and 17,008 confirmed pages of Louisiana historical scholarship.

As Conrad wrote in his "About the Series" statement, which appeared in every volume of the series:

It was in the spring of 1992 that first thought was given to the matter of how best the Center for Louisiana Studies might commemorate the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase in 2003... THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE BICENTENNIAL SERIES IN LOUISIANA HISTORY presents a great source of information for anyone interested in the history of the colony and the state. It stands as an appropriate memorial to the men and women who shaped the colony and state down to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

— Glenn R. Conrad, General Editor

Conrad identified nineteen broad topics of Louisiana history and planned to publish all nineteen volumes between 1995 and 2004. He personally edited Volume I (The French Experience in Louisiana, 1995) and served as General Editor of the entire series, recruiting sixteen contributing volume editors from among the foremost Louisiana historians of the twentieth century. The series covers the full span of Louisiana history from French colonial settlement through the close of the twentieth century across every major dimension of the state's life — political, legal, economic, social, cultural, literary, religious, and demographic. Four volumes were issued in multiple parts — Vol. IV (Parts A & B), Vol. V (Parts A & B), Vol. XI (Parts A, B & C), and Vol. XIV (Parts A, B & C) — bringing the total number of physical books to 26.

The complete series

The Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History

Vol.	Title	Editor(s)	Pages
I	The French Experience in Louisiana	Conrad, Glenn R.	666
II	The Spanish Presence in Louisiana, 1763–1803	Din, Gilbert C.	579
III	The Louisiana Purchase and Its Aftermath, 1800–1830	Labbé, Dolores Egger	637
IV	Antebellum Louisiana, 1830–1860
	Part A: Life and Labor	De Latte, Carolyn E.	590
	Part B: Politics	De Latte	422
V	The Civil War in Louisiana
	Part A: Military Activity	Bergeron, Arthur W.	436
	Part B: The Home Front	Bergeron, Arthur W.	436
VI	Reconstructing Louisiana	Bergeron, Arthur W.	801
VII	Louisiana Politics and the Paradoxes of Reaction and Reform	Schott, Matthew J.	706
VIII	The Age of the Longs: Louisiana, 1928–1960	Haas, Edward F.	716
IX	Louisiana Since the Longs: 1960s to Century's End	Kurtz, Michael L.	742
X	A Refuge for All Ages: Immigration in Louisiana History	Brasseaux, Carl A.	716
XI	The African American Experience in Louisiana	Vincent, Charles
	Part A: From Africa to the Civil War	Vincent	741
	Part B: 1860 to World War I'''	Vincent; Conrad	674
	Part C: 1920 to Present	Vincent	592
XII	Arts and Entertainment in Louisiana	Brady, Patricia	762
XIII	An Uncommon Experience: Law and Judicial Institutions in Louisiana	Billings, Warren M., Schafer, Judith Kelleher	880
XIV	New Orleans and Urban Louisiana	Shepherd, Jr., Samuel C.
	Part A: Settlement to 1860	Shepherd, Jr.	768
	Part B: 1860 to World War I	Shepherd, Jr.	674
	Part C: 1920 to Present	Shepherd, Jr.	592
XV	Visions and Revisions: Perspectives on Louisiana Society/Culture	Baker, Vaughan Burdin	802
XVI	Agriculture and Economic Development in Louisiana	Bechnel, Thomas A.	700
XVII	Louisiana Literature and Literary Figures	Allain, Mathé	646
XVIII	Education in Louisiana	Wade, Michael G.	616
XIX	Religion in Louisiana	Nolan, Charles E.	788
Total — 19 volumes, 26 physical books			17,008

Conrad passed away on June 4, 2003 — one year before the series he conceived in 1992 was complete. Three volumes were published posthumously: Louisiana Literature and Literary Figures (Vol. XVII, 2004), Religion in Louisiana (Vol. XIX, 2004), and Arts and Entertainment in Louisiana (Vol. XII, 2006), carried across the finish line by the scholars he had recruited and trusted.

Honors and recognition

Distinguished Professor, University of Southwestern Louisiana (1978) Daughters of the American Revolution Medal of Honor (1984) Louisiana Preservation Alliance Education Award (1984) Historic New Orleans Collection Manuscript Award (1992) Outstanding Civic Service Award, Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce (1993) McGinty Lifetime Meritorious Service Award for contributions to Louisiana's history and heritage (1995) Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association (1999) Humanist of the Year Award, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (2001) Inducted into the Acadian Museum as a "Living Legend" (2003)

The Louisiana Historical Association named its Glenn R. Conrad Prize in his honor — awarded annually to the best published article on any aspect of Louisiana history from any source.

Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said of Conrad: "Glenn is the premiere historian of Louisiana cultures, especially those of south Louisiana. He places a tremendous value on the people and families of Acadiana, giving folks in the region a stronger sense of appreciation of their unique heritage. His work is invaluable to Louisiana."

Selected works

Books and edited volumes

1967 : The Germans in Louisiana in the Eighteenth Century. Louisiana Historical Association, Lafayette, La.

1970 : The First Families of Louisiana, Vol. I. Claitor's Publishing Division, Baton Rouge. ISBN 978-0875110202 : The First Families of Louisiana, Vol. II. Claitor's Publishing Division, Baton Rouge. ISBN 978-0875113562

1971 : Creed of a Congressman: F. Edward Hébert of Louisiana (with Felix Edward Hébert and Virginea R. Burguières). USL History Series, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, La.

1972 : Saint-Jean-Baptiste des Allemands: Abstracts of the Civil Records of St. John the Baptist Parish to 1803, 1st ed. (424 pages). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL, Lafayette, La.

1973 : France and North America: Over Three Hundred Years of Dialogue (editor, with Mathé Allain). University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, La.

1974 : St. Charles: Abstracts of the Civil Records of St. Charles Parish, 1700–1803 (544 pages). University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, La. : France and North America: The Revolutionary Experience (editor, with Mathé Allain). U.S.L., Lafayette, La.

1975 : Alsatian Immigration to Louisiana, 1753–1759. Center for Louisiana Studies, USL, Lafayette, La. : L'immigration Alsacienne en Louisiane, 1753–1759. Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique française, Montreal. (French-language edition) : A Name and Subject Guide to the First Fifteen Volumes of Louisiana History (with Juana E. Roque; 92 pages). Louisiana Historical Association, Baton Rouge.

1977 : The Courthouses of Louisiana (with Carl A. Brasseaux and R. Warren Robinson). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. Revised edition (234 pages), 1997. ISBN 978-1887366144

1978 : Readings in Louisiana History (editor). Louisiana Historical Association, New Orleans.

1982 : Virginians in the Teche Country. Doubleday, Virginia. : A Selected Bibliography of Scholarly Literature on Colonial Louisiana and New France (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984066

1983 : The Cajuns: Essays on Their History and Culture, 3rd ed. (editor). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984103 : St. Peter's Cemetery, New Iberia, Louisiana (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. : "Gone but Not Forgotten": Records from South Louisiana Cemeteries (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. : Inventory of the Louisiana Historical Association Collection at the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University. Louisiana Historical Association.

1984 : Louisiana Gothic: Recollections of the 1930s (with Vaughan Baker). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984196 : Shadows-on-the-Teche — and the Family Who Owned It. Center for Louisiana Studies, USL.

1985 : Louisiana History: Index to Volumes I–XXV, 1960–1984 (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Louisiana Historical Association.

1986 : New Iberia: Essays on the Town and Its People, 2nd ed. (editor). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984318. Reprint ed. 2016: ISBN 978-1935754596

1988 : A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, 2 vols. (editor). Louisiana Historical Association / Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984370

1989 : French Louisiana: A Commemoration of the French Revolution Bicentennial (editor). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL.

1990 : The Attakapas Domesday Book: Land Grants, Claims, and Certifications in the Attakapas District, 1764–1826. Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984578 : Louisiana History: Index to Volumes XXVI–XXX, 1985–1989 (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Louisiana Historical Association.

1992 : Saint-Jean-Baptiste des Allemands: Abstracts of the Civil Records of St. John the Baptist Parish to 1803, 2nd ed. (325 pages). University of Southwestern Louisiana. : A Bibliography of Scholarly Literature on Colonial Louisiana and New France (with Carl A. Brasseaux). University of Louisiana at Lafayette. ISBN 978-0940984738 : The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809 (editor, with Carl A. Brasseaux; translated by David Cheramie; 306 pages). University of Louisiana at Lafayette. ISBN 978-0940984769. Reprint ed. 2016: ISBN 978-1935754602

1993 : Cross, Crozier, and Crucible: A Volume Celebrating the Bicentennial of a Catholic Diocese in Louisiana, 1793–1993 (editors: Glenn R. Conrad, Earl F. Niehaus, Alfred E. Lemmon, J. Edgar Bruns, Emilie Griffin, Charles E. Nolan). Archdiocese of New Orleans / Center for Louisiana Studies. ISBN 978-0940984783 (Conrad contributed the opening essay: "The Faces of French Louisiana," pp. 5–15) : Land Records of the Attakapas District: Attakapas–St. Martin Estates, 1804–1818, Vol. II, Part 2 (269 pages). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL.

1994 : Crevasse! The 1927 Flood in Acadiana (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984882

1995 : White Gold: A Brief History of the Louisiana Sugar Industry, 1795–1995 (with Ray F. Lucas). Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984929 : The French Experience in Louisiana (editor). Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series, Vol. I. Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-0940984974

1996 : Louisiana History: Index to Volumes XXXI–XXXV, 1990–1994 (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Louisiana Historical Association.

1997 : The Courthouses of Louisiana, revised ed. (234 pages; with Carl A. Brasseaux and R. Warren Robinson). University of Southwestern Louisiana. ISBN 978-1887366144

2000 : The African American Experience in Louisiana: From the Civil War to Jim Crow (co-editor, with Charles Vincent). Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series, Vol. XI-B. Center for Louisiana Studies, USL. ISBN 978-1887366373 : Louisiana History: Index to Volumes XXXVI–XL, 1995–1999 (with Carl A. Brasseaux). Louisiana Historical Association.

Selected journal articles

"L'immigration alsacienne en Louisiane, 1753–1759." Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, Vol. 28 (March 1975), p. 565. Review of A History of French Louisiana Vol. 1 by Marcel Giraud and So Vast, So Beautiful a Land by Marshall Sprague. The American Historical Review, Vol. 80 (December 1975), p. 1382. "Friend or Foe? Religious Exiles at the Opelousas Post in the Revolution." Attakapas Gazette, Vol. 12 (1977), pp. 137–139. "Émigration Forcée: A French Attempt to Populate Louisiana, 1716–1720." Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, Vol. 4 (1979), p. 57. "Review of A History of French Louisiana, Vol. 2: Years of Transition, 1715–1717 by Marcel Giraud, trans. Brian Pearce." The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 60 (November 1994), p. 778. "Administration of the Illinois Country: The French Debate." Louisiana History, Vol. 36 (1995), p. 31. "Edward D. Turner: Soldier, Jurist, Planter, Patriot." Louisiana History, Vol. 37 (April 1996), p. 217. "The Faces of French Louisiana." In Cross, Crozier and Crucible, Glenn Conrad, ed., pp. 5–15. Archdiocese of New Orleans / Center for Louisiana Studies, 1993.

Conrad published over 40 scholarly articles throughout his career. The complete record is held in Collection 260, Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Archival collections

Glenn R. Conrad Papers (Collection 260). Professional papers, 1767–2003, n.d. 24 linear feet, 42 boxes. Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Note: Box 41 is restricted. Glenn R. Conrad Personal Papers (Collection 260A). Personal papers, 1950–2005. 19 linear feet. Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Land Records of the Attakapas District

Land Records of the Attakapas District is a multivolume scholarly series conceived, researched, and edited by Conrad and published by the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). The first volume, subtitled The Attakapas Domesday Book: Land Grants, Claims and Confirmations in the Attakapas District, 1764–1826, was published in 1990 (ISBN 0-940984-57-1). The series represents the culmination of more than five years of original archival research and constitutes one of the most exhaustive documentary studies of land proprietorship ever undertaken for any region of Louisiana.

The title deliberately invokes the Norman Domesday Book of 1086, in which William the Conqueror surveyed all privately held land in England to determine what was owned, by whom, and what revenues could be derived from it. Conrad draws the parallel explicitly: just as the Norman conquerors commissioned that survey to establish the extent of private versus public domain in a newly acquired territory, the United States government — beginning in 1805, two years after the Louisiana Purchase — required all residents of the former French and Spanish colony to record their foreign land titles, so that the extent of the public domain could be determined and opened for sale. The records generated by that two-decade-long claims process form the documentary spine of Volume I.

The endpaper maps reproduced in the volume are taken from the 1816–1817 map of the State of Louisiana by William Darby, now held in the Map Division of the Library of Congress, and show the Attakapas region, Opelousas District, Atchafalaya Bay, and surrounding parishes in remarkable geographic detail. Darby himself had served as one of six deputy surveyors for the Western District of the Territory of Orleans beginning in 1806, surveying the very lands Conrad's work documents.

Historical Background and Scope

The old Attakapas District occupied the south-central region of colonial Louisiana, bounded on the east by the vast and largely uninhabited Atchafalaya Basin, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the west by the open prairies of Southwest Louisiana, and on the north by the Opelousas District. Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Attakapas Post became Attakapas County in 1805. That county was subsequently subdivided into five parishes that exist to this day: Iberia, Lafayette, St. Martin, St. Mary, and Vermilion. Volume I covers the period from 1764, when the first French-era land grants were issued in the district, through 1826, the year of the last mass certification of land titles by the United States Congress for the Attakapas region.

The principal rivers and bayous of the district — Carencro, Fusilier, Teche, Tortue, Pétite Anse, Carlin, Vermilion, Cypremort, and others — formed the arteries of settlement. Colonial land concessions were oriented exclusively along these waterways, each tract fronting a bayou and running to a customary depth of forty arpents, giving rise to the distinctive long lot pattern of land ownership that still defines much of the Louisiana landscape.

Origins of the Series

Conrad's decision to undertake this investigation grew directly out of his dissatisfaction with a body of popular and scholarly writing that had emerged during the Louisiana French cultural renaissance of the late 1960s and 1970s. That literature — associated principally with Malcolm Comeaux (Atchafalaya Swamp Life, 1972), William Faulkner Rushton (The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana, 1979), and James Dormon (The People Called Cajuns, 1983) — advanced what Conrad termed the "Comeaux-Rushton theory": the proposition that Louisiana Acadians, having finally found a home after the trauma of the Grand Dérangement, were systematically dispossessed of their fertile riparian lands by wealthy Anglo-American and Creole speculators in the antebellum era and forced into the swamps, marshes, and prairies — a process the authors characterized as a "second expulsion" or "second Acadian migration."

Conrad found this narrative, which had entered the bloodstream of Acadian popular memory, to be historically insupportable. What had prompted the movement of Acadians and their descendants off original settlement sites, he argued after exhaustive examination of courthouse and land records, was not ethnic persecution but a convergence of entirely mundane forces: the exhaustion of finite natural levee frontage along navigable waterways, Louisiana's historic laws of community property and forced heirship (which mandated equal division of estates among all children of a marriage), the dwindling supply of timber on long-occupied tracts, and above all the simple desire to improve one's circumstances by acquiring new land on the advancing frontier — the same motivation that drove every other group of settlers in antebellum America.

The series was designed to test this hypothesis against the documentary record in two areas simultaneously: West Baton Rouge Parish (a Mississippi River Acadian settlement area identified by Rushton as a prime site of the "second Expulsion"), and the Attakapas District more broadly. After five years of research producing nearly six hundred official and unofficial land concessions for 1764–1803 alone, plus more than eight hundred land claims and confirmations for 1805–1826, Conrad concluded that the data warranted a multivolume work.

The Land Concession Process

All land privately held in the Attakapas District prior to the Louisiana Purchase had been acquired through concession from French or Spanish colonial authorities. There were only three French grants made in the entire Attakapas region; the remainder of the colonial land record consists of Spanish-era concessions issued between 1770 and 1803. The first Spanish patents in the district were signed by Governor Alejandro O'Reilly on March 2, 1770; the last patent was issued to Martin Duralde and dated October 5, 1802.

Conrad details the five-step process by which a Spanish land patent was obtained:

The requete: the prospective grantee submitted a formal petition to the commandant of the local administrative post identifying the tract desired.

Certificate of approval: if the commandant found the land to be part of the royal domain, he forwarded the requete to the governor in New Orleans with an attached certificate of approval.Order of survey: the governor issued an order directing the royal surveyor to place the petitioner in possession of the tract — the critical step authorizing actual possession of the land, even before a formal title was issued.Certification of survey: the commandant, in the presence of witnesses (typically neighboring landowners), certified the boundaries of the granted tract.Patent or title in form: the governor issued the final patent recognizing the grantee as uncontested proprietor. Only upon receiving this document was a grantee said to have "perfected" his title.

Throughout the Spanish regime, 166 patents or titles in form were issued to Attakapas landholders, along with 190 orders of survey and 52 requetes pending at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. In addition, 134 tracts had been occupied or claimed without benefit of any phase of the Spanish granting process. Taken together, 542 tracts of land amounting to approximately 426,857 superficial arpents — officially granted or unofficially occupied — form the basis of the nearly 825 land claims put forward to American land commissioners between 1805 and 1825.

The Grantees: Ethnic and Social Composition

Conrad identifies five principal categories of grantees in the Attakapas District during the colonial period: retired French military officers and administrative officials; exiled Acadians (beginning with Governor Luis de Unzaga's mass issuance of patents on June 20, 1771); non-Acadian French Creoles; English-speakers of northern European descent arriving primarily in the 1790s and early 1800s; and Spanish settlers and free people of color.

The statistical picture that emerges is striking. Of 542 total concessions in the colonial Attakapas, Acadians held 154 (28.4%), non-Acadian French held 272 (50.3%), English-speakers held 95 (17.5%), Blacks held 5 (0.9%), and Spaniards held 16 (2.9%). In terms of land area, non-Acadian French concessions contained 268,147 superficial arpents (62.8% of all land conceded), while Acadian concessions contained 95,179 arpents (22.3%). The average non-Acadian French concession measured approximately 985 arpents; the average Acadian concession approximately 618 arpents.

Significantly, more than half of Acadian grantees (53.9%) completed all five steps necessary to obtain a patent — compared to only 21.6% of non-Acadian French grantees — suggesting that Acadians were actively investing in and improving their lands, while most non-Acadian French grantees treated their holdings as absentee income sources.

Community Property, Forced Heirship, and Land Dispersal

A substantial portion of the Volume I introduction addresses what Conrad considers the most underappreciated factor in the movement of Louisiana families off original settlement sites: the state's historic legal principles of community property and forced heirship. Under community property law, any real or movable property acquired after marriage was jointly owned by both spouses. Under forced heirship, all children of a marriage inherited equal shares of the community property upon the death of either parent.

The practical consequences for small landholders were severe. Conrad illustrates the point with a family of eight — parents and six children — living on a Spanish land grant of six arpents wide by forty arpents deep. If each of the six children were to receive an equal share upon partition, each would inherit a strip one arpent wide by forty arpents deep — a tract too narrow to sustain a family. Two case studies from West Baton Rouge Parish — the Lejeune family and the LeBlanc family, both Acadian grantees of 1785 — trace these processes across three and four generations with granular documentary precision, drawing on succession records, conveyance acts, and probate inventories from parish courthouse files.

Conrad's conclusion from the West Baton Rouge investigation applies equally to the Attakapas: there is no evidence that Acadian families were systematically dispossessed by outside forces. Descendants of both the Lejeune and LeBlanc families continued to own all or part of their original Spanish grants well past the midpoint of the nineteenth century. When land was sold, it was sold at fair market value and almost invariably for reasons of sound economic calculation.

Conrad's Central Argument

The Introduction to the Series (pages ix–xxviii), signed January 8, 1990, constitutes one of the most sustained pieces of historical revisionism in the literature of Louisiana Acadian history. Conrad's argument proceeds on three levels.

First, he dismantles the Comeaux-Rushton thesis on evidentiary grounds, showing that the documentary record — land records, conveyance acts, succession inventories, census data — simply does not support the picture of mass dispossession. Acadian landholders were neither naive nor victimized; parish records reveal them buying, selling, mortgaging, donating, and speculating in land with the full sophistication of participants in an emerging capitalist economy.

Second, he identifies the actual mechanisms of land dispersal: the exhaustion of finite natural levee frontage, wood supply depletion on long-occupied tracts, the mathematics of forced heirship, and the frontier mentality that drew successive generations toward new opportunities.

Third — and most provocatively — he argues that the "second Acadian expulsion" narrative is not a product of antebellum experience at all, but of post-Civil War reality. The catastrophic agricultural depression that gripped Louisiana for nearly eighty years after 1865 — compounded by floods, drought, insects, yellow fever, the collapse of the slave labor force, the predations of Reconstruction-era politics, and the crop-lien system — genuinely did reduce many Louisiana farming families to subsistence conditions. The raconteurs who passed on oral memories of hardship to mid-twentieth century researchers were remembering the 1870s and 1880s, not the antebellum era.

Conrad closes the introduction with an unambiguous conclusion: "If there ever was a 'second Acadian expulsion,' it was for a majority of Acadians a means of improving their lot, not an introduction to degredation."

Sources and Methodology

The principal primary sources for Volume I include the American State Papers, Class VIII, Public Lands (9 vols., Washington, D.C., 1834); the Southwest District Claims manuscript records at the Louisiana State Land Office, Baton Rouge; early land surveys held in the Division of State Lands, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources; the Trudeau Collection at The Historic New Orleans Collection; and parish courthouse records, particularly those of St. Martin Parish.

Of particular significance is Valentine King's "Abstracts of French and Spanish Land Grants Within the Limits of the Present Southwest Land District of the State of Louisiana from the Year 1757 to 1802," a manuscript compilation by the Register of Lands reproduced as Appendix I of Volume I. Available on microfilm at the Louisiana Land Office (Film 917, Reel 38) and at the Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room, Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette (Film 41.38), it provides the only known comprehensive listing of all complete French and Spanish patents issued in the Attakapas and Opelousas districts by governor: D'Abbadie (3), Aubry and Foucault (24), Unzaga (119), Gálvez (199), Miro (71), Carondelet (46), Gayoso (19), and Morales (20).

Subsequent Volumes

Volume I was followed by additional volumes addressing the conveyance records of the Attakapas District in the early American period:

Land Records of the Attakapas District, Volume II, Part 1: Conveyance Records of Attakapas County, 1804–1818 (Center for Louisiana Studies, 1992) Land Records of the Attakapas District: Attakapas–St. Martin Estates, 1804–1818 (Center for Louisiana Studies, 1993)

The thousands of conveyance records in these volumes — documenting sales, donations, exchanges, mortgages, and estate settlements — form the evidentiary basis for Conrad's larger argument about the economic vitality and entrepreneurial sophistication of Attakapas landholders in the generation following the Louisiana Purchase.

Significance

The Land Records of the Attakapas District series occupies a unique position in the historiography of Louisiana. As a work of primary source documentation, it makes accessible to researchers a body of records previously scattered across state land offices, courthouse archives, and manuscript collections. As a work of historical argument, it represents the most sustained scholarly challenge ever mounted to the "second expulsion" narrative. And as a genealogical resource, it remains indispensable to the hundreds of thousands of people of Acadian, French Creole, and Anglo-American descent whose ancestors held land in what are now the parishes of Iberia, Lafayette, St. Martin, St. Mary, and Vermilion.

Conrad himself noted in his conclusion to Volume I that the early settlers of the Attakapas, "while maintaining certain cultural traits, began forging a new cultural synthesis, with distinctive traits in no way related to their pasts. The Louisiana coastal environment dictated that, it bends allcomers to its will."

External links

• Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
• Glenn R. Conrad Papers, Collection 260 — UL Lafayette Special Collections
• Glenn R. Conrad Personal Papers, Collection 260A — UL Lafayette Special Collections
• Glenn R. Conrad Prize — Louisiana Historical Association
• Glenn Conrad — Living Legend, Acadian Museum