In the last quarter of the 18th century, there was an
Atakapa chief named
Nementou. On April 16, 1784, he sold land on
Bayou Plaquemine Brule to Antoin Blanc for $100. Nementou is later mentioned as chief of a village on a river with the same name. Eventually, through a clerical error, Nementou became Mementou and this was then corrupted into Mermentau through confusion with the
French word
mer, which means "sea". The Mermentau area was once reputedly a refuge for smugglers. It was a crossing point for brave travelers on the Old Spanish Trail, but had such a bad reputation that until the
Louisiana Purchase no one would go there to see how many people there were. John Landreth was a surveyor who was sent from Washington, D.C., in 1818 to look for timber in Acadiana that could be harvested for the use of building Navy ships. He kept a journal and had this to say:
"...these places, particularly the Mermentau and Calcasieu are the harbours and Dens of the most abandoned wretches of the human race... smugglers and Pirates who go about the coast of the Gulph (sic) of vessels of a small draught of water and rob and plunder without distinction every vessel of every nation they meet and are able to conquer and put to death every soul they find on board without respect of persons age or sex and then their unlawful plunder they carry all through the country and sell at a very low rate and find plenty of purchasers." Early settlement During the
Civil War and the years immediately after it there were widespread reports of bushwhackers, robbers, and other fugitives hiding in the Mermentau woods and tales of hidden treasures in the area. According to one of the stories, a man named Frank Quebedeaux once found an iron pot filled with coins. The cache had been hidden between four
copal trees that had grown close together. One of the earliest known settlers was John Webb, an
English seaman who came in 1827. It is said that Webb was a member of the crew of
, 1st Viscount Nelson|Lord Nelson's flagship at the famous
Battle of Trafalgar (Oct. l, 1805) in which the British defeated French and Spanish fleets but during which Nelson was killed. Webb lived in an area that came to be known as Webb's Cove, near the junction of the
Mermentau River and
Bayou Queue de Tortue. Cornelius Duson McNaughton, who was running from the law in
Quebec, joined Webb there about 1837. Jean Castex, a native of France, came to Mermentau around 1856. He opened a mercantile business in 1859 and later became one of
Acadia Parish's leading merchants. He was also a cotton and rice farmer and built what may have been the first
cotton gin in the parish in 1860. A sawmill was also built at the town about that time. The Mermentau post office was established on September 2, 1859. Victorin Maignaud, another native of France, came to Mermentau in 1866 and opened a dry goods store. Maignaud operated the river ferry for some 40 years, was postmaster for 17 years, and eventually owned a store, hotel, sawmill, and rice mill. Timber from the Mermentau area provided much of the building material and fencing used by the prairie settlers. The lumber was hauled by oxcart to places as far away as
Opelousas. On May 18, 1872, the
Opelousas Courier reported:
"For the last two weeks the streets of our town have been almost daily crowded with carts and wagons loaded with pieux, boards, and shingles coming from Pointe-aux-Loups and Mermento (sic). Never has there been such a crowd at one time, and so successively we counted eleven ox-wagons in one expedition in one day this week. Eight feet pieux are worth $12 per 100; six feet pieux, $6, and shingles, $6 per 1,000." Jesuit priests from
Grand Coteau began to visit Mermentau in the 1860s. In 1871, Father Joseph Anthonioz had begun to gather lumber to build a chapel there, but it was never finished. The first church was built in 1882, next to the Maignaud Cemetery on what is now
Hwy. 90. It burned down in 1886. In 1891, a temporary chapel was built at another location. Property for the church in its present location was donated in 1889 by Jean Castex and Mrs. Marie U. Duhon, widow of Aurelien Duhon. A larger church was built there, but in August 1900 it was blown off its foundation by a storm and damaged beyond use. It was finally rebuilt in 1908.
Today Mermentau is known for where Captain James Campbell, pirate
Jean Laffite's most trusted lieutenant, stashed $9,000 in gold coins. ==Geography==