FONTENOT
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| Fontenots dominating, 1982 |
In my hometown, the name Fontenot rules. In the early/mid 1700s, the children of Jean-Louis Fontenot, a French soldier stationed at Fort Toulouse, left Alabama for the Opelousas Territory, eventually settling in Evangeline Parish. Today, when you tell someone you are from Ville Platte they might immediately ask you if you are a Fontenot. For the record, I am not a Fontenot, nor can I count any Fontenot lineage. For a Ville Plattian, that is hard to do! (I have Fontenette way back, but that doesn't count.) There are 13 pages of Fontenots in the Ville Platte phone book. My cousins are Fontenots, and I have been to a few Fontenot-Fontenot weddings. They say Fontenots can date as long as they aren't part of the same clan, named for the progenitors of a line, LaRose, Pierre-Xenon, Gabriel, Belair, etc. I have even seen the seperate Fontenot basket behind the counter at the pharmacy. There was no room for the Fuseliers and Forets, so the Fontenots got their own basket:
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| the fabled Fontenot Basket (special thanks to Thrifty-Way Pharamcy in Ville Platte for the photo) |
I thought I had seen everything, until I saw the following precious children on the cover of this month's Evangeline Parish Bonnes Nouvelles, practicing their alphabet and learning their words...Feather, Frog, Fish, Fat and FONTENOT!
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| F is for FONTENOT! |
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