Billeaud is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Lafayette Parish Lafayette Parish () is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the parish had a population of 241,753, up from 221,578 at the 2010 United States census. The parish seat and largest city is Lafayett ...

Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...

, United States. The community is located near the intersection of

US 90 U.S. Route 90 or U.S. Highway 90 (US 90) is an east–west major United States highway in the Southern United States. Despite the "0" in its route number, US 90 never was a full coast-to-coast route. It generally travels near Int ...

and LA Hwy 182 .

History

The town is named after Martial Billeaud, who in 1889 converted his horse powered syrup mill into a steam powered sugar factory. The new factory was constructed at a cost of $50,000 and had a daily capacity of four hundred tons of cane. Area sugar planters had a local mill for their product. The Billeaud Sugar Mill brought a tremendous wave of prosperity to Broussard, which coincided with the previously mentioned sugar boom in southern Louisiana as a whole.

Attractions

The Billeaud House comes from the Billeaud Sugar Plantation. It was built prior to the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. Today it is used as a spinning and weaving cottage. One of the looms is a 150-year-old original. The other is a replica, built locally by 72-year-old Mr. Whitney Breaux for the Bicentennial of Louisiana. Homespun blankets and clothes were woven from white cotton, native to Louisiana, and brown cotton introduced from

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

to the

Acadians The Acadians (; , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French colonial empire, French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, most descendants of Acadians live in either the Northern Americ ...

by the

Spaniards Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance-speaking ethnic group native to the Iberian Peninsula, primarily associated with the modern nation-state of Spain. Genetically and ethnolinguistically, Spaniards belong to the broader Southern a ...

.www.acadian-cajun.com "The Billeaud House"

References

Unincorporated communities in Louisiana Unincorporated communities in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana Acadiana {{Louisiana-geo-stub