| "...In order to determine where the true boundary line is, you are going to have to do the Forensic Research necessary to determine what the boundary looked like in 1844......." Don Bertrand to the Lafayette Consolidated Council, December 16, 2003 |
| The Final Word ? Continued..4 |
| The Louisiana State Constitution provides that only the Legislature may change a boundary line, then an election is to be held in the two adjoining parishes and it is necessary to garner the support of a two-thirds vote in each parish in order to change the boundary. The Louisiana Revised Statutes provides: Surveys and Surveyors: Part II. Surveys By Parishes, R.S. 151. Authorization to hire surveyors, procure field notes, and make Surveyors Any parish, except the Parish of Orleans, may procure necessary field notes from any previous survey and may employ one or more competent surveyors to survey or re-survey and establish or re-establish township lines, range lines, section corners, and half-mile stations where these have never been surveyed or established or where the original witness trees have been des- troyed or lost. It is obvious that the Revised Statutes provide for a vehicle to reinstate known monuments when they are lost or destroyed. The Revised Statutes also provided for the fixing of parish boundaries when they need to be re-established. Chapter 4 Parishes and Parish Boundaries R.S.221. Fixing parish boundary Whenever the governing authority of any parish desires to ascertain and fix the boundary line of any adjoining parish, it shall pass an ordinance to that effect fixing a time and place for starting the running of the boundary. It shall then serve the presiding officer of the governing authority of the adjoining parish with a copy of the ordinance and with notice, at least six months in advance of the time and place of starting the running of the boundary. The surveyors appointed for that purpose, or, if there were none specifically appointed, the parish surveyor of both parishes shall, at the time fixed, proceed to the running and marking of the boundary line. If the surveyor of either parish fails to attend at the time and place fixed, the other surveyor shall wait two days and if the first doesn't arrive within that time shall proceed to the running and marking of the boundary line. Surveyors would have to know where the landmarks are located in order to fix the boundary in the proper locations according to the Legislative Act No. 81 dated 1844. It would then follow that surveys from that time along with descriptions of the Natural Landmarks (the style used) be known and observed in order to provide the surveyor the appropriate information to locate and survey the boundary on the ground. In the absence of an actual parish survey, one would need to know the exact location of the Vermilion River, Coulee Isle des Cannes, Grange's Coulee and Indian Point Coulee. This is perfectly reasonable, except we need to know where these Natural Landmarks were in 1844. These Natural Landmarks do exist today just as they are described in the original act by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1844. However there is one very important twist. The names changed, and in order to understand what the description of 1844 actually describes, it is necessary to understand what the names represented in 1844. So how can we know what the names represented in 1844 if we do not have surveys of the parish lines from 1844? And what did the boundary line actually look like in 1844? That is precisely the delimma I faced until December 15, 2003. The missing puzzle piece was a glimpse of the parish line in 1844, and it came in the form of a confederate map located in the Louisiana State Archives. (This confederate map of Lafayette Parish was one of more than thirty parish maps whose originals are housed in the National Archives and were maps seized by the Union troops when they traveled through south Louisiana in 1863 and 1864. The maps were taken to Washington D.C., and for many years were the property of the War Department, then the Army Corps of Engineers until being turned over to the National Archives. Copies of the maps were subsequently sent to Louisiana and are part of the Archives in Baton Rouge. What I was to find later was the maps had been common knowlege in Lafayette Parish and the State Land Office and had been featured in historical books of the area from the 1980's. Despite his statement that he had never seen this map before at the December 16, 2003 Lafayette Consolidated Council Meeting, Mr. Bill Campbell had evidence of this map in the Public Works file dated Juy 15, 2003.) |
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| Township 10 South Range 3 East |
| Township 10 South Range 4 East |
| Township 11 South Range 3 East |
| Township 11 South Range 4 East |
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| (Below) A portion of the Confederate Map Below. The SW boundary is significantly different than the Bernard boundary |
| Click on the Map to Enlarge and compare to the Bernard Survey |
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