Mervine Kahn's was place to shop The Mervine Kahn store was one of the largest and fanciest in south Louisiana for many years but the Rayne landmark was opened almost by accident.
Kahn and Michel Schmulen were on their way to ope...
Bendel name lives in stores across country Henri Bendel died 75 years ago this week. His name is remembered in Acadiana because of the Bendel Gardens subdivision in Lafayette. But that’s not why he’s still remembered in places where high f...
Tales abound of Lafitte's gold I've found no more than this little piece from the Lafayette Democrat of Nov. 7, 1908, about the treasure scam that suckered tens of thousands of dollars from a handful of residents:
"Price Choat, ...
Basile celebrating centennial
The Evangeline Parish community of Basile is marking the 100th anniversary of its incorporation this month, but its history starts more than a century ago.
Basile was first known as Schamber Post ...
Duson bad guy was well armed It was big news in Duson when fast living and local police caught up with Robert Benton Mathus on the morning of March 19, 1953.
He was one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Men when Lafayette Sheriff Ma...
Bunk Johnson had proper nickname
Everyone's heard of Louis Armstrong, the most famous New Orleans jazz trumpeter of all, but the man who created Armstrong's music and who the New York Times said taught Armstrong to play that music...
Politics and old feud turned deadly Practically everyone's heard of the long running feud between the Hatfields and McCoys in the Appalachian back country, but we've had a few bloody family encounters in Acadiana too.
One of them cam...
Brits made sneaky survey of Cajun coast Even though Spanish adventurers sailed through the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Mexico beginning in the 1500s, the coastline of Louisiana was mostly uncharted until more than two centuries later,...
Forty acres yielded riches
When I was a small child I thought all pickup trucks were painted gray and carried on the door a yellow decal with a red devil in the center. I also thought these trucks carried potted meat. As ...
Nothing like Louisiana politics The old story goes that in the early 1970s Louisiana sold some used voting machines to Matamoras, Mexico. They were used for the first time in a local election in Mexico several months later, and ...
Did Ada and doc meet in heaven? When James LeBoeuf, Morgan City's power plant superintendent, disappeared on Friday night, July 1, 1927, his wife, Ada, said he'd probably gone to Lafayette. She didn't report his disappearance to...
The soldiers kept coming back
Nothing is left where the farmhouse of Louis Francois Desire Arnaud and his wife Sarah Burleigh Arnaud stood in the middle 1800s near Grand Coteau.
It was a nice house, well situated. Their big far...
