APPENDICES

Acadians Who Found Refuge in Louisiana, February 1764-early 1800s

[RIT]

LOUISIANA: WESTERN SETTLEMENTS

According to the Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville, Louisiana, Catherine Ritte, widow of Guillaume Blanchard, was Acadian. Evidently she settled in the Opelousas District, where she was buried in April 1790 under the name Catherine Rieter.

CONCLUSION

The family's name also is spelled Ritter. [See also Book Ten]

Sources: [see below]

Settlement Abbreviations
(present-day civil parishes that existed in 1861 are in parenthesis; hyperlinks on the abbreviations take you to brief histories of each settlement):

Asc	Ascension	Lf	Lafourche (Lafourche, Terrebonne)	PCP	Pointe Coupée
Asp	Assumption	Natc	Natchitoches (Natchitoches)	SB	San Bernardo (St. Bernard)
Atk	Attakapas (St. Martin, St. Mary, Lafayette, Vermilion)	Natz	San Luìs de Natchez (Concordia)	StG	St.-Gabriel d'Iberville (Iberville)
BdE	Bayou des Écores (East Baton Rouge, West Feliciana)	NO	New Orleans (Orleans)	StJ	St.-Jacques de Cabanocé (St. James)
BR	Baton Rouge (East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge)	Op	Opelousas (St. Landry, Calcasieu)

For a chronology of Acadian Arrivals in Louisiana, 1764-early 1800s, see Appendix.

The hyperlink attached to an individual's name is connected to a list of Acadian immigrants for a particular settlement and provides a different perspective on the refugee's place in family and community.

Name	Arrived	Settled	Profile
Catherine RITTE 01	17??	Op?	married Guillaume BLANCHARD; a widow when she came to LA; settled Opelousas District?

NOTES

01. Wall of Names, 11, calls her Catherine RITTE veuve Guillaume BLANCHARD, & lists her singly.

I have found her family in neither Arsenault, Généalogie, nor White, DGFA-1, only in Wall of Names, so I must assume that the researchers at the Acadian Memorial have found an Acadian origin for her that eludes me. Her surname sounds German. When did she reach LA? Where did she settle? A Catherine RITTER, recorded as RIETER, was buried at Opelousas 12 Apr 1790, but the recording priest offered no clue as to her parents, age, or spouse. This is probably her. See Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records, 1-A:671 (Opel. Ch.: v.1, p.13).

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