In a message dated 8/7/2002 10:01:08 AM Central Daylight Time, mlee@uwf.edu writes: > > > Good morning all, > > I think I've found it (Choquopoulou, MS)! In a book by S.G. > (Grady) Thigpen called "Next Door to Heaven" about Hancock/Pearl River > Cos. in MS there is a piece entitled "Achoucoupoulousians" . It has to > do with a couple of the largest land claims in south MS. In April of > 1783 Louis Boisdore asked Governor Miro for a land grant for > Achoucoupoulous in the vicinity of what is now Bay St. Louis, MS. The > description was as follows: running from the Philip Saucier plantation > on the east up to the Bayou Mosquito Village, formerly inhabited, & > running down the length of the Pearl River on the west. The application > was approved 26 April 1783. Boisdore said he wanted raise cattle there. > In 1808 Boisdore died & his widow tried to get the land surveyed but the > surveyor never got it done. The Boidore heirs held onto the land claim. > This land was a fifteen mile wide strip running north from the Gulf of > Mexico for about forty miles to the 31 degree latitude which runs > through Lumberton, MS. With the eastern boundary running through Bay > St..Louis, MS, and the western boundary running north from Pearlington, > MS to the east of Picayuane, MS. The case of the claim was argued > through the MS State Supreme Court & in 1850 it reached the US Supreme > Court where it was denied. > > Nowhere does it say the name was Choctaw or what it meant. Hope > this helps, John. > > Marcie > > Thanks a great deal Marcie. I think that helps a lot. I don't know of the Bourgeois side of my family having any relationship to the Boisdore's that you mention. Perhaps the Favre's did had a relationship which I think is more likely or perhaps one of the Ladner's did. In the Dispensation records that I've found where Francois (Francisco) Bourgeois sought a dispensation to marry his 3rd cousin, who was a Ladner, in 1801, and it says that someone had to sign for him since he didn't know how and he was poor and they were living in Bay St. Louis but were to be married in Mobile. I also found a citation for a dispensation for his father-in-law who lived in Chucupulu, Miss. to marry his 3rd cousin and one for a Fayard who lived in Choquopoulou, Miss., to marry her 3rd cousin. Francois Bourgeois' mother was a Fayard and probably a sister or cousin of this Fayard mentioned in the dispensation records. So, I would think that the Chucupulu or Choquopoulou, Miss. place names are one and the same as the one you found, Achoucoupoulous. If it is not a Choctaw name, it is certainly an Indian name. It is similar to the name Tchoupitoulas, I think, which was the name of an Indian tribe around New Orleans and is has been a famous street name here in New Orleans for as long as I've know. There is the joke about the policeman in New Orleans who went to an accident on Tchoupitoulas St. and he couldn't spell the name so he had the accident relocated to Camp St. a block away so he could fill out his report. When I was little, my grandfather, Oswald Bourgeois, would take me for trips to Waveland and Bay St. Louis. He had a little strip of land there that was about 300 feet long and 50 feet wide that he inherited from his father. It would have made a good street. He never inherited much from his father's will and after my grandfather died my aunt eventually sold the land that my grandfather inherited because she really couldn't keep it up. My grandfather lived most of his adult life of 82 years in New Orleans and retired as the head boiler maker / machinist of the old Jax Brewery on Decatur St. in the French Quarter. Probably he didn't inherit too much because his sisters didn't approve of my grandmother who didn't hold her tongue for them. And something similar happened with my grandfather's brother, Robert, who married a girl that his sisters didn't cotton to. I guess that was some of the Choctaw culture coming through with my grand aunts' disapproval of my grandmother and her sister-in-law. Robert's son, Robert Clark, who flew with Doolittle over Tokyo, looked remarkably like my grandfather when he got older. My grandfather outlived all of his brothers and sisters. He had seven siblings. In any event, my grandfather used to tell me as we drove along the highway between Pearl River and Bay St. Louis that either his father or his grandfather once owned all that land and to me it looked to be as far as the eye could see for miles and miles but my grandfather told me that most all of it got sold to the railroad over the years before he was born. He was born in 1900. I think all the land came to my great grandfather or great great grandfather either through Bernardo Bourgeois' marriage to Isabella Farve or through Bernardo's father's marriage to one of the Ladner's in Mobile. I really don't know. I do know that when Alexis Farve grew old, Bernardo became executor of his father-in-law Alexis Farve's property which Alexis inherited from Simon Farve. Whether it was the same as the land grant you mentioned I don't know. It could have been. But it could have been a different land grant. As I've seen in the book "Dancing Rabbit" by Broox Sledge, the Choctaw nation's land once went as far as the Gulf of Mexico so Achoucoupoulous may well be a Choctaw name from a time before the various treaties separated the Choctaw from their land. Once again, Marcie, thanks for finding this info out. I appreciate it. John Craven New Orleans