The Lafayette Parish region of south Louisiana was settled by French-speaking Acadians in the mid-1700s. The British had driven them from Nova Scotia for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the English Crown. The Acadians were joined by another group of settlers called Creoles, descendants of African, West Indian, and European pioneers. At the time of the migration, Louisiana was under Spanish rule and authorities welcomed the new settlers.
Lafayette began as Petit Manchac in the mid-1700s when the immigrants flocked to the point where the Old Spanish Trail crossed the Vermilion River. In 1821, an Acadian refugee, Jean Mouton, formally designed Lafayette with St. John Church in the center. Two years later, the Legislature created Lafayette Parish and named it after the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution, who was visiting the country at the time. Louisiana is the only United States state divided into parishes instead of counties. The original division matched jurisdictions of the Roman Catholic Church.
The community incorporated in 1836 as Vermilionville. Agriculture and cattle-raising boosted the economy. The community prospered until the region was nearly destroyed by yellow fever and the Civil War. In 1881, when the railroad was extended from New Orleans to Houston, the area again prospered.
The town’s name was changed to Lafayette in 1884. In 1940, oil companies began to establish offices in Lafayette because of its central location to oil activities. Today, Lafayette is a center of the gulf oil and gas industry. As the city grew geographically, so did the governmental entities empowered to help serve it. City government, under a trustee form of government in 1972, became a Mayor-Council arrangement with five district representatives. A 14-member Parish Police Jury was replaced by a seven-member Parish Council in 1984.
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