Deaths at Cloutierville - Ancestors in Neighboring Newspapers

Today's post highlights one of my favorite tips for searching for ancestors among old sources - in this case, newspapers.  What I like to remind everyone is not to assume that just because your ancestors lived in one particular location, that information on them will be limited to that location!  Since newspapers were one of the best ways to spread information about ones' friends and neighbors, newspapers located outside of the actual hometown of an ancestor may provide you with better information, since they're meant for the people who didn't keep up with that person on a daily basis.  Check surrounding towns' newspapers for mentions of your ancestors, or even the papers of the towns where their families lived in other counties or states.

Today's news clipping comes from the Opelousas Courier, a weekly paper in both French and English editions published in Opelousas, Louisiana from 1852 to 1910.  Opelousas is the parish seat of St. Landry Parish, which is located three parishes away from Natchitoches, where the people it mentions were from.  The notice is of a list of recent deaths at Cloutierville, located along the Cane River in Natchitoches Parish, and states that among the deceased are also "names who are well-known in our Parish".

• The Opelousas courier. (Opelousas, La.), 05 Nov. 1853. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83026389/1853-11-05/ed-1/seq-1/>

Of particular interest to this blogger are the names Eusèbe Deslouches, Hyppolite Rachal, and Mmes. P. S. Compère and Julien Rachal, which match names in my own family tree.  The Eusèbe Deslouches in my records was the son of Appoline Rachal and Landry Deslouches, and the nephew of Hyppolite Rachal, who also appears in the list.  Hyppolite was, like Appoline and my ancestor Cyriaque, a child of Sylvestre Rachal and Marie Rose Michel-Zoriche.  If they are the same people as mine, Eusèbe Deslouches was about 9 years old and his uncle Hyppolite was about 28 years of age at the time of their deaths.  As neither of them could be found on the 1860 census, I think it likely but not 100% confirmed.  Also here in this list is an additional corroboration for the death of my 5th-great grandmother, Mme. P. S. Compère (née Lolette Rachal, daughter of Julien Rachal and Marie Louise Brevel) who died September of 1853, according to my records, which cited her succession filed with the Natchitoches clerk of court as the source for that date.  The Compères' elder son Joseph Maximin had married Clara Dejean of Opelousas, and so their name would indeed have been familiar in Opelousas.  The name in this list that precedes Lolette's, Mme. Julien Rachal, is not her mother, who died in 1815, but is probably instead her sister-in-law, Marie Melanie Lavespere, the widow of Mme. Compère's brother, Julien Jr.  Two of their sons were also married to Dejean sisters, so the Rachals would have been known in Opelousas as well.

The next column on the newspaper page (link in the caption above) contains a letter from the bishop at Natchitoches which may be relevant to this list.  In it, he laments the devastation brought upon the communities at Cloutierville, Shreveport, and Alexandria by a recent outbreak of yellow fever.