Generations
c. 1665–1725 · La Rochelle
Three generations of chief surgeons
La Rochelle was one of the great naval and merchant ports of Louis XIV's France. Edmé Goudeau ran its naval surgery from about 1667. With another surgeon he founded a school there to train surgeons for the king's ships. It taught Goudeau men for several generations.
Edmé handed the post to his eldest son Henry in 1678. When Henry died about 1698, his younger brother Charles took it. Charles married Marie Anne Dergny the same year. When Charles died in 1722 the post went to his son Charles Henry, who died three years later at 23. The next brother, Jacques, had no interest in medicine, and the post left the family. Family tradition says Jacques went to London, became a hatter, and married in a Huguenot church. The London register tells a different story.
Edmé died on 3 January 1710, aged 86, "after having received the sacraments of the church." Charles died on 6 May 1722, aged 56. The parish of St-Barthélemy buried both men in the chapel of the Hospitalière nuns' convent-hospital, where the family had treated the town's sick.
1728–1764 · The colony
Two king's doctors go to Louisiana
Two younger sons of Charles did train at the school: François Jean (1708–1758) and Michel (1713–1764). Each took a royal commission as a docteur du roi. That meant two years of service at a colonial military post, two years' pay in advance, and a chest of clothes, medicines and instruments.
A post surgeon had to treat everyone free: officers, soldiers, their families, the civilians who supplied the fort and, in practice, the nearby tribes. To earn money he needed side work. That could be the storekeeper's job, a small farm, or trade.
François Jean served at Natchitoches, married twice, and moved to New Orleans. He lived in his mother-in-law's house on Rue Dumaine, which survives today as Madame John's Legacy. He sailed to France in 1757 to settle his mother's estate. On the way back the British captured his ship. He died a prisoner of war at Plymouth. His two sons died without children. His son Benigne François fell at the siege of Pensacola in 1781, fighting for Spain on the American side.
Michel was surgeon-major at Fort Toulouse on the Alabama River from about 1733. He learned some of the Alabama language and traded for deerskins. In 1734 at Mobile he married Marie Thérèse Huchet, daughter of an interpreter respected by the Alabama chiefs. In the 1740s the family lived on the old Rochon plantation at the mouth of Dog River, south of Mobile.
In 1751 the governor sent Michel up the Mississippi to Fort de Chartres in the Illinois country. The new commandant objected to bringing a wife and daughters. The governor insisted. The convoy took three and a half months. In Chartres Michel bought a house with a yard, well, garden and outbuildings.
After the 1763 Treaty of Paris gave the east bank to Britain, Michel and his wife left Illinois for Pointe Coupée, where their son Antoine lived. Michel died there on New Year's Eve 1764. The burial record calls him "of Illinois, veteran surgeon-major."
1756–1813 · Spanish Louisiana
The sons: Antoine and Pierre
Colonial law required physicians to train in Europe. So Michel's sons, Pierre and Antoine, almost certainly studied at the family school in La Rochelle as teenagers, then came back as military surgeons.
Antoine I served at La Balize, the fort at the mouth of the Mississippi, from 1756 to 1759. In 1762 he married Marie Jeanne Roy at Pointe Coupée. Her grandfather had helped Cadillac found Detroit. They had at least twelve children. River floods pushed them to Grand Coteau near Opelousas by 1780. About 1792 they moved to Bayou Rouge Prairie in what is now Avoyelles Parish.
Pierre I served at Fort Toulouse and then at the New Orleans hospital. In 1770 the Spanish governor Alejandro O'Reilly commissioned him a sub-lieutenant of militia. In 1772 he became surgeon-major at Pointe Coupée. In 1776 he married Marie Henriette Dufour. He was almost certainly with the Pointe Coupée militia when Gálvez took Baton Rouge from the British in 1779. In 1798 he sold out at Pointe Coupée. He later served at Plaquemine. After the Louisiana Purchase he moved to the Spanish Royal Hospital at Baton Rouge, still in Spanish West Florida. He died there in 1813.
1799–1900 · Avoyelles and Baton Rouge
The family settles and spreads
In 1798 Pierre I's eldest son, Pierre II, arrived at Bayou Rouge Prairie, near his uncle Antoine. In 1799 he married his first cousin Eugénie. The church required a bishop's dispensation for the marriage, and the letter survives in the diocesan archives at Notre Dame. In 1807 Pierre II bought land from his uncle and father-in-law. In January 1838 a Pierre Goudeau dedicated the Goudeau Family Cemetery there. The settlement later got its own post office, opened in 1895 under the name Goudeau.
Pierre I's son Julien (1788–1850) stayed on the family plantation in West Baton Rouge. His son Julien II had seventeen children by two wives. That is why there are so many Goudeaus in East and West Baton Rouge parishes.
Sub-branches of the Avoyelles family moved south into St. Landry, Acadia and Lafayette parishes. In the early 1900s some of them began to spell the name Godeau, Godeaux or Goodeaux. The Avoyelles and Baton Rouge branches kept the original spelling. By 1880 Louisiana had 83 Goudeau households, more than any other state.
New findings
Research done for this site in October 2026, beyond the published family overview. Each item names its source. "Primary" means the original record or a direct transcription of it.
London · 1745 · Primary
The London Jacques was probably not Charles's son
The tradition says Charles's son Jacques (born about 1704) went to London and married in a Huguenot church. The register of the French church called La Patente, in Spitalfields, has exactly one Goudeau marriage. On 2 June 1745 it records "Jaque Goudeau, native of Roman in Poitou, son of the late Jean Goudeau and of Catherine Jourdain." He married Susanne Le Grand of Rouen.
His father was Jean, not Charles, and his mother was Catherine Jourdain, not Marie Anne Dergny. He came from Poitou, not La Rochelle. He was a Protestant, while the La Rochelle Goudeaus were buried as Catholics. The couple baptised at least seven children at La Patente between 1746 and 1758. Several entries call the father "of Rouman in Haut Poitou". "Roman" is most likely Romans, near Saint-Maixent in the Deux-Sèvres.
The most likely explanation is that two different Jacques Goudeaus have been merged. If so, the fate of Charles's son Jacques is unknown. The London family is a separate Poitevin Huguenot line. A René Goudeau was also a godparent among the Poitou refugees at Stepney in 1701 and 1714.
Source: Registers of the Church known as La Patente in Spittlefields, 1689–1785, Huguenot Society Quarto Series vol. 11, marriages 1745 and baptisms 1746–1758.
Illinois and St. Louis · 1756–1785 · Primary
Michel's daughters, and a son-in-law who raided a British fort
The overview names Michel's three daughters but not their husbands. The Kaskaskia parish register names all three, each "daughter of surgeon Michel Godeau":
- Marie Josèphe married Eugène Pourré dit Beausoleil, a marine sergeant in the company of Varenne, on 10 January 1756.
- Louise Marguerite married Pierre Baron on 6 February 1759. She was buried at St. Louis Church, New Orleans, on 25 April 1794.
- Marie Thérèse married Joseph Crely, son of the cooper Jean-Baptiste Crely, on 16 November 1763. She died at 20 and was buried in January 1766.
Eugène Pourré became a captain of the St. Louis militia under Spain. On 2 January 1781 he led about 65 militiamen and 60 Native allies out of St. Louis, across Illinois in midwinter. On 12 February they crossed the frozen river and took the British post of Fort St. Joseph, in what is now Niles, Michigan, by surprise. He brought the British flag back to St. Louis. So two of Michel's family fought Britain for Spain in the same spring of 1781: his son-in-law at St. Joseph, and his great-nephew François, killed at Pensacola. Pourré died in 1783. In 1785 "his widow, née Josepha Godeau" sold his farm south of St. Louis.
François Jean's daughter Isabel married Paul Rastel, chevalier de Rocheblave, a French officer who had been held in the Bastille in 1765. He died at Opelousas in 1777. They had five children baptised in New Orleans, and her cousin Pierre Goudeau I became guardian of the orphans. This last point comes from an online tree and still needs checking against the sacramental records.
After Michel's death his widow received 6,104 livres from the court sale of his belongings, by a receipt dated 10 August 1766 at New Orleans.
Sources: Natalia Belting, Kaskaskia under the French Regime (1948), marriages 1756–1763 and notes on the 1752 census; Frederic Billon, Annals of St. Louis in its Early Days (1886), p. 407; Fort St. Joseph; WikiTree, Rocheblave-3; Louisiana Lineage.
France · Secondary
Where the name comes from
Goudeau is a western form of Godeau. Today the name is most common by far in the Deux-Sèvres, in old Haut-Poitou, then in Vienne and Charente-Maritime. A Protestant Goudeau family is recorded in Bas-Poitou from 1578. Edmé's origin before La Rochelle is still unknown. Poitou, just inland from La Rochelle, is the obvious place to look. In French records the family usually appears as Godeau, so search under both spellings. Name dictionaries offer two meanings: a pet form of the Germanic name Godard, or godeau, a vine-planting tool, perhaps a nickname for a vine grower.
Sources: Filae surname distribution; Dauzat, Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de famille.
La Rochelle · 1670–1722 · Primary transcriptions
Corrected dates for Edmé and Charles
Edmé's 1670 commission says he had already held the office "for three years", so he started about 1667. A separate letter of mastery followed in 1672. The burial registers give Edmé's age at death as 86 (born about 1623–24) and Charles's as 56 (born about 1666, not 1668).
Sources: Cathy Sturgell, "The Burial Location of Edmé Goudeau/Godeau and his son Charles" (2022); translation of the 1670 commission.
Bayou Rouge · 1779–1826 · Primary, via federal record
A Goudeau's own account of the Tunica sale
In 1826, in a land dispute at the Opelousas Land Office, Pierre Goudeau testified under oath. He said he had lived at Bayou Rouge for 28 years, about a mile from the Tunica village. He named "Pan Roy" as the head man who controlled the land. He said Panroy sold "nearly one-half the Bayou Rouge Prairie" to his father around 1794. He also said a later chief, Jean Baptiste, sold more land around 1810–15 for $50 in cash and $150 in goods, which the chief "divided among all the Indians."
Twenty-eight years puts the witness's arrival in 1798. That fits Pierre II, who came to Bayou Rouge that year. But the buyer was Antoine I, who was Pierre II's uncle and father-in-law. So either the clerk wrote "father" for "father-in-law", or the witness was Antoine's son Pierre III. Panroy himself was no stranger to the Spanish: in 1779 Governor Gálvez wrote to honour "the Indian named Panroy of the tribe of Thomicas." The federal review concluded that land sales like these and settler encroachment probably broke up the Tunica village at Bayou Rouge.
Source: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Proposed Finding, Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe of Louisiana, citing American State Papers, Public Lands II:243 and III:151.
Pointe Coupée and Avoyelles · 1795–1860 · Primary
Enslaved people in Goudeau households
A family history should include the people the family held in bondage. In the 1795 Pointe Coupée slave conspiracy trial, the Goudeau estate under Pierre Goudeau, almost certainly Dr. Pierre I, is listed as holding eight people: Louis, Petit Pierre, Marie-Anne, Lucas, François, Philie, Hector and Antoine. Louis, about 35, born among the Carabalí and married to Philie, was convicted on witness testimony and sentenced to flogging and ten years' labour at a presidio. In 1855 the Avoyelles tax lists show the widow of Julien Goudeau, our direct ancestor Marceline Decuir, holding 57 people, and Pierre Goudeau holding 27.
Sources: Louisiana Slave Conspiracies project, Pierre Goudeau and Louis Goudeau; 1855 Avoyelles slaveholders, from Goodspeed (1890).
Avoyelles · 1824–1884 · Secondary
Goudeaus in parish government, and Goudeaus of colour
Goudeaus served on the Avoyelles police jury, the parish governing body, for most of the nineteenth century: P. Goudeau (1824), Julien Goudeau (1842–47), J. J. Goudeau as clerk and later treasurer (1852–69), Pierre F. Goudeau (1880) and Charles Goudeau (1884). Felicien Goudeau, recorded as a man of colour, sat on the police jury during and after Reconstruction (1871–74, 1877, 1880). Creoles of colour carrying the Goudeau name have been part of the family's story since the colonial period. Researcher Christophe Landry lists the descendants of Auguste Goudeau and Divine Ramón among Creole families with Native ancestry. The Goudeau School, built in the 1930s for Black children, grew out of Antioch Baptist Church (founded 1905).
Sources: Goodspeed, Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana (1890), Avoyelles sketch; Landry, Louisiana Creole families with Indian ancestors.
1861–1865 · Service records index
The Civil War
At least five Goudeaus served in Confederate units: Privates Antoine (Co. C), Julien (Co. F) and Pierre (Co. G, the Murdock Guards) of the 8th Louisiana Cavalry, and Don Louis and D. Goudeau of the 18th Louisiana Infantry. Amédée Goudeau (1841–1862), son of Julien of Avoyelles, studied at St. Joseph's College in Bardstown, Kentucky, and was buried in the family cemetery in November 1862. The cause of his death is not recorded.
Sources: Acadians in Gray (acadiansingray.com), an index of the Compiled Service Records; Find a Grave, Amédée Goudeau.
1758 · Inference
Where François Jean really died
The family account has François Jean dying on a prison hulk at Plymouth. In the Seven Years' War, Plymouth held most French prisoners in Mill Prison on land. The navy storeship Fortune was still sailing to Louisiana in the 1760s, so his ship must have been a different Fortune, probably a merchantman. The British records to search are the prisoner registers (ADM 103), the Sick and Hurt Board papers (ADM 97–98) and the prize papers for a Fortune taken in 1758 (HCA 32), all at The National Archives, Kew.
Paris · Archive lead
A colonial personnel file
The French colonial archives at Aix-en-Provence (ANOM) list a personal file for "Goudeau, surgeon at the post of La Balize, Louisiana, 1759." This is almost certainly Antoine I, who served there from 1756 to 1759. The file has not been read. It may hold his commission, his training record from La Rochelle, and correspondence about his pay.
Source: ANOM, series COL E (personal files), inventory.
Our line, 1805 to today
The published family overview stops at about 1850. This part of the line was traced for this site in October 2026, working back from Ross Goudeau Jr.'s obituary and checking each step against records.
- Ross Henry Goudeau Jr. (1921–2009). His obituary names his son Scott Kevin Goudeau, his grandson Graham Scott Goudeau, and his parents, Ross Henry Goudeau Sr. and Esther Jeansonne of Marksville. In the 1950 census, taken in April, he is 28 and living with his parents in Lafayette Parish. He and his father are both listed as coin-machine operators. In June 1950 he married Dorothy Mouton.
The war. His obituary says he served in the Army Signal Corps during the D-Day invasion, and his gravestone reads "S SGT US ARMY". He was a charter member of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. The family also strongly remembers that he served in the Aleutian Islands, and that he was cagey about whether he saw combat there. The two are not exclusive. The Japanese held Attu and Kiska from June 1942 to mid-1943. Some Army units garrisoned Alaska in 1942–43 and were then sent to England for the Normandy build-up. His unit has not been identified yet. At least one Signal Corps unit did both: the 165th Signal Photographic Company earned credit for the Aleutian Islands campaign, and its cameramen then landed in Normandy on D-Day. That is not evidence that he served in it, but it shows the path existed. His discharge paper or Army personnel file would name his unit and list his campaigns.
A "novelty company" in that era placed pinball machines, jukeboxes and other coin machines in diners, bars and drugstores around Acadiana, kept them running, and split the takings with the owners. The family remembers Ross Jr. making the rounds of the diners to repair the pinball machines. His father was already in the trade by 1950, so the business probably started with Ross Sr. A 1991 article in Play Meter, the coin-machine trade magazine, says Ross Jr.'s brother Gerald started his own company in 1948 and mentions their father Ross. The coin-machine trade was a family business.
- Ross Henry Goudeau Sr. (1898–1961). The St. Landry Clarion of 22 January 1921 reported his wedding at the bride's home on 15 January: "Mr. Ross H. Goudeau of Marksville, La., and Miss Esther Jeansonne. The young couple will make their home in Monroe." The Louisiana death index records his death in Lafayette Parish on 2 April 1961, aged 62.
- Guy Julien Goudeau (1875–1968). The death index records Guy Julian Goudeau, died 12 March 1968 at 92 in Avoyelles, and his wife Helen, died 23 March 1946 at 69. In the 1950 census he is a 75-year-old widower lodging in Marksville. That he was Ross Sr.'s father and Julien Jules's son rests on Find a Grave family links for now.
- Julien Jules Goudeau (1829–1886). Goodspeed's 1892 history of Avoyelles records "Julien J. Goudeau" as clerk of the district court from 1866 to 1868. As "J. J. Goudeau" he was clerk of the police jury (1852), a Marksville alderman (1858), an incorporator of the Louisiana Central Stem Railroad (1854) and parish treasurer (1869). His signature as clerk appears in court papers that went up to the U.S. Supreme Court in Marshall v. Knox (1871).
- Julien Goudeau (1805–1852). Goodspeed lists him as a militia lieutenant in 1825 and a police juror in 1842, 1844 and 1847. A family biography in the same book says Julian Goudeau was the son of Pierre Goudeau, a physician, married "Miss Decuire", and was among the first settlers of Avoyelles. His tomb tablet in the Goudeau Family Cemetery names his wife and ten children.
One hard fact belongs here too. "Widow Julien Goudeau", listed with 57 enslaved people on the Avoyelles roll, was almost certainly Marceline Decuir, our direct ancestor. See New findings.
Still to prove with a record: that Guy Julien was Ross Sr.'s father, and Julien Jules's son. The Louisiana State Archives will supply death certificates for Ross Sr. (1961), Guy (1968) and Helen (1946), which should name parents. Esther Jeansonne's and Helen Masters's parents are not yet known.
Sources: obituaries of Ross H. Goudeau Jr. (2009) and Dorothy Mouton Goudeau (2017); 1950 U.S. census, Lafayette Parish ED 28-16 and Avoyelles ED 5-5A; St. Landry Clarion, 22 January 1921; Louisiana statewide death index; Goodspeed, Avoyelles chapter (1892); Marshall v. Knox transcript; Find a Grave: Ross Jr., Ross Sr., Guy Julien, Julien Jules, Julien.