Naming Belle Marie
Belle Marie
The Story behind the Contest to Name Evangeline’s Daughter
It will always amaze me how the tree escaped my notice for as long as it did. It had nothing to do with the tree’s size or grandeur. It’s a big and beautiful live oak. And it had nothing to do with the visibility of the tree. I’ve walked, or driven, past it hundreds of times. If you’ve ever taken Evangeline Boulevard as it elbows past the Old Castillo Hotel to get to the bridge in St. Martinville, you’ve driven right past it, too. It had nothing to do with the tree itself, and everything to do with the tree’s celebrity neighbor. It grows so close to Evangeline, their crowns touch.
You can see how a tree with a famous neighbor might go unnoticed. People come by busloads to see the Evangeline Oak, and the legendary tree does not disappoint. Her wild lightning branches cast a spell over the little park, and visitors are transported back in time.
I’ve always thought of that jewel of a park, with the dramatic Evangeline Oak at its focal point, as a kind of wormhole into the past. Turn one way, and you see the bricks of the Old Castillo Hotel backgrounding Evangeline’s branches. Turn another way, and there’s Bayou Teche, blue with giant irises. You’re back in the land of steamboats, the bells of St. Martin de Tours, only a block away, decorating the hours of the day.
Louisiana irises in Evangeline Oak Park
One Saturday afternoon this April, I was standing on a folding chair in the park, Windexing some tall windows and watching visitors come and go out of the corner of my eye. All afternoon tourists walked right past the unmarked live oak headlong toward the other one, the one they had gone there to see. Although the tree is almost as tall as Evangeline, almost as big around, and as lush, or lusher, no one paid any attention to the unmarked live oak. It fades into the background. Such is the life of a tree growing literally in the shadow of one of the most storied trees in the world: just another live oak in the land of live oaks.
We were standing under “the other oak,” Mary Desormeaux, myself and the winner of the contest to name the tree—the winning name had just been revealed—and we were measuring the live oak for the very first time. Henri Clay Bienvenu was there to photograph the moment the length of twine had wrapped around the trunk to meet itself on the other side—seventeen feet exactly—and conversation naturally turned to the origin and age of the tree. I asked Henri what he remembered about the tree from back in the day. I thought it was a telling exchange. He said. “I never really noticed it.”
Origins of the Daughter Oak
That’s not to say that the tree has escaped notice entirely. In fact, it has a nickname, as noted in this 1990 Teche News article:
The City Council Monday approved the call for bids on the initial portion of a master plan that would improve access around the oak, providing for the eventual demise of the Evangeline Oak by calling attention to an adjacent “Daughter of Evangeline” oak, provide dramatic nighttime lighting around the oak and boulevard, and establish an elevated walkway along the west bank of the bayou.
Jane Bulliard, because of her work with the Acadian Memorial and her deep dives into the history of St. Martinville, knows the tree better than anyone. She told me the story, which she heard from “Pacan” Randazzo, who had heard it from Brother Resweber, who was there when the tree was planted. Brother was just a young boy when he saw Edmond Bulliard put the “Daughter of Evangeline” in the ground. This would have been in the early 1930s, if our calculations are correct. As the story goes, Edmond, owner of Evangeline Pepper & Food Products, motivated in part by civic pride, and in part by the fact that an image of the Evangeline Oak was featured on his hot sauce’s label, planted a second live oak beside the Evangeline Oak, looking ahead to a future in which Evangeline might no longer be around.
Edmond Bulliard in Catahoula—R. Cavendish, photographer
Evangeline has courted Her fair share of misfortune, and Her eventual demise has always hung over Her like a worrisome cloud. In southern Louisiana, lightning or a tornado could be the final blow to Evangeline any day of the week. It wouldn’t be the first time that the Evangeline Oak has died either. According to Carl Brasseaux, author of “In Search of Evangeline: Birth and Evolution of the Evangeline Myth,” the tree we know today as the Evangeline Oak is perhaps the second or third tree to be given that name.
Sometime between 1895 and 1902, St. Martinville established a small park and designated one of its trees, located on public property apparently near the present city hall, as the first “Evangeline Oak,” and this otherwise unremarkable botanical specimen was soon promoted as a “sacred” relic of Longfellow’s poem and the Acadian exile.
But that tree was attacked with an ax one Sunday in December, in a shocking act of mutilation that was reported in The Weekly Messenger the following Saturday as no less than a murder.
Monday, the people of Saint Martinville were shocked beyond expression and their condemnation was not too severe for the wilful act of vandalism that was committed in cutting the limbs of the Evangeline Oak. This grand old tree, the pride of the town, and the admiration of the strangers who visited this place, was disfigured, mutilated, murdered, for what reason we cannot say, but the damage done is unfortunate, and cannot be repaired, as this tree is now disfigured, ruined forever.
Evangeline Oak—June 2022
On the bright side, the act of vandalism prompted a counter-response. The citizens of St. Martinville came together to protect and preserve the tradition of the Evangeline Oak. A tree situated directly behind the Sisters of Mercy Convent building—the Old Castillo Hotel—was given the name Evangeline. This is the Evangeline Oak we know and love today. Spearheaded by Mayor Fournet, and with fundraising by the Evangeline Literary Society, their efforts resulted in the creation of Evangeline Oak Park, or “Place d’Evangeline” as it was know at the turn of the twentieth century. A hundred years after the new Evangeline Oak was named, Her survival remained in doubt. A 2002 article in the Teche News recorded St. Martinville Mayor Eric Martin’s concern for the legendary tree:
“The famous oak is not healthy, and maybe has 20 or 30 years left,” Martin said. “But next to it is the ‘Daughter Oak’ that is growing and (was planted) from an Evangeline Oak acorn.”
It’s unclear where exactly the live oak sapling came from. Whether truly a daughter-by-acorn of Evangeline or not, the tree became referred to as the Daughter of Evangeline, or the Daughter Oak, and has grown alongside Evangeline for the last ninety years. And she has caught up in size with the mother oak. Today the daughter is only seven inches narrower in girth and has a spread that’s just as wide. Based on girth alone, the Evangeline Oak was recently estimated to be 160 years old, which means She would have been an acorn at the time of the Civil War. However, girth is only a crude estimate of the age of an oak, and photographs suggest that Evangeline is much older than 160 years.
Dolores el Rio at the Evangeline Oak in 1929, courtesy James Akers
There’s a photograph of Dolores del Rio, the star who portrayed Evangeline in the 1929 silent film, standing in front of the Evangeline Oak. Even then the oak looks to be at least a hundred years old, which means Evangeline would have been around in the early 1800s. The only definitive way to determine the age of a tree is to take a sample of it and count the rings. In Evangeline’s case, girth is likely an underestimate of Her age because of how Her growth has been stunted during different periods of Her life, for example, when in the first two decades of the twenty-first century She was strangled by a fig vine that had been planted as an ornament at Her base. Evangeline, unfortunately, has suffered from all the attention.
Evangeline Oak visitors, circa 1929—courtesy Don Terry
A photograph found in a Crowley flea market shows visitors posing on benches placed around the oak. The photograph, thought to have been taken around 1929, is notable for the view it gives of what lies just north of the Evangeline Oak—an empty space. This is the space where the Daughter Oak now stands. This means that the Daughter Oak would have been planted some time after 1929.
Bronze statue of Evangeline, 1965—State Library of Louisiana Historic Photograph Collection
Evangeline mania peaked in St. Martinville in the 1930s. The bronze statue of Evangeline was unveiled in the churchyard of St. Martin de Tours in 1931. (Dolores del Rio, after whom the statue was modeled, returned to St. Martinville for the unveiling.) Longfellow-Evangeline State Park was established in 1934. And the first large-scale renovation of Evangeline Oak Park was accomplished in the early 1930s. This is when white concrete pillars and heavy chain first cordoned off Evangeline. A postcard from the early 1930s shows Edmond Bulliard posing with his company car at the newly beautified Evangeline Oak Park. It’s not unreasonable to think that the Daughter Oak was planted during this same beautification project. That would put the age of the Daughter Oak, in 2023, at around ninety years old.
Edmond Bulliard at Evangeline Oak Park—courtesy Jane Bulliard
I didn’t learn of the Daughter Oak until October of 2022. I had contacted Mary Desormeaux, President of St. Martinville Garden Club, about doing a reading of Longfellow’s Evangeline at Evangeline Oak Park. As it turned out, she was wrapping up a yearslong effort to restore Evangeline to health after almost two decades of neglect. Evangeline had been slowly strangled by an exotic vine planted at her base in the 1980s. The vine continued to grow up and down Evangeline through the 1990s and into the new century, and it had grown so tight it was cutting into the tree’s bark. (You can see the scars on Evangeline if you visit her today.) Not only was the vine removed, the whole park was reimagined. The Daughter Oak had to be taken into consideration during the renovation because the tree had grown so tall that the crowns of the two oaks were touching and growing into each other’s sunlight. Mary told me how some of the branches from the Daughter Oak had to be cut to give Evangeline more sunlight. I was surprised to hear about the sacrifice of limbs, but I was even more surprised to hear that there was even another tree there. When I asked Mary what the name of the oak was, she told me the story of the daughter tree.
Evangeline Oak in 2022, with vine removed and fence installed
As part of the renovation the old white wooden posts and heavy chain around Evangeline were removed, the concrete pillars at each corner were painted black, and a black aluminum fence, short enough to leave an unobstructed view of the tree, but tall enough to prevent people from walking right up to Her, was installed around the fabled oak. One of the best things you can do to preserve a live oak is to give it some space and leave it alone. Looking back through newspaper articles about Evangeline, I was struck by how so much harm has been done in our various efforts to celebrate Her.
Weekly Town Talk—July 7, 1928
For example, Her limbs were carved into gavels that were given as gifts to Democratic Convention chairmen in Houston in 1928. Her roots have surely been traipsed upon by thousands and thousands of people. Even the fig vine planted at Evangeline’s base, in an effort to beautify Her, eventually ended up strangling Her. The low black fence will allow Evangeline Her space going forward. A second low black fence was installed around the Daughter Oak as well. Previously unenclosed, unnoticed and unmarked, the Daughter Oak has emerged from St. Martinville’s fern-feathered past and is now stepping into Her own light. The two fenced-in areas are about equal in size, and the oaks are practically equal in size now too. You’d be forgiven for thinking them sisters.
The Contest
It was Mary’s idea to hold a contest to name the Daughter Oak. I told her I was on board, and we ended up folding the naming contest into a series of events throughout the month of April. For the first time in the city’s history, over the course of five events, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie was read in its entirety, beginning and ending under the legendary oak. Readings also took place at the Acadian Memorial and the St. Martinville Library.
We opened the contest to anyone, whether a resident of St. Martinville or not. There was no entrance fee, and all ages were encouraged to participate. We requested a brief statement in support of the name, and we emphasized that the name could be related to the poem Evangeline, or it could be completely unrelated. The tree could be any gender, or none at all. The important thing was that the proposed name should spotlight something specific about the history, culture or mythology of St. Martinville.
Daughter Oak in 2022 before receiving her name
Submissions closed on April 15th, and by then we had brought two more people on board—Father Jason Vidrine, Pastor at St. Martin de Tours and Danielle Fontenette, Culture, Recreation and Tourism Director for the city of St. Martinville. We met on April 19th at the church offices of St. Martin de Tours, just down Evangeline Boulevard from the two oaks. We started by clarifying our criteria. Something French. Something reflecting the area’s Acadian heritage. Something beautiful to say. Something inclusive. Something that would tell a good story, both today and a hundred years from today. Something to promote the city. Something to honor the history of the city. Something that would continue to open up in many ways over time, even in unexpected ways.
We reviewed the almost two hundred submissions, blind to the names of the submitters, and after deliberating for an hour and half, we hadn’t arrived at a consensus, although we felt we were getting closer. The name Belle Vie, submitted by John Comeaux, was singled out for its sound, and for how it captured a certain emotion we were looking for. Here is the supporting statement he submitted with the name.
Belle Vie, french for Beautiful Life. Complimenting the tree, the area, the landscape, and the people of St. Martinville and Acadiana. Literally just visited there with my wife, who is from the Philippines. Living overseas for the past twenty years, I can say nothing is better than going home to beautiful memories of my youth and the wonderful life we were able to have thanks to those old oak trees lining the bayou, swinging and jumping from them into the bayous. Finding them in yards with their branches low, perfect for climbing and relaxing on. If I think about it, these old trees didn’t just attract lovers to a meeting point, they attracted countless people, children and adults alike, to gather at them. To pause and appreciate them. No one can deny their attraction once seen. Where these trees are found, so are beautiful lives and memories.
We liked the name, but felt that it lacked a certain local connection. It wasn’t clear how it might tap into the roots of St. Martinville and branch out in new directions. In other words, it was a name that could have been given to any number of other bayou-side trees in southern Louisiana. Other names singled out were Jolie, Jolie Fille, Belle of the Bayou, Lucille, Beausoleil, Martinet and Marie.
In that first meeting we also discussed the immediate environment of the Daughter Oak, not only how the tree fits into Evangeline Oak Park, but also the tree’s relation to that whole block where the boulevard elbows into New Market Street. The Daughter Oak, we pointed out, was positioned between the Evangeline Oak, just south of the tree, and the St. Martinville Cultural Heritage Center, just north of the tree. In fact, the branches of the yet-to-be-named tree were actually touching that building’s south wall.
Daughter Oak, with St. Martinville Cultural Heritage Center in background
Housing both the Museum of the Acadian Memorial and the African-American Museum, the St. Martinville Cultural Heritage Center offers a gateway into the history of two diasporas that have made a lasting impact on the city’s culture and character. (A diaspora is a body of people that have been dispersed outside their homeland.) We imagined the Daughter Oak as an external expression of the building that it shaded. Danielle pointed out that there were windows on the south wall of the building, the wall the oak was touching, and we were intrigued by that architectural detail. She mentioned how, for archival reasons, she was advised against including windows in the floor plan. She advocated for the windows anyway.
Later that evening we held a reading at the St. Martin Parish Public Library on Porter Street in St. Martinville. In between cantos of the poem, we screened a short film—part documentary, part animation—created by filmmaker Jillian Godshall from Lafayette. The eight-minute-long film weaved together interviews of St. Martinville residents with cartoon dramatizations of the legend. One of the residents interviewed in the film was none other than Danielle, who zoomed out from the legend of Evangeline to consider the wider story of which Evangeline was a specific example.
Undated postcard—Boston Public Library
She said that when she is in Evangeline Oak Park, her thoughts often turn to Marie of Senegal, an enslaved African woman whose name is memorialized in St. Martinville history by appearing on the very first page of the records from what would later develop into the St. Martin de Tours Church archives. Seven baptisms and one marriage were recorded on June 5, 1756—the dawn of recorded history for St. Martinville and St. Martin Parish—including the baptism and marriage of Marie of Senegal. The name Marie had come up earlier in the day during our discussion of possible names, and there it was again.
After the reading at the Acadian Memorial that Saturday, I took the opportunity to scan the “Wall of Names” to see how many Maries I could find. The wall lists approximately three thousand persons identified as Acadian refugees in early Louisiana records. Their names are engraved on twelve bronze plaques and framed in granite.
A section of the Wall of Names at the Acadian Memorial
One day, I’ll go back and count the exact number of Maries. For now, it’s safe to say that there are well over a hundred. And still today, most people from St. Martin Parish have someone in their family with the name of Marie for a first name or middle name. Then I went next door to the African-American Museum to see the windows Danielle had referred to.
Mary Demouchet at the front desk escorted me to the south wall of the museum, and I was surprised to see that these were not small windows, as I had incorrectly pictured in my mind for some reason, but three tall, beautifully glittering windows. I’m not sure why the windows had never registered from the outside. They’re readily apparent. I certainly hadn’t given any consideration to what the Daughter Oak would look like from the perspective of someone standing inside the museum, but once I was there, seeing the tree through the window, I realized how important this particular viewpoint was. I think that was the first sign that we were on the right track, standing in front of that wall of windows and looking out onto the park.
View of Daughter Oak from inside the African-American Museum
We met again on Thursday, April 27, two days before the name of the tree would be revealed. Father Vidrine brought with him the original 1756 baptism and marriage records that Danielle had alluded to in the film. The book of records had become unbound over the centuries, and the loose pages had been slipped into protective plastic sleeves, collected together in a black plastic binder. We didn’t dare pull them out or handle them. Instead, we huddled around the two-hundred-fifty-year-old-plus documents admiring the exquisite penmanship and deciphering their content. The records were in French, of course. We could make out the name Marie—Marie nation Senegal negresse esclave—in faded brown ink on the paper. Consistent with the age of material, there were plenty of blemishes, and holes that looked like an insect had eaten its way here and there across the paper. It might have been moth larvae that had chewed those holes; I prefer to think they were bookworms. That was the second sign that we were getting closer to the name, those wormholes we saw in the paper.
June 5, 1756 baptism and marriage records
On one hand, we agreed that Belle Vie sounded good and captured the right spirit, but it lacked a clear grounding in the specifics of St. Martinville history. On the other hand, the name Marie had deep roots in the history of St. Martinville, going back to the very first page of recorded history, in fact, and cutting across all populations, but it lacked a certain fullness of phrase. Blending the two names together, we came up with Belle Marie. Something French. Something reflecting the area’s Acadian heritage. Something beautiful to say. Something inclusive. Something that would tell a good story, both today and a hundred years from today. Something to promote the city. Something to honor the history of the city. Something that would continue to open up in many ways over time, even in unexpected ways. The name felt right, and all the signs were encouraging.
Future Directions
One of the criteria guiding the committee was that the name of the oak should open up to the future, even as it looked to the past. The most immediate plans are for signage to identify the tree. More long-range plans call for a display in the African-American Museum, centered around the central window of the south wall, inviting visitors to view both trees—Evangeline and Belle Marie—and highlight what their namesakes have in common. The hope is that in their rootedness the two live oaks will continue to spur interest in genealogy for people who count among their ancestors past residents of St. Martinville and St. Martin Parish, and that in their lushness, the two live oaks, standing side by side in the park, each in her own green, more like sisters now than mother and daughter, might continue to serve as living symbols of faith. Looking through that tall window—past Belle Marie, past Evangeline, on the far side of the park—a visitor can get a glimpse of the bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, noted abolitionist and champion of the people in their resistance against the forces of oppression. In the same way that live oaks grow acorns that grow into new live oaks, so does the lamplight of a long-ago poet persist from century to century.
Bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Evangeline Oak Park
After the final reading of Longfellow’s Evangeline, the winning name of the tree was revealed, and members of the committee spoke about their reasons for choosing Belle Marie. I’ve included a portion of Danielle’s remarks here, because they summarize so elegantly a sentiment we had all been feeling.
Evangeline means many things to many people. I first learned this when I started working for the city about 28 years ago, from Jane Bulliard, who made sure that the Evangeline Oak was preserved, and the story of Evangeline was preserved, and at one point, Miss Jane said—we were getting ready to design the African-American Museum—she said, “Danielle, you know, Evangeline should mean something to everyone, not just the story that we tell but the subject of the story, of people being deported, taken from their homes to make a new life in a new place. We then started to design the African-American Museum, and Evangeline helped us thrive to do our genealogy, to be able to tell the story of our own people. Evangeline has done so much for us in St. Martinville that when we were meeting to name her daughter, we wanted to remind everyone that it was because of her that other stories are coming to light. She has strengthened everyone to embrace their ancestry. Evangeline’s Belle Marie will now bring new life and new stories to our Evangeline Oak Park.
You could say there were actually three signs to let us know that we had chosen the right name for the tree. The third sign came to light when Father Vidrine was wrapping up the ceremony. He told the crowd that had gathered under the Evangeline Oak what he had just learned from Elaine Breaux, who was just recognized as one of the winners of the contest. Although known to all as Elaine, she revealed that her first name is in fact Marie. Twenty-three years ago, her husband Wade had the occasion to paint something on the side of an old wooden cistern on their property in St. Martinville. Taking the name of his wife, and wanting to make a fuller phrase out of it, he had two words painted on the side of it. We couldn’t believe it when he showed us the photograph—the words Belle Marie painted in cursive on the cistern.
Before we adjourned to measure the trunks of both trees—seventeen feet exactly for Belle Marie and seventeen feet, seven inches for Evangeline—Father Vidrine blessed them both.
We appeal to your graciousness, O Almighty God, that you would shower your blessings upon these first roots of creation, which you have nurtured throughout the lives of these trees. Grant your people a sense of constant gratitude so that all may discover your rich gifts. We bless this tree of Evangeline, and this tree of Belle Marie, and we pray that your blessing may come through them to all who visit these banks of the Bayou Teche.
Belle Marie as seen from inside the African-American Museum
The fictional Evangeline famously never wed and never gave birth. If she had, there’s a pretty good chance that her daughter would have been named Marie. When you visit Belle Marie be sure to see her from both perspectives—standing in the park beneath her branches, and standing inside the museum, looking through the glittering windows, perfect, as it turns out, for noticing the two trees growing just beyond the glass.