A man from the islands
Our family’s American story begins with Juan Franco Plasencia (written in some records as Juan de Plasencia), born around 1738 on La Gomera, one of the seven inhabited Canary Islands. The Canaries had belonged to Spain for nearly three centuries by then, and their people were known as isleños, Spanish for “islanders.”
Life there was hard in the 1770s. Drought and locusts had ruined harvests, and when the Spanish crown went looking for settlers willing to cross the ocean, many island families listened.
Spain needed Louisiana held
Spain controlled Louisiana, and the British sat just across the Mississippi. To strengthen the colony, Spain offered Canary Islanders passage, land, and support to settle there. Between 1778 and 1783, roughly two thousand of them came, and they founded four small communities along the waterways around New Orleans.
Many of the men were recruited as soldiers as well as settlers. They were there to farm the land and to defend it.
The settlement that disappeared
One of those communities was Valenzuela, laid out where Bayou Lafourche leaves the Mississippi, around today’s Plattenville and Belle Rose in Assumption Parish. The first islanders arrived there in the spring of 1779.
Valenzuela lasted, but not by its name. It was eventually plowed under by sugar plantations, and you won’t find it on a modern map. What survived were the families, and the Spanish surnames still heard up and down the bayou.
A Plaisance in the American Revolution
When Spain entered the war against Britain, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez led Louisiana’s troops against British forts along the Gulf Coast. Juan Franco Plasencia served as a private in the Spanish infantry of Louisiana during those campaigns.
That service is why the Sons of the American Revolution recognize him as a patriot ancestor today. A memorial plaque for him hangs inside the church at Plattenville.
How Plasencia became Plaisance
At the same time the islanders arrived, thousands of Acadian exiles were settling Bayou Lafourche. The two peoples farmed side by side, worshipped in the same churches, and married into each other’s families. Juan himself took an Acadian wife, Marie Françoise Bourg. Within a generation or two, Valenzuela spoke French.
The name followed the language. Priests and clerks wrote down what they heard, and you can watch the spelling change from one record to the next.
1830: Jean Baptiste Plaisance, native of Assumption on Bayou Lafourche, son of Baltasar de Plezencia and Henriette Breaux.
Marriage record, Lafayette, from another early Plaisance household on the bayou. One document, the father in Spanish, the son in French.
- Juan Franco Plasencia
- Jean Mathias Plaisance
- Juan Philippe Plaisance
Still on the bayou
From Plattenville the family spread south with everyone else on the Lafourche, into Thibodaux, Raceland, Lockport, Larose, and on toward the Gulf. Ask around in Lafourche and Terrebonne today and you’ll find Plaisances who have no idea their name started out Spanish.
Sources and a note on accuracy
Both sides of our family descend from Juan Franco Plasencia, through his sons Jean Mathias and Juan Philippe. This is still research in progress: the details of his life and the early generations come from published genealogies and lineage society records, which are research aids rather than final proof. Corrections are always welcome.
- Sons of the American Revolution, Patriot Record P-181769, Juan de Plaisance / de Plasencia, and related member applications.
- Gilbert C. Din, The Canary Islanders of Louisiana (LSU Press).
- Sidney Louis Villeré, The Canary Islands Migration to Louisiana, 1778 to 1783.
- Donald J. Hébert, Southwest Louisiana Records.
- “Isleños,” 64 Parishes, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
- Canary Islanders Heritage Society of Louisiana.