Biography

Christopher E. Cenac Sr., M.D., F.A.C.S, grew up in Houma, Louisiana. His book Eyes of An Eagle, is a docu-novel about his great-grandfather’s life that provides a history of early Terrebonne Parish. It was a selected book of the Louisiana Bicentennial Commission, and has been placed in Terrebonne Parish schools as a historical resource. His next book, Livestock Brands and Marks: An Unexpected Bayou Country History, was named a Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. 

Schedule

2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
State Capitol, House Committee Room 6
Discussion
America’s Third Coast

3:15 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Bookselling Tent
Book Signing

Hard Scrabble to Hallelujah: Legacies of Terrebonne Parish - Volume 1: Bayou Terrebonne

AN INCOMPARABLE HISTORICAL RECORD OF A BAYOU'S MANY PLANTATIONS, FARMS, AND HOMESTEADS

This book represents the first time that the known history and a significant amount of new information has been compiled into a single written record about one of the most important eras in the south central coastal bayou parish of Terrebonne. The book makes clear the unique geographical, topographical, and sociological conditions that beckoned the first settlers who developed the large estates that became sugar plantations. This first of a planned four-volume series chronicles details about founders and their estates along Bayou Terrebonne from its headwaters in the northern civil parish to its most southerly reaches near the Gulf of Mexico. Those and other parish plantations along important waterways contributed significantly to the dominance of King Sugar in Louisiana.

The rich soils and opportunities of the area became the overriding reason many well-heeled Anglo-Americans moved there to join Francophone locals in cultivating the crop. From that nineteenth century period up to the twentieth century's side effects of World Wars I and II, Hardscrabble to Hallelujah, Volume I describes important yet widely unrecognized geography and history. Today, cultural and physical legacies such as ex-slave founded communities and place names endure from the time that the planter society was the driving economic force of this fascinating region.