Biography

Claire Domangue Joller received the first place award from the North American Catholic Press Association in 2001 for her first year of Bayou Catholic newspaper columns in the Arts, Culture, and Leisure category, and came in second in 2014 in the Association’s General Commentary category. Her “Seeing Clairely” column won a Louisiana Press Association award in 2001 and 2012. Joller was the writer for Dr. Christopher E. Cenac Sr.’s book Eyes of An Eagle, and Livestock Brands and Marks.

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.