My mother was Berthille Marie Falgout, daughter of Joseph Marcellin Falgout and Lillianne Eloise Champagne. Even though I have tons of information on this family, I never tire of hearing about them.

All Falgoust and Falgout families in America are descendants of the French surgeon, Louis Marcel Falgoust dit Beaumont, whose roots can be traced back to 1555 in Languedoc, France. Louis used the name, Beaumont, in Louisiana. His great-grandfather, Gabriel Massalue, was called the Sieur de Beaumont in French records. Louis apparently adoped the dit name in the fashion of many of the early French settlers in the America. Born at Langeais, France, a town approximately six miles west of Tours, on the Loire River, Louis Marcel Falgoust followed in the footsteps of his father, Pierre Falgoust, and his grandfather, Pierre Falgoux and his great-grandfather, Gabriel Massalue, and became a surgeon. He came to Louisiana as a surgeon-major with the French army around 1738, and he married in Louisiana to Marie Jeanne Castan, daughter of Joseph Castan and Claudine Volmar, immigrants to the Louisiana Colony in 1720. Marie Jeanne was born in the Indian village of the Tunicas, where her parents settled after their marriage.

Louis Marcel Falgoust, descendant of influential ancestors who lived during the French Renaissance period, grew up under the influence of the Age of Enlightenment in France. He lived in an area of France on the Loire River which saw the comings and goings of royalty and pagentry. Louis ultimately shunned the comfort and security of his life in France and came instead to French Louisiana, a virtual wilderness when he arrived. He served as a surgeon at the German Coast of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes for over 30 years. All Falgoust and Falgout families of the United States descend from the union of Louis Marcel Falgoust and Marie Jeanne Castan. Their oldest son, Jean Louis, established the Falgoust branch of the family at Vacherie, St. James Parish, Louisiana. Their two youngest sons, Charles and George, moved into Lafourche Parish after the Louisiana Purchase, and established their Falgout branches of the family.

The earliest Falgoust ancestor found in France was Dominique Falgoux, progenitor of many generations of successful landowners, city administrators, attorneys and judges at Villesequelande, a small town west of Carcassonne in Languedoc, France. An act of burial for Dominique Falgoux exists in the archives of the Church of the Assumption at Villesequelande, which states that he died in 1654 at the age of 100 years. Dominique and his wife, Andrine Garrigues, had children who died of the bubonic plague, including, it is believed, his son, Dominique, the ancestor of the American Falgousts and Falgouts.

Dominique's grandson, Eutrope Falgoux, was the bailiff of Villesequelande and an official on the council at Carcassonne at the time that the Canal du Midi was planned by Louis IV, the Sun King, and designed to pass thru Villesequelande. Eutrope Falgoux' last will and testament exists in the archives at Aude, France, and it attests to his wealth and importance. When he died, he was buried inside the Church of the Assumption at Villesequelande, in front of the bench of the councils, on the side of the Evangelists (the gospel side of the church).

Eutrope Falgoux sent his younger son, Pierre Falgoux, to Langeais, on the Loire River, to study to become an apothecary surgeon under Gabriel Massalue, a wealthy and important personage in Tourraine. Pierre Falgoux married Massalue's daughter, Gabrielle, who was ten years older than him. Gabrielle died nine months later in childbirth, but the son that she bore lived and was named Pierre. The father, Pierre, returned to Villesequelande, but the son, Pierre, lived with his Massalue relatives at Langeais, became a surgeon by the age of eighteen years, married Catherine Courault, the daughter of a rich candle merchant at Langeais, and they became the parents of Louis Marcel Falgoust, our immigrant ancestor
who came to the Louisiana Colony.