Abbeville

Abbeville, city, seat (1854) of Vermilion parish, southern Louisiana, U.S., on the Vermilion River, 20 miles (32 km) south-southwest of Lafayette. It was founded in 1843 by a Capuchin missionary, Père Antoine Desire Mégret, who patterned it on a French Provençal village. First called La Chapelle and settled by Acadians from Nova Scotia and Mediterranean immigrants, it was later named Abbeville (“Priest’s Town”). St. Marie Madeleine Church (1910) now occupies the site of Mégret’s chapel,...