The Evangeline Oak & St. Martin de Tours

Longfellow never saw Louisiana. He wrote *Evangeline* in 1847 from secondhand accounts of the Acadian deportation—the British expulsion from eastern Canada that scattered French families across the Atlantic world. The poem tells of a woman separated from her betrothed during the expulsion, who finds him again in Louisiana only to learn he has committed to another. She never recovers from the shock of both finding and losing him. St. Martinville claimed the story immediately, and by the late nineteenth century the oak tree had become a pilgrimage site. St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church stands beside it. Acadian settlers founded the church in 1765—the third oldest in Louisiana and the mother church of the Acadian people who colonized this parish in the late 1700s. They brought the Evangeline story with them, and some believe the historical woman behind the tale—possibly an orphan named Emmeline Labiche—was buried on these grounds. The statue in the churchyard came later. After Dolores del Río starred in the 1929 film adaptation, she donated a likeness of Evangeline modeled on her own face. Oak, statue, and church stand within steps of each other on Main Street. Free to visit. You're standing at the physical claim Acadiana made on a story written by a man who never came here—proof that a people decides which tales belong to them, regardless of who wrote them down.