Euzebe Vidrine’s story is not a pleasant one but it is interesting. Several people I know are related to him or to one of the people he killed, so talking about him is never too easy. Many people come to the library to check out his life story that he "wrote." Someone wrote it for him because he couldn’t speak English very well.
Request his autobiography from your library. It does contain Evangeline parish history from the 1920s.
Again, I like to see how things were said in different time periods. I found some articles in our vertical files and looked for more in the Alexandria Town Talk.
The Town Talk covers the story extensively. They never mention Acadian or Cajun or French. This article, from the Weekly Gazette, is very interesting and I'm not sure who wrote it. It has courtesy of the St. Louis Post Dispatch but that might be for the pictures. I can’t find an author. It has pictures of Euzebe Vidrine, his home, and a picture of Robert Leo Wiggins - one of the men Euzebe killed.
These are some quotes that I found interesting:
“In Ville Platte where lived Robert Leo Wiggins, out Mamou way where Vidrine’s housing, in the lumber camp beside the bayou, in this land of the Acadians, Vidrine was known, feared. His life was a sort of mystery, perhaps it would be fair to him to say that he lived a dreamer’s existence, rather than a drama-although the “Cajan’s” as he seemed wont to style himself, live and toil in their drama.”
“They were here in the thousands, these French-Americans of this Southland Arcadie..”
“They talked their French or the patois that compromises with English.”
The Weekly Gazette – 1924
Who wrote that??? Someone from St. Louis? The language is very different from the Town Talk.
It’s interesting history. Again, it’s not pleasant history and some people are very sensitive about talking about it.
The life of Euzebe Vidrine.
Author Vidrine, Euzebe, 1898- 1924
Ville Platte has copies and I looked on Loan Shark http://lapac.library.net/default.htm and saw several others have copies too.