Hard Scrabble to Hallelujah, Volume 1: Bayou Terrebonne

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 four planned volumes 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, Hard Scrabble to Hallelujah, Volume I: Bayou Terrebonne 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.

Christopher Everette Cenac, Sr., M.D., F.A.C.S. is a practicing orthopedic surgeon and has served a term as Terrebonne Parish coroner. He and his wife, Cindy, reside at Winter Quarters on Bayou Black. He is the author of Eyes of an Eagle: Jean-Pierre Cenac, Patriarch: An Illustrated History of Early Houma-Terrebonne (selected book of the Louisiana Bicentennial Commission) and Livestock Brands and Marks: An Unexpected Bayou Country History 1822-1946, Pioneer Families Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana (a Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year), both distributed by University Press of Mississippi. Claire Domangue Joller has received awards from the National Catholic Press Association and the Louisiana Press Association for her newspaper and magazine columns.