"Bull" Aguillard, Pt. Coupee Parish, La. Submitted by James Dabadie ------------------------------------------------------------------ ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------ FeIix D'Abadie stories transcribed by Bernice D'Abadie, 1956. "Bull" Aguillard was a hulk of a man, uneducated, never serious and always broke. He was the husband of Eugenie Fabre's half sister and brother of Ida Aguillard who married Lamar Jewell. Of all Bull's practical jokes, the most humorous concerned Theophile Mars and his mule. Theophile was a hermit who lived in the backlands of the Island. He came to New Roads only a few times a year with his mule to buy staples. One summer the season had been exceptionally dry. Cisterns were empty and wells went dry. Families living on the banks of False River were desperate for water. False River had dried up considerably with only water left out in the middle of the channel. To save time and effort, the home owners dug ditches from the middle of the channel back to the bank in front of their houses and made water holes from which it was easy to dip a bucket of water. Throughout the summer the water holes and ditches became deeper to get the water from mid-channel. As the autumn season came, the heat lifted and the rain came at last. It did not take long for the cisterns to fill up, the wells to be replenished and for False River to rise to a normal level covering all the ditches and water holes. One morning Theophile came out of the wilderness riding his mule. Bull was up and doing nothing in particular when he saw Theophile come down the road. "Theophile," he hollered. "Where you go, Man?" "I go to New Roads, me" Bull continued, "Man, today she be hot. What for you don't give your mule some water?" Theophile looked agreeable and headed his mule out beyond the bank of False River a little. Bull, Knowing the underwater topography said, "A little to the right, Theophile, a little to the right. The water, she is better there." Thoephile rode a little to the right. "A little more to the right, Theophile." SPLASH, -- BUBBLE, BUBBLE - GURLE ---GURGLE --i--#@%&* Bull doubled himself in laugher --- a roaring belly laugh. The mule and his rider had dropped off into an old water hole. "And when they came up, the mule he had perches in his ears and Theophile look like a mermaid draped in sea weed", Bull always said. The second story is about when bull's joking nature was his undoing. He got into an argument with a neighbor, Camille Gremillion. Before he walked off he threatened, "Camille, for next time I see you in town, me, I'm going to buggy whip you." No one ever knew if Bull was serious or not, but Camille, like other men of his day knew that to be buggy whipped was a worse insult than a hurt. Camille carried a pistol the next time he went to New Roads. As chance would have it, he met Bull in the General Store where Charles Dabadie worked. Bull, when he saw Camille enter the door, reached over to the stock of buggy whips and pulled one out and as he turned, Camille drew his gun and fired. Bull was mortally wounded. As uncle Charlie raised Bull's head to make him a little more comfortable, Bull, knowing he was dying, whispered, "I'm taking to the bull rushes." In that place and time, when youngsters got in trouble with their parents and knew they would be whipped for some misdoing, many would hide out amid the bull rushes in the swamp for a day or a night in hopes their parent's wrath would cool. To take to the bull rushes was the final resort for salvation. ******************************************************************* THE SHOOTING OF BULL AGUILLARD AS REPORTED BY THE POINTE COUPEE BANNER ON NOV 2, 1907 A TRAGEDY A marring feature of All Saints day, was the shooting of Joseph Aguillard Jr. by Louis Gremillion last evening in the St Dizier store opposite the courthouse. From what we can learn the following are alleged to be the facts in the case. Some months ago Aguillard and Gremillion had some words over some trifling matter, and since that time Aguillard had shown a tendency to constantly menace Gremillion, who is physically but a boy compared to Aguillard. On last evening at about four o'clock, Gremillion was standing in front of a show-case in the front portion of the store, when suddenly Aguillard walked up to him with a buggy whip and remarked "It is about time that we finish this matter," and immediately he began beating the young man with the whip; Gremillion drew a revolver, and fired two shots, both taking effect in the abdomen, on a line with the umbilicus. After examination by Dr. Tircuit, it was discovered that both shots had made their exit, one through the left side and the other through the hip. Aguillard is in a very serious condition, and is probably fatally shot. His friends do not expect him to recover. The young man fully realizes his condition and expressed himself as having received his death wounds. Immediately after the shooting, young Gremillion in company with a relative walked over to the courthouse, and surrendered to the Sheriff E.G. Benker who placed him in jail. THE DEATH OF BULL AGUILLARD AS REPORTED BY THE POINTE COUPEE BANNER ON NOV 9, 1907 AGUILLARD DIES Joseph Aguillard Jr., the young man who was shot by Louis Gremillion at the store of O. St. Dizier & Co., on All Saints day, breathed his last, Wednesday morning at four o'clock. As reported by us last week, the young man was so seriously shot, that it was known that he would never recover and it was a source of wonder to those who knew the character of the wounds that he survived as he did. Up to the time of his death, Aguillard never once gave any evidence of severe suffering but on the contrary, he expressed a confidence of ultimate recovery. Fever such as attends peritonitis, usually in such cases, never became manifest, and the physicians account for his death as the result of secondary hemorrhage. The remains were interred at the Church of the Immaculate Conception on last Wednesday evening. ************************************************* Note by transcriber; Joseph Aguillard Jr. was the son of Joseph Aguillard and Eliska Major. He was born in 1873. He was married to Georgina Dabadie in 1896. Georgina was the daughter of Ovide Dabadie and Augustine Gauthier and was born in 1875.