L. O. Broussard, Vermilion Parish bios, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller
Source: A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 16-17, by Henry E.
Chambers.  Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago
and New York, 1925
Submitted September 2001

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 L. O. Broussard.  Not only in Louisiana but throughout the South, L. O.
Broussard of Abbeville has achieved general recognition as an able 
financier and business leader.  He is a former president of the 
Louisiana Bankers Association, and for over twenty years was secretary 
of that association.

Lastie Odilon Broussard was born at Abbeville, February 22, 1869.  His 
father Hon. Lastie Broussard was born in Vermilion Parish in 1838, and 
died at Abbeville in 1911.  During the war between the states, he held 
the office of parish assessor and for twenty-five years was clerk of 
courts of Vermilion Parish.  While clerk he read law, and for over 
thirty years carried on an extensive general law practice.  At the same 
time he looked after his varied interests as a land owner and planter, 
and served in the Louisiana State Senate from the Thirteenth District 
and in 1894 became one of the organizers of the Bank of Abbeville.  His 
character and activities were vitally associated with the progress and 
prosperity of Abbeville and vicinity.  He married Perpetua Mayard, who 
was born at Abbeville in 1857 and died in 1907.

L. O. Broussard, fifth in a family of fifteen children, was reared in a 
home of wealth and culture, was given a good education in private 
schools, and took his college course in St. Charles College at Grand 
Coteau, where he received the Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts 
degrees.  Mr. Broussard had a year or so of teaching experience in 
Vermilion Parish, was tax collector for four years and from 1892 to 
1894, superintendent of .public schools of the parish.

The institution to which he has given his large measure of business 
service, is the Bank of Abbeville.  When it was organized in 1894, he 
became cashier and since 1907 has been its president.  This bank was 
started with a capital of $15,000.  In 1924 its capital, surplus and 
profits totaled $350,000.  For thirty years the bank has represented 
the qualities O~ safety, stability, usefulness and progress.  Mr. 
Broussard has other extensive financial and agricultural interests.  He 
is president of the Abbeville Grocery Company, a wholesale house that 
has done much to establish Abbeville as a trade center for a large 
territory.  He is president of the Atchafalaya Teche-Vermilion Company, 
owning and operating irrigation canals and rice plantations.  He was of 
the organizers and was president until 1923 of the Suterlin Barry 
Company, dealers in stocks and bonds at New Orleans, and since 1923 has 
been treasurer of the company.  He helped organize the Security Sales 
Company at New Orleans.

Mr. Broussard was a member of the Louisiana Constitutional Conventions 
of 1915 and 1921, and during the World war was chairman of Vermilion 
Parish in the first, second, third and fourth Liberty Loan and district 
chairman of some of the drives.  He is a member of the Austin Club of 
New Orleans, the Louisiana and Pickwick Clubs of that city.  Mr. 
Broussard's first wife was Leonora Rainer, now deceased.  The three 
children of that marriage are:  Guy R., vice president of the Abbeville 
Grocery Company;  Leonora, wife of Thomas K. Martin of Hot Springs, 
Arkansas;  Blanche, wife of Thomas C. Nicolls, Jr., of New Orleans.  
Mr. Broussard married for his second wife Marjorie Bancroft of Port 
Huron, Michigan.  They have an adopted daughter, Marjorie Broussard.  
Mrs. Broussard takes an active part in literary and social clubs in 
Abbeville.