MEAUX : Vermilion Parish Towns & Cities, Louisiana
Submitted by Kathy LaCombe-Tell
Source: Jim Bradshaw; Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, 6/24/1997
Submitted August 2004

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MEAUX 

Once there was no Meaux. The unincorporated community northwest of 
Abbeville was called Harrington's Island when it was first settled. 
Later it became known as Millington. It wasn't until 1919 that the 
place got its current name. 

According to family history, cattleman Joseph Harrington, sometime 
before 1847, began driving herds through the area, bringing them from 
Texas to market in New Orleans. He liked the place. and decided to put 
up a home there, transporting timber from the Cow Island area to build 
his residence. His home was on high ground surrounded by ponds, and 
thus became known as Harrington's Island. 

In the late 1800s, the Vermilion Parish Police Jury appointed a group 
of landowners to build a public road in the arena. They lived along a 
path used by the public to travel from Harrington's Island to 
Abbeville, and each of them was to pay $10 for the cost of a surveyor 
who would map the road, placing its centerline along the boundaries to, 
their properties and taking ten feet on each side (for a 20-foot-wide road). 

In 1913, Millington M. Hartman, who owned a store in the area, was 
instrumental in having a post office established, and it was then that 
the name became Millington, in his honor. 

At that time there were four one room schools located nearby, and, in 
1919, the citizenry proposed that they be consolidated into one central 
school at Millington. On Feb. 24, 1910, Muriel Daisy Meaux and his 
wife, Odelia Broussard donated 1½ acres for the new school. This was 
when the community was named for them. 

The school eventually grew into a high school, which was consolidated 
in 1977 with Maurice High School into the North Vermilion High School, 
located in the community of Leroy.