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THE EVANGELINE OAK
St. Martinsville, Louisiana
"On the banks of the Têche, are the towns of St. Maur and
St. Martin. There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bridegroom . . . Beautiful is the land,
with its prairies and forests of fruit trees ....They who dwell
there have named it the Eden of Louisiana!"
"Evangeline" is an 1847 poem by American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It
is also is the name of the poem’s heroine, who has acquired mythical status in Cajun Louisiana. In the poem, an
Acadian maiden named Evangeline Bellefontaine is torn from her lover, Gabriel Lajeunesse, on their wedding day. With
a group of fellow exiles, she travels to Louisiana.
St. Martinville jurist and playwright Felix Voorhies wrote an English revision of
Longfellow’s work. In 1922 and 1929, major Hollywood film productions depicted the Evangeline story; the
second versions starred, Dolores Del Rio, who donated money toward the creation of an Evangeline statue in her own image.
Finished in 1930, the statue was placed beside the St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church in St. Martinville, on a spot marking
the alleged burial place of Emmeline Labiche, the "real" Evangeline. Today, tourists still flock to the Evangeline oak,
statue, and "tomb." For many, the Evangeline story serves as a source of ethnic pride.
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