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Dr. Chris Cenac Sr. comes from a large family. His great-grandfather, Jean-Pierre Cenac, had 14 children and, upon his death, 75 living grandchildren. As of 1970, the most recent count, Cenac was one of about 390 great-grandchildren.
“You think I have a lot of cousins?” he remarked.
That ancestry led to a new passion for the semi-retired orthopedic surgeon – writing. Cenac said he has always been interested in history, particularly that of his home and heritage. After his father died before achieving his goal of writing an account of their family, Cenac took over the task so he could pass the history on to his grandchildren.
“My father always was proud of the fact that he was of French heritage,” he said. “We’re not Acadian; we’re not Cajun. We’re of pure French lineage. He was proud of the fact that he was bilingual and that we lived in a unique part of the United States.”
Cenac’s first book, “Eyes of an Eagle,” released in 2011, is about the life of Jean-Pierre, who emigrated from France to Louisiana in 1860. Settlers in Terrebonne Parish were required to register the brands and marks of their livestock, so Cenac decided to include Jean-Pierre’s registration in “Eyes of an Eagle.”
He found a note in 2005 from his late father stating that Jean-Pierre had registered a livestock brand at the Terrebonne Parish Courthouse. However, when the clerk of court said he had never seen any brand books, Cenac abandoned his search. Two years later, the clerk called to say three brand books had been found in a storage facility that was being cleaned.
The books included entries for Jean-Pierre and his wife’s grandfather, Edmond Fanguy. Seeing the connection between the brand books and his family inspired Cenac to have the records published as a historical account of various families in the region. His second book, “Livestock Brands and Marks: An Unexpected Bayou Country History,” was officially released Nov. 2 at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge.
The book follows livestock registration from Terrebonne Parish’s founding in 1822 to 1946, after the creation of the Louisiana Livestock Brand Commission. Cenac said “unexpected” refers to the people involved in registration being unaware that it would prove important to later generations.
“They were recording the chronological settling of the parish by the original pioneer families,” he explained. “They thought they were just doing their job, but as it turned out, we had 124 years of history.”
“Livestock Brands and Marks” contains a brief background of branding and livestock laws and the ways different kinds of livestock were branded. The majority is filled with photographs of every page in the branding books, with the settler’s name and brand next to each of the 1,140 entries. Cenac said the images were “cleaned up”; the ink had bled through each page, some handwriting was illegible, and the books included a mix of French and English.
“This is the first and only time that there is an indexed, easily readable and accessible resource which documents the chronological settling of a parish from the very first day,” Cenac said.
He said he developed an interest in and knowledge of livestock growing up around cattle and horses. Archivists, historians and his family in France contributed to his research for “Livestock Brands and Marks.”
“I love to write books and hear people say, ‘I read it, and I didn’t know that (information),’” he said.
“Eyes of an Eagle” is now the official history textbook for seventh graders in Terrebonne Parish, and “Livestock Brands and Marks” was recently nominated for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Book of the Year Award. Both titles are available as e-books, at Barnes and Noble and from Amazon.com.
Cenac signs copies of “Livestock Brands and Marks” from 2-4 p.m., Dec. 1 at the Terrebonne Parish Library Main Branch. WWL-TV anchors Eric Paulsen and Sally-Ann Roberts also attend the signing to promote their October release, “Your Power Is On: A Little Book of Hope.”
Cenac is working on two more books: a pictorial of the early Houma region and a history of medicine in south Louisiana, particularly Terrebonne Parish. He plans for his series to total six books.
“It’s like a wildfire – 600,000 acres burning, and it started with one little match. As I started, it kept growing,” he said. “One book led to the second book, and both led to the third book.”
He described Jean-Pierre’s struggles, from escaping the high infant mortality rate of the time to surviving a two-month voyage to Louisiana and a Yellow Fever epidemic upon arriving. He also said his grandfather lost an arm at 14 after a hunting accident but went on to become the first college-educated Terrebonnian.
“You don’t often think back on how hard it was 100 years ago here, 50 years ago here,” Cenac said. “The boat could have sunk; (an ancestor) could have fallen off a horse; my grandpa could have died; my daddy could have gotten killed; and I wouldn’t be here. … We never think about what it took for us to be sitting here.”
Dr. Chris Cenac, a semi-retired orthropedic surgeon, has become a respected historian of Terrebonne Parish. He started by tracing his own ancestry.
