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St. Martin caught up in growth
Not too many years after d’Iberville settled what is now the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a French colonial officer married Maria Brusler of Dauphine Island, and built a home on a bayou near the north shore of Biloxi Bay.
Today, more than 250 years later, the bayou and surrounding community are known by the name of the first inhabitant, Col. Raymond St. Martin de Jorqui-boey.
The community has continued its identity al-though St. Martin’s marriage was blessed with four daughters and there were no sons to carry on the name.
After many years of quiet existence, St. Martin today finds itself caught up in fantastic growth which has been evidenced along the Coast since post-World War II days.
But there is a lot of local history in this small area along the Harri-son-Jackson County line, according to Dale Greenwell, local historian who has helped recall some of St. Martin's past.
John Baptiste Ladner was the person who was apparently most responsible for the continued existence of the St. Martin community, although he moved there about 100 years after the area was first settled.
Ladner, his wife and a young Indian named Lapouche fled Horn Island during a night in 1814, after they spotted a large British Fleet which came to the Mississippi Coast enroute to an ill fated attempt to capture the city of New Orleans.
The three rowed from Horn Island to Deer Island in a leaking boat and then to the mainland. Greenwell says it was necessary to ■ use some of the clothing of Ladner’s pregnant wife to stop the leaks in the boat.
Ladner did not return to his home on Horn Island. He built a log cabin on what is now Langley Point in St. Martin where he and his wife reared a family of five daughters.
The oldest girl, born shortly after the Ladners left Horn Island,
married Francis La-Fontaine when she was 13 years old, and remained in St. Martin.
Greenwell tells an interesting story about LaFontaine. A cabin boy on one of the ships of the pirate Jean Laf-itte, LaFontaine was put ashore in the Biloxi area when he was 13, at the same time the Ladners moved to Langley Point. He was 26 years oid when he married.
“He always wore a golden ring in his ear and a bandanna wrapped around his head instead of a hat," Greenwell says.
The other daughters were married to a Stanislaus Beaugez, a man named LaForce, one named Tiblier and the other was a Ryan.
"Each of these was given a strip of land that ran from the bay to the Big Ridge where they built their homes," Greenwell noted.
Beaugez and Tiblier were from New Orleans, and both owned businesses on Conti Street there. They met their wives through the women's father who at times went to New Or-1
Sun-Herald 7A/76