To find information on the Soileau family in Louisiana see:
(#1) Archdiocese of New Orleans Sacramental Records (the first Noel Soileau)Catholic Church Records
(#2) Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records (Noel Sileau's descendants)
(#3) Southwest Louisiana Records by Rev. Donald J. Hebert (Diocese of Lafayette). (Noel Soileau's descendants)
Fr. Hebert was a genius. He recorded and published civil marriages and successions (estates & wills)from the area courthouses, without regard to race or creed. Fr. Hebert rarely mentions race, but it is sometimes mentioned in the civil records. Once you have identified a family, they are not hard to follow.
Volunteers from the Evangeline Genealogical & Historical Society, P. O. Box 664, Ville Platte, LA abstracted and recorded hundreds of pages of cemetery records originally published in "La Voix des Prairies" the quarterly newsletter of The Evangeline Gen. & Hist. Society. Copies of these cemetery records can be found in the Evangeline Parish Library in Ville Platte, LA. Ask the librarian for help in locating these records. (I feel sure similiar information can be found in St. Landry Parish, Opelousas, LA, but I have not done any research there.)
"The Fontenot Family 1600-1903: A Genealogical Study of the Descendants of Jean Louis dit Colin and Louise Angelique Henry" pub. 1999 by the Evangeline Gen. & Hist. Soc., contains a great deal of information on the Soileaus who intermarried with the Fontenots/Guillorys and others. This is a good resource for linking families. Other family books can also be found in the Ville Platte library.
The Social Security Death Index at Ancestry.com is an excellent resource. Even if our older ancestors did not pay into the SS Fund, if they were still alive in the early 1960s during the Johnson Administration, they were assigned a SS# so they could collect Medicare benefits. My father paid into the fund, and although my mother did not pay into the fund, both are listed on the SSDI: Adam Morein (1899-1997) Alcina (nee LeDoux) Morein (1909-2000). A married woman uses her husband's surname on her SS card. We received a $255 death benefit when my father died, but because my mother did not pay into the fund, we did not receive the death benefit.
Another good place for information is the funeral home that handled their final arrangements. The funeral home is required to report the death to the SS Adm. In our case, at our request, the funeral home provided us with copies of my parents' death certificate for $3 each. A bargain!
The churches in Louisiana charge very litte for certified copies. I paid $2 at one church for birth certificates, and $3 at another for marriage certificates. Another great bargain! St. Ann's Catholic Church Records, Mamou, LA, were burned in the fire of 1936. For this reason, I was not able to get a copy of my parents' marriage certificate (1924), but I do have the month and date of their marriage in my memory.
The Lake Charles fire of 1910 destroyed not only the Calcasieu Parish Court House records but also the Catholic Church's records. Those records are hard to find.
Census records contain a whole lot of information. In the 1860 St. Landry Parish census I learned that my second gret-grandfather, Pierre Felix Morin, came to this country from Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. I wrote to the archives in Guadeloupe and 11-months later, received my answer from France. I knew his father's name, Mathieu Morin but only his mothers given name, Aimee. I learned her full name, Aimee Julie Chaix, and the full names of her parents and Mathieu Morin's parents as well as Mathieu's birthplace, Castillion, France, where they had the 100 years war.
Good luck in your research. I am busy editing my very large database and no longer have time to do individual research as I did in the past, but occasionally, I read queries, and if I can supply answers, I do.
Avec mes meilleurs sentiments
(with my very best wishes)
Rosie Morein Wells
Birmingham, AL