St.-Eustache Church. Consecrated in 1637. I wanted to see this particular belle because of my family history: Louis Saucier of Quebec joined Iberville’s Gulf Coast Expedition in 1697 and was the first of my ancestors to make it to Louisiana. Louis settled in Mobile (capital of Louisiana at the time) in 1702.

Louis immigrated from Paris – the St.-Eustache parish, to be exact. His father, Charles Saucier was an organist. Perhaps Charles even played the organ in St.-Eustache Church!

I could not wait to see this church, to walk down the ambulatory, to touch the stone walls perhaps in the very place that my ancestors did over three hundred years ago. Genealogy brings history here and now instead of leaving it in the past as a bunch of dusty old relics.