Abbeville

City, seat (1854) of Vermilion parish, southern Louisiana, U.S., on the Vermilion River, 20 miles (32 km) south-southwest of Lafayette. It was founded in 1843 by a Capuchin missionary, Père Antoine Desire Mégret, who patterned it on a French Provençal village. First called La Chapelle and settled by Acadians from Nova Scotia and Mediterranean immigrants, it was later named Abbeville (“Priest's