Lorenzo Casso left his motherland of Italy during the turbulent years when Garibaldi was waging civil war across the land and, soon after his arrival in the United States, found himself caught up in the American Civil War. He became Ascension Parish’s first Italian immigrant, settling in Donaldsonville, where he married a Louisiana Creole and founded the Casso family in Louisiana. His descendants now total almost five hundred.
Pestilence, flood, crop failure, civil strife, death, destruction and disappointment—the age-old elements in man’s struggle for existence—are all chronicled in this vivid and moving account of one family’s life on the Louisiana frontier.
Evans J. Casso writes about his Venetian grandfather with poignancy and admiration, while capturing the drama and pathos that characterized the family’s rich history. His maternal ancestry, which is thoroughly French, reaches back into Louisiana’s early history to such grandsires as Felix Babin, Theodule Richard, and Jean Baptiste Gaudin, a prominent sugar planter, landowner, and slave-holder in antebellum Ascension Parish.
About the Author
A scholar of the American Civil War and Napoleonic history, Evans Casso has lectured before civic groups, high schools, and universities. A frequent visitor to Europe, he has pursued the ghosts of Napoleon’s armies across the continent and researched much of the battlefield action on the actual sites. He is an honorary member of the Central Bonaparte Committee of Corsica and serves on an international commission to preserve the Bonapartes’ summer home (Milelli) on Corsica.
Casso is past president of the New Orleans Civil War Round Table and has served on its executive committee. From 1961-65 he served on the Civil War Centennial commission of Orleans Parish. He is a member of the Confederate Historical Society of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England, and is active in the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana.
The author was educated at Old St. Joseph’s Commercial Institute, the Catholic high schools of Donaldsonville, and Louisiana State University. He is the father of two daughters and two foster sons, and has three grandchildren. He and his wife, the former Madeleine Noto, reside in New Orleans.
LORENZO
The History of the Casso Family in Louisiana
By Evans J. Casso
REFERENCE / Genealogy
ISBN: 9781565545441 pb (F)