The Oldest Church in Louisiana

While the building may only be a century old, the congregation for St. Anne's Catholic Church built the original parish at the beginning of the 18th century. The parishoners were Spanish colonists from the Canary Islands, Mexcians, and members of the Adais tribe.

According to the newspaper The New Orleans Item from January 18, 1920, St. Anne's Church between Allen and Robeline along LA 485 in Natchitoches Parish is the church with the oldest congregation in the state of Louisiana.

Here's the article:

Robeline Lays Claim to Louisiana's First Church: Colony of Canary Islanders Established there in 1694 and soon afterwards joined by the famous Father Margil.

The old St. Louis Cathedral [New Orleans], and the Church of the parish of St. Louis preceding its erection, are so entwined with the early settlement of Louisiana that it is hard for the average person to realize that the first church in Louisiana probably was built near what is now the town of Robeline, Louisiana, and not down on our Place D'Armes.

In those days of Spanish supremacy in Mexico and Texas, part of what is now Louisiana was in dispute between France and Spain. Colonies were sent out by both countries to make the "possession is nine points of the law" claim. Spain established a colony of Canary Islanders near Robeline or at Adais, as it was then known, from the tribe of Indians living in that part of the state. One authority places the establishment of this colony in 1694. It is well-known that great suffering was caused by famine in the Canary Islands and that Spain elected to relieve the conditions by moving the inhabitants elsewhere. A church was always one of the first structure erected in any new colony in those days.

From time to time new recruits were sent out the colony from Mexico. Finally, a priest, the famous Father Margil, in process of canonization, joined the colony in 1715 during one of his missionary trips. He is supposed to have been with the Spanish colonists, when in 1717 St. Denis, the French commander of the neighboring French colony of Natchitoches, descended upon the Spaniards and drove them away. The church of "Our Lady of Adais" as it was called was burned and the valuable church vessels and vestments stolen. The town was burned also.

The descendants of these settlers now live on Spanish Lake in Sabine parish [this is Spanish Lake in Natchitoches parish at Allen]. Of folk lore or tradition of the early days no trace can be found. They speak what they please to call Spanish. In reality it is a strange mixture of many tongues with a strong predominance of both American and Mexican Indian words. Records have been lost or burned. Even the record of the old Cathedral at Natchitoches do not back beyond 1721. The people of Spanish Lake are a "lost colony" indeed.

One old woman tells some tale of a settlement between Adais and Spanish Lake. But she is old and her language hard to understand.

The Mexicans who joined the Adais colony are supposed to be part of a large party sent out from Mexico which established colonies in Nacogdoches, Texas, and at Los Harmigas on the Louisiana side of the Sabine bottom lands where 400 or 500 families of their descendants live today. In the two hundred years since that time the Spanish element has almost disappeared in the Mexican until the descendants of the "lost colony" today are more Mexican than Spanish in appearance. The language has been last to die.

Something over two years ago a mission church was built for the "lost colony" through funds donated by the Catholic Church Extension Society. The modern successor of Father Margil's church of "Our Lady of Adais" is called St. Ann [sic].

An 1814 map of Adayes, near Natchitoches, depicts Spanish Lake, which was drained after the removal of the Great Raft and no longer exists. The colonists, under Father Margil's watchful eye, built a church just north of Adayes in the early 1700s (LOC).