The progenitor of the Laffitte family in northwest Louisiana was born in Pouyroquelaure, Gascony, France on March 4, 1746 to Francois Jean Bouet and Marie de Laffitte. He immigrated to Louisiana in 1764 and eventually settled here in the Bayou Pierre community. Laffitte was a prominent figure in local affairs and a respected trader with the Yatasi and other Caddo Indian groups in northwest Louisiana and northeast Texas. He established a cattle ranch in the Dolet Hills region of present-day DeSoto Parish and was appointed a justice in the Bayou Pierre settlement by the Spanish. In 1770 he married Marie Magdeleine Grappe (1754-1781), of French and Chitimacha Indian descent. Although contemporaries, their eldest sons, Pierre and Jean Baptiste, were not related to the pirates Pierre and Jean Laffite of Barataria fame. In 1782 Laffitte married Eulalie Marie Anne de Soto (1762-1833), of French and Spanish descent and granddaughter of Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, founder of Natchitoches. Paul Bouet Laffitte's name disappears from local records after 1815, with the date and place of his death being unknown.
