Joseph Eloi Broussard

Joseph Eloi Broussard (1866-1956) was a pioneer rice grower and miller in southeast Texas. He was born and grew up near Beaumont, Texas. In 1892 he converted a grist mill into the Beaumont Rice Mill, the first commercially successful rice mill in the state of Texas. He also established an irrigation company (later absorbed by the Lower Neches Valley Authority) to create an irrigation system to support rice agriculture.

As a result of his work, the cultivation of rice expanded from 1500 acres locally in 1892 to 400,000 acres in 23 Texas counties by the time of Broussard's death. His leadership and landholdings resulted in rice being cultivated in peak years on some 10,000 acres in the local area.

As the mill processed rice, it helped rice become an important commodity crop of the early residents of Beaumont. Broussard also raised cattle on his property, and harvesting lumber was important in the region.

Joseph Eloi Broussard was born on December 16, 1866 to Eloi and Mary Azema (Hébert) Broussard in Beaumont, Texas, a farming and lumber area. His maternal grandfather was of French Creole descent and had migrated to Texas from Louisiana. His father's family was also of French ancestry, and he was raised as Roman Catholic.

After his father died when Joseph was young, his mother remarried to Lovan Hamshire. They lived on his ranch near present-day Hamshire, Texas. Young Joseph studied for three years at an academy in Galveston, then began working with cattle and as a postal rider in Jefferson County, Texas.

In 1885 Broussard was named at the age of 19 as the first postmaster of a local post office. He named it La Belle for his fiancée, Mary Belle Bordages. Broussard and Mary Belle Bordages married in 1889 and had nine children together.

Her father Phillip Bordages (c. 1840-1891) was born in France and immigrated to New Orleans at the age of 18. He settled in Jefferson County, Texas, where he became a farmer and merchant. He married Ellen Elliott (1846-1889) and they had six children together. The Bordages parents are buried in the Broussard Cemetery southwest of Beaumont.

A few years later Broussard bought a one-third interest in a gristmill in Beaumont. In 1891 he founded the Beaumont Irrigation Company with a rice irrigation and canal system, the first in the state, to support rice culture in the area. In 1892 he converted his mill to a rice mill, the first commercially successful one in the state of Texas. At that time, farmers in the county had 1500 acres in rice. Broussard was instrumental in establishing the rice industry and this product as a commodity crop in Texas.

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