La Maison Broussard, dating to 1790, is the oldest building in Vermilionville and was the home of Armand Broussard, who came to Louisiana as a child from Acadian Canada. He was the son of Joseph "Beausoleil" Broussard, the Acadian resistance fighter who brought more than two hundred Acadian refugees from Canada to the Poste des Attakapas in 1765. At sixteen, Armand registered his first cattle brand and later became a prosperous rancher with his wife Anne Benoit and their fourteen children. He also served in the American Revolution and at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Like most large farming operations, the Broussard plantation used enslaved labor, and enslaved people in southwest Louisiana came from diverse backgrounds, including native-born Africans from many ethnic groups across western and central Africa, French-speaking Creole people of color, and English-speaking people of color from the eastern states. They worked in skilled trades such as construction, blacksmithing, cattle droving, laundering, cooking, carpentry, masonry, and plastering, as well as in field labor and domestic work, and their cooking helped carry African dishes and ingredients such as jambalaya, rice-based dishes, coush-coush, okra, and sweet potatoes into the region's food traditions.