Père Antoine Desiré Mégret, born in France on May 23, 1797, arrived in Louisiana in 1842 and was sent to Vermilionville, now Lafayette, as pastor of St. John's Parish. In 1843 he purchased from Joseph LeBlanc one hundred sixty arpents of land about three miles north of Perry's Bridge on the Vermilion River. St. Mary Magdalen Church was dedicated there in 1844, and land not reserved for the rectory, cemetery, and town squares was sold in lots as the community, formerly La Chapelle, became Abbeville that year. Having designed and developed the town around two central squares, he offered property and a building for the courthouse and was influential in Abbeville's establishment as the parish seat in 1845. In 1853 a yellow fever epidemic claimed seventy-three lives in the community, and the last was Père Mégret, who had been ministering to the victims. He is entombed under St. John's Cathedral in Lafayette, Louisiana.