St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana Plantation House. Present-day St. John the Baptist Parish includes the third permanent settlement in what is now the state of Louisiana, after Natchitoches (1714) and New Orleans (1718). It was considered part of the German Coast http://www.gachgs.com/. The area was settled in the early 1720s by a group of German colonists. Many families established towns close to the Mississippi River in the areas now known as Lucy, Garyville, and Reserve. The area was under the French regime until 1763, when France ceded Louisiana to Spain after the Seven Years' War (the French and Indian War). At the beginning of the
France in the Middle Ages the north of France, the "langue d'oïl" like Picard, Walloon, and Francien, were influenced by the Germanic languages spoken by the Frankish invaders. From the time period of Clovis I on, the Franks extended their rule over northern Gaul. Over time, the French language developed from either the Oïl language found around Paris and Île-de-France (the Francien theory) or from a standard administrative language based on common characteristics found in all Oïl languages (the lingua franca theory). "Langue d'oc", the languages which use "oc" or "òc" for "yes", is the language group in the south of France and northern Spain.