About Us

What Exactly is a Sale Barn?

The Richard Cattle Auction Barn (1946) is a large one story frame building located on the Vermilion River on the outskirts of Abbeville. It began as a idea in the mind of Jean Avery Richard.

Mr Avery, as he was called, began his business with a slaughterhouse nested along the banks of the Vermilion River, the normal mode of transporting cattle in the 1940's. 

In just a few years, Mr Avery began bringing people together under a still standing hackberry tree....to sell and buy cattle.  These cows that would eventually get slaughtered in his place just 10 feet away and a new business was born. 

The original Sale Barn was called "Avery's Place" and was enlarged as business grew.  With the end of World War II and his sons John and Roland returning, "Avery's Place" grew into the structure of today and christened "Abbeville Commission Company". 
Although there have been some changes, the auction barn still looks very much as it did when origianally built and later enlarged.

The broad low-slung auction barn has a distinctive profile with a low-pitch gable end and livestock pens taking up the majority of the sale barn.

A large auction arena spans much of the front of the building and is now the setting for Le Bayou Legendaire performances.
On the west side of the barn, behind the office, are two cattle chutes -- one for incoming and one for outgoing. Cattle entered the barn one at a time via the chute; then they passed single file down a corridor marked off by wood. While in line they were tagged and taken to holding pens for prospective buyers to view from an elevated walkway. When it was time for the weekly auction to begin, the animals entered the auction arena one at a time via a swing door. The round-shaped area where the cattle stood is surrounded by a steel railing on a concrete base on which the now concert stage was constructed. Behind it is still the platform for the auctioneer and other personnel.

Rising above the dirt-floored area for the cattle, in a semicircular, amphitheater fashion, is wooden seating for buyers and is now used to seat concert attendees

After a given animal was sold, it was led to the weighing room beneath the auctioneer's stage.

A typical weekly sale in the candidate auction barn involved 200 or so head. Cattle arrived via barge along the Vermilion River and truck with sellers ranged from full-time cattlemen to Cajun families with a head or two.

Buyers were from southern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. Richard's auction barn was a very important auction facility and remained the only auction barn in the parish until the early 1950s.The only other nearby auction barns when it was constructed were in Lafayette and Opelousas, some twenty-five to forty miles away respectively.
Had there been no Richard Sale Barn, sellers in the area would have had to transport their cattle long distances especially for those times.

Richard's provided an important commodity -- someone to bring buyers and sellers together in one convenient place. And because it was an auction rather than a one-on-one sale, the chances of a higher price were much better. On the buyer's side, there was the opportunity to look over more cattle.

One of the reasons people particularly liked to do business at Richard's was the fact that a seller did not have to wait on his check; it was given to him at the end of the auction.
The auctioning was quite an attraction in and of itself, and interviewees joked that there were perhaps more people in attendance than cattle on some occasions.
The auctioneer would sometimes go back and forth from French to English depending on his audience.
Tuesday afternoon auctions at the Richard barn were recalled fondly as being a "way of life" for people in the cattle business.
Cattlemen and local folks particularly remember that it was more than just a Sale Barn -- that the auctions were a place to meet and talk with friends.

One former cattleman noted that there were two things one made sure they did
in a given week -- go to the Tuesday afternoon auction at Richard's and attend Mass.
Richard's Auction Barn remained a local institution into the 1970s when it closed.
People familiar with the area indicate that it is one of only two old auction barns remaining.
It is presently owned by John Avery Richard III, the builder's son and founders grandson, who still uses the back portion to train horses.