Auguste Voinche Store

The building was a Confederate hospital before it was a cotton story. In early 1863 the hospital at Fort De Russy moved into Auguste Voinche's brick building across from the courthouse, with half the cellar closed off and the other half serving as the kitchen. A nurse and a coffin-maker later recalled the sick staying a few months. In 1864 Union sailors took cotton out of that cellar. Voinche protested that he was a French citizen, lost the cotton anyway, and his claim for payment produced over two thousand pages of testimony.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — steps away
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 1.1 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 21 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 26 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• Bailey Theater — steps away
• Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin — steps away
• Founding Of Marksville — steps away
• Solomon Northup, "Twelve Years a Slave" — steps away