Founding Of Marksville

Spanish and French records give the founder's name in several forms, among them Marc Eliche and Marco Litche; Wikipedia's article on the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe uses the second and dates his trading post to 1794, as the Tunica were settling nearby. Wikipedia's Marksville article calls him a Sephardic Jewish trader believed to be from Venice; the marker calls him an Italian peddler. He gave the land for Courthouse Square. The settlement had grown into a town by 1809, when it appears on Louisiana maps, six years after the Louisiana Purchase.

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

• Solomon Northup, "Twelve Years a Slave" — steps away
• The First Bowie Knife — steps away
• Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin — steps away
• Fort De Russy — steps away