Francois Rouquier Homesite

François Rouquier was born in 1759 at Puylaroque in southwestern France and was in Natchitoches by 1780, where a family-history compilation describes him as an Indian trader who came with the military post. It says he grew very wealthy and became a leading citizen. He married Marie Louise Prud'Homme here on 5 May 1782, they had at least three children, and he died in town on 13 January 1808. A house carrying both family names still stands on Jefferson Street.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — 1.6 mi
  The riverfront blocks of the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, founded in 1714 at a Natchitoches village, with a brick-paved Front Street, Cane River frontage and the largest bousillage construction in the South.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 1.7 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 8.3 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.

More markers nearby

• Old Normal Hill — 1.4 mi
• Northwestern State University — 1.5 mi
• Steel Magnolias — 1.6 mi
• Henri de Tonti — 1.8 mi