La Providence

Jacques Villeré was born in 1761 into a family the Spanish takeover would break. His father, a captain in the German Coast militia, was caught up in the 1768 uprising and did not survive it; accounts differ on whether he was executed or died before sentencing. The boy went to France as a page at Louis XVI's court, was commissioned an artillery officer in St. Domingue at eighteen, and came home in 1782. He lost the 1812 governor's race, won in 1816 and served to 1820. The British began their New Orleans campaign from his plantation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 8.4 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• Destrehan Plantation — 8.6 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 9.0 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• Congo Square — 9.2 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.

More markers nearby

• First World Championship Heavyweight Prize Fight Monument — 1.7 mi
• Cannes Brûlées — 1.7 mi
• Wedell - Williams Airport Site — 2.5 mi
• LaFreniere Plantation — 2.6 mi