Paul Boüet Laffitte

The surname is something of an accident. Born Paul Bouet in Gers in 1746, the son of Jean Francois Bouet and Marie de Laffitte, he sailed from Bordeaux in September 1764 at about eighteen. One family history suggests a Spanish official recorded him under his mother's name, and his descendants kept it. He settled at Bayou Pierre, now Carmel, and traded with Native people. Two marriages, the first to a local trader's daughter and the second to Eulalie, daughter of Manuel de Soto, gave him fourteen children, and the Laffittes of northwest Louisiana descend from them.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mansfield State Historic Site — 6.4 mi
  A 1957 museum and three-quarter-mile trail on the ground where Confederate troops broke a Union line on April 8, 1864, in a park begun by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
• Lake Bistineau State Park — 27 mi
  A 903-acre state park on a lake the Great Raft made, opened in 1946 with a separate section for Black visitors from 1956, and now known for cypress water and a lake that is drawn down.

More markers nearby

• Church of the Holy Apostles — steps away
• Rock Chapel — 0.4 mi
• Battle of Mansfield or Sabine Cross Roads (Rail Fence Used as Barricade) — 6.3 mi
• Louisiana Monument (Battle of Mansfield) — 6.4 mi