St. Joseph Catholic Church

The best account of how St. Joseph began is a diary. Father Julius Janeau, the founding pastor, wrote it in French, and it describes how the parish was organized before the Civil War and how the first church was built in 1869. The congregation has since had three churches: that first one, a second in 1885, and a third finished in 1925. The Daughters of the Cross started the parish school convent. For the 150th anniversary in 2019, a small book transcribed Janeau's diary and followed the three buildings.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 0.3 mi
  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 — 0.9 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

• Fort De Russy — 0.2 mi
• Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin — 0.2 mi
• The First Bowie Knife — 0.2 mi
• Solomon Northup, "Twelve Years a Slave" — 0.3 mi