Welcome to Franklin

Alexander Porter, who built Oaklawn about 1837, reached Louisiana by way of Ireland and Nashville. Born in County Donegal in 1785, he emigrated at sixteen, three years after his father, a Presbyterian minister, was executed in the 1798 United Irishmen rising. He practiced law in the Attakapas country, sat on the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1821 to 1833, and served in the U.S. Senate until ill health ended his term in 1837. By the 1840s he held about 320 enslaved people, and a 1999 journal article called him a planter and slave trader. He died in 1844.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grevemberg House Museum — 0.7 mi
  Franklin's 1851 Greek Revival townhouse, the official St. Mary Parish museum, saved from demolition by one vote and set in the Franklin Historic District on Bayou Teche.
• Chitimacha Museum — 6.8 mi
  The Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Charenton: the tribe's account of its territory, the French wars and enslavement, the land held in trust, and river cane baskets.
• Wedell-Williams Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum — 15 mi
  A Louisiana State Museum in Patterson on the world's largest cypress sawmill town and the Wedell-Williams racing planes, with a theater and changing exhibits.
• Cypremort Point State Park — 22 mi
  A 185-acre Vermilion Bay park reached by road, with a half-mile man-made beach, a marsh boardwalk, shore fishing and a boat launch, and a Chitimacha tradition of a great cypress here.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Irish Bend — steps away
• The Gunboat Diana — steps away
• Jared Young Sanders — steps away
• Franklin — steps away