About

Origin of Marksville

Marksville is named after Marc Eliche (Marco Litche or Marco de Élitxe, as recorded by the Spanish), a Venetian Jew who established a trading post after his wagon broke down in this area. He was a Sephardic Jewish trader believed to be from Venice.

His Italian name was recorded by a Spanish priest as Marco Litche; French priests, who were with colonists, recorded his name as Marc Eliche or Mark Eliché after his trading post was established about 1794.

Origin of Marksville

>Marksville is named after Marc Eliche (Marco Litche or Marco de Élitxe, as recorded by the Spanish), a Venetian Jew who established a trading post after his wagon broke down in this area. He was a Sephardic Jewish trader believed to be from Venice.

His Italian name was recorded by a Spanish priest as Marco Litche; French priests, who were with colonists, recorded his name as Marc Eliche or Mark Eliché after his trading post was established about 1794.

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The Trading Center

Marksville became the trading center of a rural area developed as cotton plantations. After the United States outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, enslavers purchased African-American slaves through the domestic slave trade; a total of more than one million were transported to the Deep South from the Upper South in the first half of the 19th century.

Enslavers typically bought slaves from markets in New Orleans where they had been taken via the Mississippi River or by the coastal slave trade at sea. Solomon Northup, a free black slave from Saratoga Springs, NY, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. After being held for nearly 12 years on plantations in Avoyelles Parish, he was freed in 1853 with the help of Marksville and New York officials. Northup’s memoir, which he published after returning to New York, was the basis of the 2013 movie 12 Years A Slave, of the same name.

Notes on Maps

Marksville was noted on Louisiana maps as early as 1809, after the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Eliche later donated the land that became the Courthouse Square. It is still the center of Marksville, the parish seat.

Marksville’s population has numerous families of Cajun ancestry, in addition to African Americans, European Americans, and persons of mixed European-African ancestry. Many of the families had ancestors here since the city was incorporated.

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Notes on Maps

Marksville was noted on Louisiana maps as early as 1809, after the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Eliche later donated the land that became the Courthouse Square. It is still the center of Marksville, the parish seat.

Marksville’s population has numerous families of Cajun ancestry, in addition to African Americans, European Americans, and persons of mixed European-African ancestry. Many of the families had ancestors here since the city was incorporated.