The Sculpture Site

Founded in 1794, Marksville is named after Marc Eliche, a traveling peddler from Italy who came to establish a trading post after his wagon broke down in this area. Marksville is named after Marc Eliche who established a trading post after his wagon broke down in this area.  Eliche later donated the land that became the Courthouse Square. The City of Marksville was incorporated on March 31, 1807 and is the parish seat.  Marksville’s population has numerous families of Cajun ancestry and 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. The case of Solomon Northup is one of renowned popularity and of historical earnest connected to various people and places in Avoyelles and Rapides parishes.

On January 4, 1853, Solomon Northup was found to be a free citizen of New York by Judge Ralph Cushman, and was freed from his slave owner Edwin Epps and transferred into the custody of Henry B. Northup Esq., whom was appointed Agent of the State of New York to locate and rescue Solomon and return him to his family.