Editing Marksville, Louisiana (section)

==History==
[[File:Marksville District.jpg|thumb|[[Marksville Commercial Historic District]]]]
The land where Marksville was founded on was once a meeting place, leading to the present day [[Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Indian Mounds of Northeast Louisiana - A Driving Trail |url=https://www.crt.state.la.us/dataprojects/archaeology/moundsguide/Marksville.html |website=www.crt.state.la.us |access-date=19 August 2022}}</ref>

Marksville is named after Marc Eliche (Marco Litche or Marco de Élitxe, as recorded by the Spanish), a [[Sephardic Jews|Sephardic Jewish]] trader believed to be from [[Venice]], who established a [[trading post]] after his wagon broke down in this area.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.citytowninfo.com/places/louisiana/marksville |title=Marksville, Louisiana - City Information, Fast Facts, Schools, Colleges, and More |publisher=Citytowninfo.com |access-date=2015-11-10}}</ref><ref name="Leeper2012">{{cite book|last=D’Artois Leeper|first=Clare|title=Louisiana Place Names: Popular, Unusual, and Forgotten Stories of Towns, Cities, Plantations, Bayous, and Even Some Cemeteries|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HgL-Yi7GIEQC|access-date=8 November 2018|date=19 October 2012|publisher=LSU Press|location=Baton Rouge, Louisiana|isbn=978-0-8071-4738-2|pages=159–160}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jewsinamerica.com/settlers/Frame-4-mapnamespage4.html?refresh=1238789171854 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120322030110/http://www.jewsinamerica.com/settlers/Frame-4-mapnamespage4.html?refresh=1238789171854 |url-status=usurped |archive-date=March 22, 2012 |title=Jews in America |publisher=Jews in America |access-date=2015-11-10}}</ref> 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''<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://marksvillechamber.org/about/|title=About Marksville|website=Marksville Chamber of Commerce|access-date=2016-06-23}}</ref> after his trading post was established about 1794. Marksville was noted on Louisiana maps as early as 1809, after the United States acquired the territory in the [[Louisiana Purchase]] of 1803.<ref name=":0" /> Eliche later donated the land that became the Courthouse Square in the center of Marksville.

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.

Marksville became the trading center of a rural area developed as cotton [[plantations in the American South|plantations]]. After the United States outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, enslavers purchased [[African-American]] [[Slavery in the United States|slaves]] through the domestic [[History of slavery|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 Negro|free black]] from [[Saratoga Springs, New York]], 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 (film)|12 Years A Slave]]'', of the same name.

===2015 shooting of Jeremy Mardis===
{{Main|Shooting of Jeremy Mardis}}
On March 31, 2017, Judge William Bennett of the 12th [[United States federal judicial district|Judicial District]] Court sentenced Stafford to forty years' imprisonment for the [[manslaughter]] of Jeremy Mardis. He was given a concurrent fifteen years for the attempted manslaughter of Christopher Few. Judge Bennett denied Stafford's defense request for a new trial. Stafford told the court that he did not know Jeremy was strapped in the front seat of the father's vehicle when he fired the fatal shots.<ref name=mgregory>{{cite news|url=http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/2017/03/31/stafford-gets-40-years-boys-fatal-shooting/99867726/|author=Melissa Gregory|title=Stafford gets 40 years in boy's fatal shooting|newspaper=The Monroe News-Star|access-date=April 1, 2017}}</ref> Meanwhile, Greenhouse will be tried beginning June 12 on second-degree and attempted second-degree murder counts.<ref name=mgregory/>