Francis Xavier Ransdell

Francis Xavier Ransdell (May 23, 1861 – February 11, 1939) was a lawyer and judge of the 6th Judicial District Court, based in Lake Providence in East Carroll Parish in the far northeastern corner of his native Louisiana. He was the younger brother of three-term U.S. Senator Joseph Eugene Ransdell.

Background[edit]

Francis and Joseph Ransdell were born at Elmwood Plantation in Rapides Parish near Alexandria. During the American Civil War, a skirmish broke out between Union and Confederate troops in their yard. Their father sent his wife and children in a covered wagon westward to Texas until the war ended. The senior Ransdell was accidentally killed in 1865 in the sugar mill on his plantation, and the family faced much difficulty during Reconstruction. Joseph helped his brother Francis through college^[1] and relocated in 1882 to Lake Providence to live with a sister and to study law in the office of Judge Field Farrar Montgomery, as then permitted at a time before law school graduation was required prior to taking the bar examination.^[2]

Career[edit]

Francis Ransdell joined his brother in Lake Providence, where he too studied in the law office of Judge Montgomery. The brothers soon established law offices, farms, and residences.^[2]

Ransdell was first elected in 1899 as the state judge for the 9th Judicial District (now 6th District) encompassing East Carroll and Madison parishes. Tensas Parish, the smallest entity in Louisiana, was later added and remains a part of the 6th Judicial District. In 1892, Ransdell married the former Katie Blackburn Davis at her home on Belle Meade Plantation in the capital city of Nashville, Tennessee. They lived for four years in Chattanooga, Tennessee.^[3] but returned to Lake Providence in 1897. Judge Ransdell and his family were members of the St. Patrick's Catholic Church, located at 207 Scarborough Street in Lake Providence.^[2]

Joseph Ransdell's political career was cut short when he was defeated for senatorial re-nomination to a fourth term in the Democratic primary in 1930^[4] by then Governor Huey Pierce Long, Jr. But Francis Ransdell continued to serve on the bench for a total of thirty-six years, from June 1900, when he took office, until his retirement on December 31, 1936. He was succeeded on the court by his son-in-law, Frank Voelker, Sr., who was married to Ransdell's daughter, Isabel.^[2]

Ransdell died at the age of seventy-seven in a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He was survived by his wife and four of their six daughters. He is interred at Lake Providence Cemetery along with other family members.^[2]

Other family members[edit]

Another son-in-law, John Martin Hamley, Sr., was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1912 to 1924, clerk of the state House from 1924 to 1931, and was elected tax assessor of East Carroll Parish in 1933. He was married to the former Katie "Kate" Ransdell (1893–1980).^[2]

A Ransdell grandson, Frank Voelker, Jr., was city attorney in Lake Providence from 1950 to 1962 and chairman of the since defunct Louisiana Sovereignty Commission, a body established to promote states' rights in struggles with the national government during the second administration of Governor Jimmie Davis. The junior Voelker ran for governor in 1963^[5] but soon withdrew from gubernatorial consideration. The winner of the gubernatorial contest was John J. McKeithen.

A Ransdell great-grandson, David Ransdell Voelker, was an entrepreneur and philanthropist in New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco named him to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Blanco's successor and past opponent, Republican Bobby Jindal, elevated Voelker as the chairman of the authority. David Voelker died at the age of sixty from complications of lung transplant surgery.^[6]

References[edit]