Francis Xavier Ransdell

Education

Francis Ransdell joined his brother in Lake Providence, where he too studied in the law office of Judge Montgomery.

Career

He was the younger brother of three-term United States. Senator Joseph East. Ransdell. 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.

The senior Ransdell was accidentally killed in 1865 in the sugar mill on his plantation, and the family faced much difficulty during Reconstruction.

The brothers soon established law offices, farms, and residences. Ransdell was first elected in 1899 as the state judge for the 9th Judicial District (now 6th District) encompassing Madison and East Carroll parishes.

Tensas Parish 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 Nashville, Tennessee.

They lived for four years in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but returned to Lake Providence in 1897.

Joseph Ransdell"s political career was cut short when he was defeated for senatorial renomination to a fourth term in the Democratic primary election in 1930 by then Governor Huey Pierce Long, Junior. 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. Ransdell died at the age of seventy-seven in a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

He is interred at Lake Providence Cemetery along with other family members.

Achievements

• The junior Voelker ran for governor in 1963 but polled few votes. The eventual winner of the race was John McKeithen.

Membership

Another son-in-law, John Martin Hamley, 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.