The Hypolite Bordelon House, home to one of the first families of Avoyelles Parish, was built between 1790 and 1820. It serves as a reminder of both a simpler and harder time and is an important link to the history of this parish and its people.

Hypolite's House: A glimpse at pioneer life

Discover Avoyelles

{Editor’s Note: “Discover Avoyelles” is a series of articles about attractions in Avoyelles that could be a short activity for families this summer.}

By Raymond L. Daye
    How can such a little house be the birthplace of such a large “family?”
    Hypolite Bordelon House, sitting on Tunica Drive across from the Avoyelles School Board office, is where the Avoyelles Bordelons began.
    Suffice to say, the ancestors of Hypolite would not be able to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner at the 200-year-old home today.
    The home is a small museum and also the official HQ of the Marksville Chamber of Commerce’s tourism efforts. The small museum gives visitors a glimpse into a bygone world -- before the Civil War, before WWI and WWII.
     The home was originally located about five miles north of Marksville in the Blue Town area on La. Hwy 1192. It was occupied until about 1941, when Pierre Bordelon died. 
    The museum has always been under the direction of Clyde Neck of Marksville, a descendant of Hypolite Bordelon. Neck spearheaded the effort to move the house and preserve it as a museum.
    The Creole-style house was donated as a museum in 1978, moved to Marksville in 1979 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
    “It is amazing that it was preserved as well as it has been,” tour guide Vicki Douglas said.
    The house survived the ravages of time, hurricanes, floods and the Union Army’s retreat during the Red River Campaign of 1864.
The structure is “mostly built with pegs, not nails,” Douglas noted. “It is fitted together like a puzzle. It is still on its original cypress blocks.”
    Hypolite Bordelon was the great-grandson of Laurent Bordelon -- the first Bordelon in Louisiana. He lived in New Orleans around 1730 and “is believed to be the progenitor of all Bordelons in the state,” Douglas said.
 
Moves to Avoyelles
    The family moved to Pointe Coupee Parish for a generation before Valerie Bordelon moved to Avoyelles Parish, around 1790. His was the first family of Bordelons in the parish.
    Douglas said the Hypolite Bordelon Home might better be named the Valerie Bordelon Home.
    “Later research has indicated that Valerie may have built the home, possibly as early as 1790, instead of Hypolite building it in 1820,” she said.
    She said the roof line “is not indicative of the style of home that was common in Avoyelles at that time. However, it is the type of construction that was present in Pointe Coupee -- and the family moved here from Pointe Coupee.”
    The board house was made of virgin pine and cypress and the walls incorporate bousillage -- mud and moss -- to provide insulation.
Most of the furnishings are from the 1840-1880 era. There is an original blanket cabinet. A door, shutters and ceiling beams are also original construction.
     Five pieces -- a dining table, two chairs, a mortar & pestle and an open-side child’s crib -- were featured in the book “Furnishing Louisiana -- Creole & Acadian Furniture, 1735-1835.” 
    There is a $2 charge for adults and $1 for children. It should take less than an hour to see everything there is to see, but the family may want to stay a while longer to enjoy the quite and imagine what it might have been like to be a pioneer family on the Avoyelles Prairie 200 years ago.
     The site includes an authentic two-seater outhouse built in 1845 by another Bordelon, Louis. Visitors enjoy visiting the outhouse -- for photographs and to see how things were in a bygone era. For other reasons, there is a more modern room that has been  added to the home.
 
‘Dollhouse’ Chapel
     Although it has no historical connection to the home or the Bordelon family, the “dollhouse” chapel is a favorite attraction of visitors to the site. 
     The chapel was originally built and placed in St. Joseph Cemetery in Marksville in 1880, to serve as a place of prayer and reflection for those visiting the cemetery and to honor the deceased wife of the builder, Jean Baptiste Pierrot. 
     In 1937, Kruger Chaze, a descendant of Pierrot, asked groundskeeper Maurice Borrel if he would like to take the chapel. Borrel had cared for the chapel in the cemetery for years.
     Borrel, with help from friends and family, wheeled the chapel to his house on Lee Street, where it became a playhouse for his daughters and future generations.
     In 1988, Paul and Gertrude Borrel donated it to be part of the Hypolite Bordelon Home,  where it can once again be a place of prayer and reflection for visitors and bear witness to the happy laughter of young children.