french camp Founders Day

For 45 years, French Camp has been celebrating its founding fathers with a festive celebration.

- SANDRA MASSEY BUCKLEY

When Louis LeFleur arrived in 1810 and established a trading post along the new Natchez Trace, the area was still very much a wilderness. Christian missionaries and educators soon arrived, and in a short amount of time, the town of French Camp and the French Camp Academy were born.

In honor of the town’s 210th anniversary, the 45th annual Founders Day event was originally scheduled for Saturday, May 9 but has been postponed until May 8, 2021. “The day will be filled with ceremonies, speeches, celebrations, and general pomp and circumstance,” says Jill Cooksey, event chair and living history event coordinator.

A professional re-enactment produced by Cooksey is on tap when the event does take place, spotlighting a pivotal moment in French Camp’s history. The Gulf Coast Artillery, representing the early 19th-century British Artillery, will “invade” the town, where Andrew Jackson and his American Militia will meet them.

According to Cooksey, “Louis LeFleur was one of the first to settle in the Choctaw Nation with his family around 1810 after the Treaty of Fort Adams opened the Trace to travel in 1801,” she says. “LeFleur represented the frontier grit and tenacity it took to survive in the wilderness; those characteristics laid the foundation for making French Camp the stable, successful community it is. Le Fleur’s French-Canadian heritage, his marriage to two of Pushmataha's nieces, and his role as Governor W.C.C. Claiborne’s liaison to the Choctaw Nation was indicative of the rich and culturally diverse relationships on the frontier at that time, and what French Camp strives to achieve in our region today.”