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, Louisiana. He was the younger brother of three-term U.S. Senator Joseph E. Ransdell.
Background
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 take refuge in 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 without him. Joseph helped his brother Francis through college. Francis moved to Lake Providence in 1882 to live with a sister and to study law (read the law) in the office of Judge Field Farrar Montgomery. He passed the bar and was ready to set up practice. but returned to Lake Providence in 1897. Ransdell and his family were members of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, now at 207 Scarborough Street in Lake Providence.
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 but polled few votes; the eventual winner of the race was John McKeithen.
A Ransdell great-grandson, David Ransdell Voelker, was an entrepreneur and philanthropist in New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Governor Kathleen Babineaux 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.

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