Lougue, Hon. Charles

Submitted by Mike Miller

Hon. Charles Louque, of New Orleans, was admitted to the bar, by the University of Louisiana, on the 2nd of April, 1866, and has since then been in continuous active practice. He began the study of law on November 20, 1865. He was born in the Parish of St. John the Baptist, on November 29, 1845. His father was Norbert Louque and his mother was Candide Delhommer, a member of a French family of Louisiana. Charles Louque, one of the seventeen children born to his father, grew up on his father's plantation to the age of twelve, was educated by private tutors and in private schools at New Orleans, spent one year in Spring Hill College of Alabama, and three years in old Jefferson College, Parish of St. James. He left college during the war between the states and was in active service during 1864-65. He has the distinction of being the only living graduate of Louisiana University of his class of 1863. One of his classmates was the late Chief Justice White of the United States Supreme Court, and they were together in the office of Edward Bermudez, late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, during a period of three years. Mr. Louque has always enjoyed a large and lucrative practice, and his name appears in every volume of the reports of the Supreme and other Courts in Louisiana, in connection with cases in which he was attorney on one side or the other. He has also appeared many times before the United States, Supreme Court. He compiled, digested and published in 1878 a digest of the decisions of the Louisiana Supreme Court. From 1884 to 1888 he was a member of the City Council of New Orleans, during Mayor Fitspatrick's administration, and was chairman of the public order committee. He was elected state senator during five consecutive terms. He was first elected to the State Senate in 1902. and at successive quadrennial elections was re-elected, finally retiring alter twenty years of consecutive service in 1922. The public service for which he will perhaps best be remembered was the initiative beginning in 1887 and his long continued efforts to obtain the drainage and reclamation of the lands in and around New Orleans, making such lands available not only for agriculture but also for residence purposes. Mr. Louque married, in 1871, Miss Edna Stewart. Six children were born to said marriage. Four girls are still living, one of whom graduated as a lawyer in Tulane University in 1896.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 13-14, by Henry E. Chambers. Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.