This Creole-style home celebrates its most famous resident, Kate Chopin, and its original inhabitant, Alexis Cloutier. Built by slave labor between 1805 and 1809, the structure exemplifies the early nineteenth-century homes of the area. Alexis Cloutier had built a plantation out of the canebrakes and had amassed a fortune without learning to read or write. He became part of the elite plantation society of Cane River in the early nineteenth century. However, he was not as successful in his marriages. After his first wife died in 1806, he later had a short-lived marriage to Marie Rachal. Tradition holds that Cloutier insisted that it was his wife’s duty to wash his feet; if she refused, he allegedly became physically abusive, prompting her to attain a separation (and eventual divorce) just three months after the marriage. He later hatched a plan to divide Natchitoches Parish and establish a new parish with his property, Cloutierville, as the parish seat. When this plan failed, an embittered Cloutier sold all of his land in Cloutierville and lived until his death in 1836 on a plantation downstream now known as Little Eva. Marie’s brother, Antoine, purchased the township from Cloutier around 1822. Deciding that Cloutierville would not develop into a thriving town, he turned most of the lots into farmland. The Rachals continued to own the property until Oscar Chopin bought the house in 1879 at a sheriff’s sale. Chopin was a cotton factor in New Orleans who decided to move his family to Cloutierville after his business had failed. His wife, Kate, was an assertive twenty-nine year old woman who had lived her entire life in St. Louis and New Orleans. She had already had five children, and she was pregnant with their sixth child. Kate Chopin refused to conform to local traditions for women. She smoked, wore the latest fashions, had “Yankee” mannerisms, and reportedly flirted with other women’s husbands. Oscar’s relatives complained that he gave her too much freedom. When Oscar died of “swamp fever” in 1882, Kate continued to live in Cloutierville, despite being an unwanted outsider. She ran the general store and allegedly had an affair with Albert Sampité, a married man. In 1884, she left Cloutierville and sold the property five years later. Over the next fifteen years, Kate Chopin launched a literary career that culminated with the publication of The Awakening in 1899. Unappreciated as a writer in her own time, Kate Chopin is now regarded as one of the most important American writers of the late nineteenth century. Chopin sold the house to Dr. Josephus Griffin, who established a partnership with his friend from medical school, Dr. Samuel Scruggs. While more research is needed to clarify ownership history in the early 1900s, it appears that Dr. Lloyd Wenk purchased the house in the 1940s. Dr. Wenk eventually left Cloutierville and moved to Shreveport, leaving the house behind as rental property. The house had fallen into a serious state of disrepair, when Mildred McCoy, a lifelong resident of Cloutierville and an admirer of Kate Chopin, convinced Dr. Wenk to donate the house as a museum. Paying only the closing costs, Ms. McCoy acquired the house in 1965, began the restoration process, and opened it as the Bayou Folk Museum. However, in the mid-1970s, Ms. McCoy became ill and deeded the property and a trust fund to Northwestern State University. After spending the trust fund, NSU did not have the resources to maintain the house. In 1979, Miriam Nesom, an NSU English professor, played a key role in convincing the Association for the Preservation for Historic Natchitoches to become the stewards of the property. Lucille Carnahan and Emma Masson kept the house open to the public during this period, but in 1986, the property insurance company demanded a live-in overseer of the property. Two separate couples lived at the site until 1990, when Amanda Chenault became the overseer and curator of the Bayou Folk Museum/Kate Chopin House. A major renovation of the house in 1999 resulted in the installation of central air and heat. Today, the restored house offers visitors the opportunity to learn the history Cloutierville and its most famous inhabitant, Kate Chopin.