Estopinal, Albert, 1845-1919

Albert Estopinal Sr. (January 30, 1845 – April 28, 1919), was a sugar cane planter from St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat in both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature between 1876 and 1900 and in the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana's 1st congressional district from 1908 until his death eleven years later at the age of seventy-four.

Estopinal was born in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, and attended public and private schools in St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans. In 1862, at the age of seventeen, Estopinal left school to enlist as a soldier in the St. Bernard Guards of the 28th Louisiana Regiment of the Confederate Army. After the war, Estopinal for five years engaged in merchandising at New Orleans. By 1870, Estopinal acquired Kenilworth Plantation, built in 1759 and used originally as a military outpost in St. Bernard Parish. Estopinal's public service began after the Civil War, when he served two two-year terms from 1868 to 1872 as the St. Bernard Parish tax assessor. In 1872 and again in 1874, he was elected sheriff of St. Bernard Parish. From 1876 to 1880, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, elected to a single four-year term. From 1880 to 1900, he served in the Louisiana State Senate, having been elected to five four-year terms. From 1900 to 1904, Estopinal was the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana under Governor William Wright Heard, a native of Union Parish in north Louisiana who spent the bulk of his career in New Orleans.

Estopinal was elected to Congress upon the death of Adolph Meyer. In the spring of 1919, he died in office, just a few months into his sixth term. His tenure corresponded with the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. He served on the Naval Affairs Committee. In 1912, he was an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention, which met in Baltimore, Maryland, and nominated the successful Woodrow Wilson-Thomas Marshall ticket, a slate which easily prevailed in heavily Democratic Louisiana and nationwide as well.

Estopinal died at Kenilworth and is interred at St. Louis Cemetery III in New Orleans.