Samuel W. Martien

Samuel Winter Martien (November 12, 1854 – May 31, 1946) was a wealthy cotton planter

At the time, each Louisiana parish regardless of population had at least one representative. That advantage was lost completely to rural parishes in 1972, when both legislative chambers came into full compliance with the United States Supreme Court decision Reynolds v. Sims, which requires that each state legislative district be nearly equal in population. In recent census reports, Tensas Parish, which is majority African American, has been the smallest parish in the state in population, and the numbers continue to decline.

Robert H. Snyder of St. Joseph, who had been the lieutenant governor from 1896 to 1900, died in 1906 while serving as House Speaker. Martien (pronounced MAR TEEN) first won a special election to choose a successor to Snyder and then secured full terms in 1908, 1912, and 1916.

Grandson Norman Hopkins Martien, Jr. (1926-2012), a Waterproof native, was a graduate in chemical engineering of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston and an engineering project manager for Kaiser Aluminum in Gramercy, Louisiana. At the time of his death, he had been residing for many years in Denham Springs near Baton Rouge. The junior Martien's mother was the former Mabel Rowan, a native of Newellton in northern Tensas Parish.

In 1946, the year that his grandfather died, the junior Martien married Rosemary Louise Chennault (1928-2013), the youngest daughter of Lieutenant General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers by Chennault's first marriage to the former Nell Thompson of Waterproof. She was born in San Antonio, Texas, where Chennault was then stationed. Norman and Rosemary, who was reared in Waterproof, had three children, Nell Calloway (named for her grandmother), James Martien, and Norman Martien, III. Rosemary was a secretary and office manager at Prudential Insurance in Monroe for nearly thirty years. Rosemary later married the late Jim Simrall; Norman, Jr., subsequently wed Helen S. Martien and acquired a stepson.

Among other extended Martien descendants is Winter H. Martien, a great-grandson who resides in Natchez, Mississippi. Another great-grandson, Samuel Winter Martien (born c. 1946), resides in Pineville in Rapides Parish, Louisiana.

Death at 91 Martien, who was Episcopalian, died at the age of ninety-one, some twenty-six years after the passing of his wife. He spent his last years in Roanoke, Virginia, where he lived there with a daughter. Martien, his wife, and children are interred at Natchez City Cemetery in Natchez, Mississippi.