♀Beatrice Carr

Beatrice Carr (19 January 1896 – 15 March 1979) was a Louisiana wife and mother who raised a large family through moves from Lake Charles to Beaumont, Texas, and finally to Baton Rouge, where she lived for more than forty years. She was the wife of John Baptist Serrette (1889–1965), an elder brother of Ida Serrette (1903–1990), the mother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014).

Early life and marriage

Beatrice was born in Louisiana on 19 January 1896. Her parents are not known. Her maiden name, Carr, comes from her grave marker, which names her Beatrice Carr Serrett, and from the 2006 obituary of her daughter Lillian, which names Lillian’s parents as John B. and Beatrice Carr Serrett. She married John Baptist Serrette, some seven years her senior; no record of the marriage has been found, but their eldest son, Raymond Serret (1913–1990), was born in 1913, when she was about seventeen.

Family

By January 1920 the family was living in Ward 1 of Lake Charles, in Calcasieu Parish, where the census of that year lists Beatrice, aged 24, as a housekeeper and the wife of John, a carpenter, with four children, among them Raymond and a second son, Cleveland Serret (1916–1996). A daughter, Lillian Serret (1920–2006), was born on 8 February 1920, a few weeks after the census taker called, and so does not appear in the household. Lillian’s obituary, which names brothers and sisters who outlived her as well as those who died before her, shows that the couple had at least nine children in all.

A census index finds the family in 1930, as Serrett, at Beaumont, in Jefferson County, Texas. By 1935, the same index has them back in Louisiana at Baton Rouge, and in 1940 it places them in Police Jury Ward 3 of East Baton Rouge Parish.

Later life and death

John died on 30 July 1965. Beatrice survived him by nearly fourteen years and died on 15 March 1979, aged 83. She was buried in the Garden of Faith section of Greenoaks Memorial Park, Baton Rouge, the section where John also lies.

Notes

The records spell her married name Serrette, Serrett and Serret. On her husband’s 1942 draft registration she is named only as his contact, “Mrs J.B. Serrette”; the initials there are his, and an earlier version of the family record wrongly carried them as part of her own name. The Social Security death index records Baton Rouge as her last residence; it does not state where she died.