♀Euphemie Dupuis

Euphemie Dupuis (born 12 September 1817) was a woman of West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, the wife of the carpenter Firmin Serrette and the mother of ten children, two of whom were buried within four days of each other in August 1850. She was the great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and his daughter Ida Serrette (1903–1990).

Early life

Euphemie was born on 12 September 1817 and baptized on 9 December 1817 at St. Gabriel, Iberville Parish, the daughter of Eloi Dupuis and Henriette Hebert. The baptism names all four of her grandparents: Jean Baptiste Dupuis and Elizabeth Benois on her father’s side, and Charles Hebert and Marguerite Godreau on her mother’s. Her godparents were Elie Hebert and Adeline Dupuis, one from each side of the family. Her parents had married on 21 April 1817 at St. Gabriel, about five months before her birth; the marriage register describes them both as parishioners of Baton Rouge, and both fathers signed it.

She was the eldest of her parents’ known children. The family lived in West Baton Rouge Parish among neighboring Dupuis, Hebert and Daigle households, and the census of 1830 lists a girl of about her age in her father’s household there, with four younger children. Six younger brothers and sisters are known: Urasia Maria, Rosalie, Eloi, Marguerite Henriette, Ferreole and Edouard. Her father had died before 7 June 1831. Her mother outlived him by many years: the census of 1880 lists her, widowed and about 81, in the household of Euphemie’s brother Ferreole.

Marriage and family

On 27 November 1839, at Baton Rouge, Euphemie married Firmin Serrette of West Baton Rouge, son of Antoine Serrette; the witnesses were J. B. Cabrear and Adolphe Dupuis. The couple had ten children, born between 1840 and 1859, several of whom were baptized at the church of St. John the Baptist at Brusly. The census of August 1850 finds the family in West Baton Rouge, Firmin working as a carpenter with real estate valued at $1,400. That same month their daughter Adelle was buried on 21 August 1850, and their infant son Sebastien Enos, aged six months, on 25 August.

In March 1862 their eldest son, Battezaer, enlisted in Company D of the 27th Louisiana Infantry^W, and her husband, Firmin, enlisted in the same company on the same day; Firmin rose to corporal and was among the garrison paroled after the surrender of Vicksburg in July 1863. The census of 1870 lists Euphemie keeping house in West Baton Rouge Parish, with Firmin and the younger children. In 1887, at Butte-a-la-Rose in St. Martin Parish, where her son Pierre had settled, her son Emile killed his elder brother Alfonse; a grand jury found no true bill against him.

Notes

No record of her death has been found, and it is not known whether she was living in 1887. The family later lived near Breaux Bridge, in St. Martin Parish.

The register of the 1839 marriage gives the bride as Euphemie Dupuy of West Baton Rouge but does not name her parents. A second Euphemie Dupuis, daughter of Charles Dupuis and Marie Blanchard, was baptized in 1820, two and a half years after this Euphemie. The 1850 census gives Euphemie Serrett’s age as 34, which fits the 1817 birth better than the 1820 one, and her father’s household was in West Baton Rouge, so she is taken to be the daughter of Eloi Dupuis and Henriette Hebert; no record names her parents as Firmin’s wife.

Of her brothers and sisters, Eloi married his first cousin Marie Edilia Hebert on 7 January 1851, and Henriette Marguerite married James McDermit at Brusly on 24 May 1847.

A godmother named Euphemie Dupuis appears in 1834 at the baptism of Joseph, a child enslaved by Firmin’s father, Antoine Serrette, five years before this Euphemie married into that family; she may be the same woman, but the record does not say so.