♂Firmin Serrette

Firmin Serrette (born 25 September 1818) was a carpenter and later a farmer of West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, whose paternal grandfather, Jean Serrette, was recorded at his marriage as “of Bordeaux”. He was the great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and Pierre’s daughter Ida Serrette (1903–1990).

Early life

Firmin was born on 25 September 1818 in West Baton Rouge Parish, the son of Antoine Serrette and Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc, who had married at Baton Rouge in 1814. He was baptized on 24 September 1819 at St. Joseph’s church in Baton Rouge, with Pedro Fournier and Constance LeBlanc as godparents. The baptism names both sets of grandparents: Jean Serrette and Anne Sigur, of New Orleans, and Joseph LeBlanc and Julie Trahan. The published abstract of the register prints his birth year as 1808, a slip; his parents did not marry until 1814.

His mother died on 9 September 1837, when he was eighteen. The probate court of West Baton Rouge named his father tutor to Firmin and his four brothers and sisters, and his uncle Celestin Serret under-tutor. On 18 April 1840 Firmin gave his father a receipt, written in French, for 200 piastres “on account of what comes to me from the succession of my late mother”, and signed it with his mark. His father and his uncle signed their own names in the same court file, so the inability to write was Firmin’s own rather than the household’s. His father remarried in 1838 and died in April 1848.

Marriage and family

On 27 November 1839, at Baton Rouge, Firmin married Euphemie Dupuis, born in 1817, a daughter of Eloi Dupuis and Henriette Hebert. The couple had ten children, born between 1840 and 1859; several of them were baptized at the church of St. John the Baptist at Brusly. The census of August 1850 lists the family in West Baton Rouge Parish, with Firmin, aged 33, a carpenter owning real estate worth $1,400. That same month the couple lost two children within four days: their daughter Adelle was buried on 21 August 1850, and their son Sebastien Enos, six months old, on 25 August.

By 1870 Firmin was farming in West Baton Rouge Parish, with his son Pierre still in the household. In 1887, in the swamps of St. Martin Parish, his son Emile killed his elder son Alfonse; a grand jury found no true bill against Emile.

The war

Confederate service records show a Firmin Serret enlisting on 8 March 1862 at Iberville, the parish next to West Baton Rouge, in Company D of the 27th Louisiana Infantry Regiment^W. The identification with this Firmin is strong but not absolute, since none of the cards gives an age; the place fits, the soldier signed with a mark as Firmin did in 1840, and a paroled prisoner would have been free to return home, where Firmin appears in the census of 1870. If he is the same man, he enlisted at forty-three, on the same day and in the same company as his eldest son, Battezaer. The muster rolls list him as third corporal in the spring of 1862 and second corporal by the end of that year, present at every muster from April to December. He was captured at the surrender of Vicksburg^W, Mississippi, on 4 July 1863, and on 8 July he signed his parole oath there with his mark, as a private. The parole was a printed form filled out for some thirty thousand men in a few days, so the rank on it is not evidence of a demotion.

Death

The family record places Firmin’s death at Breaux Bridge in St. Martin Parish, the parish where his son Pierre later lived. No date or record of his death has been found.